May the birds shelter you from the sky

A hummingbird watches a family from the garden through a bedroom window and ponders about human existence. Before his departure, he flutters his wings and awaits the release of a transient soul.

Experimental documentary short film. Spain/Costa Rica, 2025.

15 min, black and white.

CREW

Direction, script and editing: Joel Jimenez

Production company: Mubox Studio (Alejandro Gonzalez and Daniel Peña)

Sound design and mixing: Laura Gantes

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

After the passing of my father, due to a neurodegenerative disease, I returned to my homeland to mourn alongside my family. During that brief visit, I discovered that the bedside monitoring camera used to oversee my father’s condition had a recording span of 16 days. This footage became my emotional anchor as I embarked on my journey back across the sea.

In an attempt to cope with the profound loss, I immersed myself in these recordings. The static nature of the monitoring camera, much like my own stagnant presence, mirrored the painful distance I felt while witnessing my father’s gradual decline from afar.

In the days when my father’s health was strong, he devoted himself to tending to the flowers in our garden and nurturing the hummingbirds that would gracefully alight to sip nectar from their blooms. Following my father’s passing, my mother shared with me a belief that resonated deeply: hummingbirds are thought to be carriers of the souls of those who have departed.

With this poignant belief in mind, I delved into research about hummingbirds, discovering countless attributes that paralleled my own experiences of migration and change. This revelation compelled me to incorporate a narration, spoken from the perspective of the hummingbird inhabiting our garden, as a heartfelt endeavor to bridge the chasm that separated my father and me.

The result is an interplay between the narrated bird poem and the recordings encapsulated within my father’s bedroom. It serves as my earnest attempt to reconcile with the profound realities of death and the relentless passage of time.