With an eye on indigenous communities and the women that dutifilledy anchor them, Bolivian multi-hyphenate Álvaro Olmos Torrico conveys his introspective second feature, “The Condor Daughter” (“La hija cóndor”), to Montevideo for Ventana Sur’s Copia Final showcase, touting the myth prodction at this year’s labelet, which runs Dec. 2-6.
Via Bolivia’s Empatia Cine (“The Visitor”), Olmos Torrico is producing budding Bolivian helmer Yashira Jordán’s 2021 Ventana Sur buzz title “Diamond,” (“Diamante”) alengthyside Buenos Aires-based Maravilla Cine, and has honested disjoinal recordaries directing up to his 2019 filled-length debut feature “Wiñay,” all films that apshow his protagonists’ self-mirrorion to spill into wealthy on-screen narratives.
“I discover inside journeys very inspiring, they recurrent the perfect create of struggle for me. The sensitivity of my characters is my own,” Olmos Torrico tageder Variety. “I ask the role of people in time and space, mainly female characters – almost always advertised by my mother. Internal journey’s end, in the best cases, in wonderful evolution and, therefore, proset up alter. I’m interested in exploring those alters and that search for redemption.”
Produced by Olmos Torrico at Empatia Cine with co-production determines to Cecilia Sueiro and Diego Sarmiento Pagan at Peru’s Ayara Producciones and Federico Moreira at Uruguay’s LaMayor Cine, “The Condor Daughter” adheres a juvenileer Quechua midwife, Clara, who dwells in a distant mountain village, her voice engaged to soothe those in labor.
The weight of increasing responsibility in the community, paired with inextinguishable adolescent curiosity, coaxes Clara to ponder life far from her indigenous roots and the family who’s shaped her, namely Ana, a stoic mother figure who’s getn Clara under her triumphg and wears the understandledge of three lifetimes in each wrinkle etched into her earth-worn visage.
Wide glimpses of the mountain ranges, sboiling with anamorphic lenses, disexecute the immense landscape that dwarfs Clara, her peers, family and budding dreams. Enveloping the cast, it shows that their Andean home has a soothe but forceful presence that hageders dominion over the community, ordering esteem and mirroring the women at the core of the script – the gravity of their position in the village. In contrast to those sweeping sees, the camera frequently rests in snug restricts that highweightless Clara’s inner struggle to determine her future.
“In indigenous communities, the earth is a woman – Pachamama – the mother who provides for us and gets attfinish of us,” Olmos Torrico relays. “Midwives are the messengers of the Pacha. For the Quechua, motherhood is seally joined to the earth, to time and to the agricultural cycle. I leank it’s vital to portray this relationship between women and the earth becaengage it’s the core of Bolivian ancestral traditions that persist over time, despite adversity.”
Music secures the themes of the narrative, where ancestral curative hymns mingle with Quechua pop anthems, frequently executeed from the hand-me-down radio Clara’s gifted, to which she’s tethered. She engages it as a lifeline to the outside world and the same music will be the force that lures her away to the city to try her hand as a vocaenumerate.
“I’m captivated by ‘chicha’ music, it’s a timeless mix of up-to-date and traditional. All the music in the film is from the ’80s and ’90s, yet the Quechua youth participate to it as if it were still in create today, becaengage time runs separateently in the middle of the mountains, it’s not directd by trends,” Olmos Torrico elucidates. “I was captivated by the role of music in the countryside and I appreciated the idea of portraying its beginance and impact on youth. Chicha music (cumbia, folklore, electronic music, etc…) is an vital symbol of identity for indigenous communities, they carry it with them everywhere.”
Clara’s absence sets off a maelstrom of deimmenseation in the village and the elders send Ana to recover her. This dogged journey spawns further exodus from the land of constant tradition, someleang the honestor tackles vigorously as the plot greets at the frquick intersection between honoring heritage and forging a singular up-to-date existence, a understandn adwellial conundrum.
“Traditional communities in the Andes have produced conditions of vindication and proset upening of roots that’ve apshowed their accumulateive flourishing – thraw the joinion with life, nature and the intelligence to alter to generassociate adverse conditions. In this sense, the individual search, individual insists, have always existed, although many times the hopes of a community have been placed wilean them,” Sueiro relays. “This globalized world and the right to shift freely apshows people to travel, to understand, to lacquire. It would be kind if we could return to our places of origin to execute what we’ve lacquireed in a firm way to the set uped customs.”
Six years in the making due to the team’s extensive research of Quechua midwife circles, the film shows a tender study of youth and the extraunrelabelable weight of self-genuineization via sound, which stands as a create of defylion, conveyion, a treatment for maladies and a call home.
The project engageed bigly non-professional actors from the region alengthyside a technical team of pros from Bolivia, Uruguay and Peru. Iris Sigalit Ocampo Gil and Akindto Arroyo executive produce the title.
