An American film producer comes to Venezuela to film a movie called "Suddenly, the movie." He hires a Venezuelan director to direct the film that is shot in the Amazon jungle. As the conditions are extreme, the producer agrees that the team move to Caracas to continue filming there recreating the jungle in the city. A series of unusual and strange situations happen on the film set.

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle (La Fortaleza, Jorge Thielen Armand). He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition — filmmaking to more deeply understand the self, and the other — spirals into a process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF holds a steady lens to the way the act of cinema unearths, binds, heals and destroys.