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When "Araya" made its debut at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, the fictionalised documentary stunned critics with its sober beauty. The film chronicles the lives of three families working in Araya, Venezuela's barren salt marshes, where locals endure a harsh lifestyle dependent on the sea. Two days after its premiere, "Araya" shared the prestigious International Critics Award with Alain Resnais's "Hiroshima, mon Amour", now a classic, and it made a sensation of Margot Benacerraf, a 32-year-old, Venezuelan-born, Paris-trained filmmaker—"Araya" was her first feature-length film.

But unlike Resnais's "Hiroshima", which was later nominated for an Oscar, "Araya" never found an official distributor. Fifty years later it has remained obscure, despite its importance to the history of both Latin-American and documentary film. Thanks to Milestone Films, "Araya" is finally getting its due; a restored print of the film in now travelling the world in a limited theatrical release.  read more »