An Island in the Continent
(Una isla en el continente)
Juan Pablo Miquirray / Mexico / 2022 / 69 min
Guadalajara International Film Festival
Festival Internacional de Cine Ambiental
Imagine India International Film Festival
Byron Bay Film Festival
Portland Eco Film Festival
San Francisco Latino Film Festival
Baja California International Film Festival
DocMX
Rain International Nature Film Festival
Pricing
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Spanish with English subtitles
With Francisco Hernandez, Edmundo Lizardi, Antonia Torres González
A journey of more than 1,300 kilometers across the Baja California Peninsula reveals a land where past and present converge in a fragile and mesmerizing balance of nature, history, and community. In An Island in the Continent, breathtaking landscapes and ancestral ways of life coexist with mounting external pressures.
Rich in natural resources and striking beauty, the region has become an increasingly attractive target for large-scale mining and tourism development—forces that threaten to disrupt its ecological and cultural equilibrium. As these competing interests intensify, director Juan Pablo Miquirray poses a pressing question: is it still possible to inhabit this territory in harmony with nature?
Related Subjects
About the Director
Juan Pablo Miquirray is a Mexican filmmaker. He graduated with honors from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in 2005 and has built a versatile career as a producer, director, and screenwriter across film and television.
He has served as production manager on acclaimed films such as Cochochi (2007), directed by Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas, and as line producer on Corazón del tiempo (2008) by Alberto Cortés. More recently, he worked as line producer on the feature film Dead Man’s Switch (2024), directed by Alejandro Gerber.
As a fiction director, Miquirray has helmed numerous short films and television projects. In 2006, he directed multiple episodes of the popular series Lo que la gente cuenta for TV Azteca. He later directed episodes of the youth series #YoSoyYo (2016) for Canal Once, and worked as second unit director on the series Crónica de Castas, starring Daniel Giménez-Cacho.
In documentary filmmaking, he has written, directed, and produced a wide range of projects. His debut feature documentary, An Island in the Continent (2022), premiered at the Cineteca Nacional. His other documentary work includes Mysteries of the Underworld, Quintana Roo for National Geographic, the mini-series The Paths of Water for Canal 14, Diáspora: relatos afromexicanos, and A Place Called Mexico for Canal Once.
Press
“Visually, the documentary is beautiful; the recording it makes of the site where the cave paintings are, the interviews it gathers, and the underwater images are dazzlingly beautiful.” – Johnny Antu-Hap, Sudcalifornios
“The rediscovery of one of the most inhospitable territories in Mexico, a millennia-old, sacred, ancestral site, vast in biodiversity and natural resources, but also coveted and disputed by mining, tourism, salt, and real estate companies, both national and foreign, and which has even caused the devastation of large areas and the displacement of residents from dozens of indigenous communities in the last four decades.” – Rivelino Rueda, Reversos
Notes on the Film
“Vising the Peninsula I was fascinated by its natural beauty, and its unique tempo, it was then that I decided that the Peninsula was the main character. It now faces a great environmental challenge in a struggle against its own destiny. As documentary filmmakers, we have an obligation to take a stand against much of the senselessness happening in the world and focus our efforts on shedding some light through moving and unique stories without losses the eye in the beauty.”
– Juan Pablo Miquirray, Director