The Eight Mountains
Against a mountain backdrop, a friendship between two boys is reawakened in adulthood. The missing period in their lives comes back to make its presence felt.
Utama
The face of the old man Virginio is as cracked as the earth beneath his feet. Virginio lives with his loving wife Sisa on a vast and arid plateau where he tries to eke out a living with his llamas. But high in the mountains the snow is dwindling and rain only falls sporadically. The village well has run dry. His grandson tries in vain to persuade him to move to the city. What he doesn’t understand however, is that Virginio and Sisa are not worried about where to live, but about where to die.
‘Utama’ means ‘our home’ in Quecha and is also the title of the film, whose dazzling images portray the disastrous influence of climate change on the ‘home’ of the indigenous population on the scorched plateau of the Bolivian Andes. The ‘actors’ are all residents of the high plain and the main characters are a real-life couple.
