Rude Awakening: A Review of Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century by María Fernanda Miño Puga

This review examines María Fernanda Miño Puga’s groundbreaking monograph Ecuadorian Cinema for the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), which offers the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of Ecuador’s emerging film industry during the early 21st century. Miño Puga, a distinguished film critic and scholar, addresses a significant gap in Latin American Film Studies by examining Ecuadorian cinema within the political and cultural context of Rafael Correa’s “Socialism for the 21st Century” movement (2006-2016). The book’s central thesis argues that Ecuadorian cinema during this period reflects the same contradictions and ambiguities as the political ideology it emerged from, maintaining neoliberal tendencies despite anti-hegemonic rhetoric. Through a praxis-based methodology incorporating theoretical frameworks from Pierre Bourdieu, Stephen Heath, and critical transnationalism, Miño Puga identifies three distinct subfields within Ecuadorian cinema: commercial exhibition, state-supported indie productions, and vernacular filmmaking. While comprehensive in scope, the review notes limitations including the exclusion of community cinema and short films, and suggests that future research should examine post-Correa developments, particularly the transformation of the National Film Council into the Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Innovation in 2020. Nevertheless, this pioneering work successfully repositions Ecuadorian cinema within the global cinematic landscape and establishes a foundational framework for future scholarship in this previously understudied field.