Discoveries from Bolivia World Cinema

Pema's graduation film made for Beijing Film Academy, Set in rural Tibet ; it is a timeless allegory of an old nomadic couple searching for a stolen yak.

In a remote time and place, a young messenger delivers a package to a man. It is the diary of his late father. They both read the diary to discover the mysterious mind behind its author. What they don't know is that they will find a disturbing truth.

Set in the remote Andes of Bolivia, “Sayariy” records a mysterious annual tradition in which two mountain tribes face off in a bloody ceremonial fight known as Tinku.

1538. In the Inca empire a strange visitor has arrived. The messenger Sisco will give the news.

Nicola, a baker by trade, separated, with three children, decides to come out of the closet, a secret that he has kept for 38 years and that he has not told anyone. On this intimate journey we accompany Nicola from the very day he makes the decision, throughout the process, to tell his ex-wife, his family and finally to all of society.

A short story of a man who accidentally loses his cellphone and is found by a person that will not return it and is unaware of the damage he could cause.

Tibetan Buddhist search for the meaning of death in an unforgiving Himalayan landscape and stir compassion by uncovering human truths

From inside Bolivia's craziest prison a cocaine worker, a drug mule and his little sister reveal the countries relationship with cocaine.

After several years a student returns to his native village only to find that despite the agrarian reform act of 1952, nothing has changed in the treatment of peasants, and racial discrimination continues.

A portrait of Namdol Lhamo, a middle-aged Tibetan woman who lives in Brussels and works as a housekeeper in an old people's home. Lhamo is one of the famous Drapchi 14, a group of nuns imprisoned in the notorious Drapchi prison of Lhasa in the early 1990s for peacefully demonstrating against the Chinese occupation.

During a Bolivian dictatorship, Naty and her daughter Anita are held in a hacienda by soldiers who were looking for some guerrillas. 30 years later, Anita, turned into a chef, returns to her old home, but the house will give her the necessary pieces to understand the past and decide her present.

Documentary on the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay and in particular on the signing of the peace treaty.

Every afternoon, Benjamin Laredo creates the crossword puzzle that will appear in the newspaper the next day. One day, after delivering his work, he meets Dochera, a woman who makes him fall in love. Not knowing how to find her, he begins to leave hidden messages in crossword puzzles so that she can read them and they can meet again.

Some of the materials and studies that were made during 2015 for the conformation and creation of the short film New life. The selection, the re-appropriation and the montage of them, conform a new poetic that has a direct relation with the final work and at the same time opens a space that allows us to glimpse the creative process, transforming itself into a piece in itself. Materiales is like the B-side of another cinematographic work, as in the old 7-inch vinyl sigles.

2024 was the worst year on record for the world’s primary tropical forests, and Bolivia lost 1.5 million hectares — more than any country except Brazil. Fires set to clear land for agriculture spiralled out of control, turning swathes of the country into an inferno. Against this backdrop, the film follows investigators from The Gecko Project as they journey through the Chiquitano dry forest in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands — the region most deeply affected by fires and deforestation.

People with disabilities are amongst the most discriminated in Bolivia. Fed up with being ignored they embark on an unimaginable journey, marching 380km over the Andean mountains in their wheelchairs to speak with president Evo Morales. Yet they’re met with riot police, barricades, teargas and water cannons.

Three stories intersect in a brutal lynching that occurred on June 1, 2013 in a town in the Bolivian tropics. Mario Vega, a prosecutor attached to judicial processes, tries to prevent the lynching of five young people from Villa Nogales, unjustly accused of stealing a truck. Miguel, the father, and Adrián, one of the young accused, join Mario to star in this story, which portrays what happens in many places in Bolivia, where "justice by one's own hands" claims many lives.

Due to the pandemic, a couple of filmmakers were stuck on the Bolivian-Chilean border for a year and a half. Filmed by the characters, this is a visual story about growing up and trying to stabilise their relationship in a world that is going through a crisis.

Amaru's Tongue: Daughter follows in a heritage of Aymaran abolitionist oral history tradition and adopts a fantastical tone, serving as an 'invitation to otherwise

Amid the lunar landscapes of the Bolivian mountains, the few traces of human presence seem minuscule, anecdotal. Shot by shot, Miguel Hilari’s camera follows these clues that lead to the city and its sonic confusion, where faces are captured with the same attention and poetry as the environment in which they live.

A wealthy executive seeks to take the wife of a humble cab driver, giving him a job in one of his companies and sending him on a trip to Bolivia in order to consummate his lust. Rejecting her affections, the businessman tries to abuse her, but her husband prevents him by shooting her and unleashing evil.

An intimate portrait of women who transform inherited pain into memory and memory into a form of healing. When the women of a family dare to speak out, the possibility emerges to heal together and seek justice.

