Anabel Rodriguez’s Time is but a stream…

The Venezuelan filmmaker’s documentary Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, that country’s official 2021 Oscar submission, started streaming in the US and Canada on December 31.

The film was released in North American by Topic, the streaming service from First Look Media.

The documentary centers on the decline of a little town on stilts called Congo Mirador, located near Latin America’s biggest oil field that extracts from what reportedly are the world’s largest crude reserves at Lake Maracaibo in northeastern Venezuela. That nation enjoyed the riches brought by oil through the 1990s. But socialism arrived in 1997, bringing the nationalization of the oil and banking industries and a contentious relationship with the United States.

With extreme falling prices of oil in recent decades, Venezuela has been broke and facing a humanitarian crisis that has seen more than 4 million countrymen leave the nation. With millions more expected to flee Venezuela, experts warn of what could be the world’s biggest refugee crisis in modern times—bigger than the one caused by the war in Syria.

Rodriguez arrived in the middle of Venezuela’s crisis during the first half of the 2010s. She started documenting the decay of what used to be a thriving fishing community. The director focused her camera on two women leaders who come from opposing political camps and offer competing visions for the floating village—and their whole motherland.

This is Rodriguez’s third doc, preceded by the documentary short The Barrel in 2012 and 2018 TV movie doc Los Venezolanos, Retadores de lo Imposible.

Based in Vienna, Rodriguez has a master’s degree in filmmaking from the London Film School.

Once Upon a Time in Venezuela has won awards at the Cine Latino Minneapolis Saint Paul, Festival de Cine Venezolano, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and International Film Festival Watch Docs. The film competed at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2020, becoming the first Venezuelan doc at the Park City, Utah fest.

In addition to Topic.com, Once Upon a Time in Venezuela will also be available on Apple iOS, Apple TV, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and Amazon Prime Video.