El viaje de Javier Heraud

This feature film/documentary written and directed by the Peruvian film director Javier Corcuera endeavours to bring to the screen one of the most interesting and enigmatic stories to come from his home country.

Corcuera aims to immerse the viewer in the last years of the life of Peruvian poet Javier Heraud in an investigation both of his tragic death and of the literary works published over his short lifetime.

Ariarca, the great-niece of Javier Heraud, opens the suitcase of memories and shares the details of a story that as of yet remains untold: her great-uncle, poet and guerrilla fighter, was killed at the age of 21 in the jungle of Peru in the year 1963. Despite his young age, Javier Heraud was survived by a fundamental work of poetry within the Peruvian canon that holds a position of great importance in the modern art history of the country.

At the start of the film, Ariarca is the same age that her her great-uncle was when he died, providing a symbolic full circle and the perfect starting point for the director to set off in search of answers from Heraud's family and beyond.

Summing up Corcuera's mission in the documentary is one of the interviewees, who states: "It is not a death of a warrior or a soldier, not even the death of a hero, instead it is the death of a symbol".