Philosopher Zhuang Zi once dreamt he was a butterfly. This pleasant daydream tells this old story from a new perspective. Modern butterflies apparently dream in VR. Nature, technology and spirituality seamlessly meld when a monk and a child both embrace modern technology their own way.

In the Bolivian mountains, Aymara children attend a school that preserves their language and worldview. When they leave, they walk through the hills to work. Between the classroom and the land, childhood and adulthood intertwine under the early weight of work and collective heritage.

Martin celebrates his fourteenth birthday with his shoeshine friends. Between superstitions and a land that comes to life, their bodies will only be flesh under a few light flashes.

The journey back home has been a recurring narrative ever since humans started to tell stories. Because going back to one’s origins is always related to identity, a dilemma that never ceases to hit close to home

Four friends in Dharamsala go for a 'mission' but their true self are eventually revealed.

The tecuas want to make a gang movie. They skip classes to be able to film. La Muñequita has left her gang because La Diabla wanted to introduce some girls who would spoil the vibe. El Man de la Villa is pissed. Robberies and fights, things are getting out of hand. The filmmakers are scared.

Celestino leaves for Brazil from the Andes in search of new opportunities, but he can't reach his destination. The migrant stays in the border and is force to work at the only laundry there. Captivity ends up revealing the true value of his freedom.

In the mountains of Bolivia, a collective of Indigenous women challenge gender stereotypes through skateboarding — tearing down the notoriously steep streets wearing traditional pollera skirts. For them, skateboarding is more than a sport — it’s a statement of resilience and empowerment in a machismo society. As the collective gains visibility, they are working toward their biggest goal yet: building Bolivia's first skate park and community center designed for girls.

Follows a Tibetan expatriate writer living in San Francisco and makes for a powerful portrait of life of Tibetan immigrants in USA, and their struggles to keep their identity and values alive.

In the rural desert of Bolivia, where the most important presence is the wind moving between papa flowers and animals, the people who harvest the land, those who built the ancient artifacts and sacred objects and the musicians who play moseñada – songs linked to the first products of the harvest – on the streets of the city have one point in common: labor. With a successful inclusion of stories of enchanted lakes, legends that pass from mouth to mouth – or from orality to audiovisual, in this case – and give a fantastic aura to those lands, Luciana Decker Orozco not only manages to capture life without oscillations . field, but resorts to the incessant movement of images and sound accompaniment to define a sensory and transcendental experience for the viewer.

Freddy is a young man who is confronting the reality of assuming his life as an adult, before his partner and society. With this pressure on his back, he begins to take the journey that will allow him to complete his search: a job stability that satisfies him. Thanks to a friend, Freddy acquires a motorcycle without papers, hoping to find a job as a delivery driver that will allow him to move forward. With the motorcycle, his search for freedom, independence and manhood begins, but at the same time the machine becomes the permanent burden of his life.

During his last night on La Paz, a detective looking for a criminal visits four different zones of the city. On these zones, with their characters and situations, the detective faces enemies that represent the mythological plagues that struck the Uru nation, beasts defeated by the Condor. The detective sees himself as the Condor.

A visual essay about how Bolivia is seen in films from other countries.

The poignant and personal account of Tenzing Sonam’s first-ever visit to his homeland, from the far reaches of Amdo Province, where Tibetans have lost their language, to Lhasa, the heart of the country.

In the 1970s, a journalist who works for the most famous newspaper in his city becomes obsessed with one of the most dangerous killers of his time. When he decides to interview him to investigate his crimes, he realizes that the result of obsession can exceed the limits in the human being.

Set in the 16th century, a peaceful Inca community is massacred by a group of conquistadors, and the survivors including Wara Wara flee into the mountains. Later, Wara Wara is assaulted by two Spanish soldiers, and rescued by a conquistador with a noble heart. The two fall in love, but are confronted with the mutual hatred between their peoples. Sentenced to death, they escape, and live happily ever after.

A plea against the government of General Hugo Banzer (1971-1978) and specifically against the Bolivian military during the seven-year dictatorship. Includes interviews with prominent politicians, union leaders, and former CIA agents, as well as with Régis Debray, advisor to President Mitterrand.

A graffiti artist decides to embark on a journey around the city in search of a better place to settle down.

Through the appropriation and mutation of images into something completely new, Volivia questions what Bolivian cinema is and its own identity in this nightmarish digital poem.

A collection of spring colours, food spoils, spoils of war, emptied creatures, and fossils. In-camera edit, a diary-like rhythm of first impressions of the US without wanting to waste film.

A humble small-town altar boy faces the consequences of watching gay porn on the church's computer.

A biographical film of the the Karma-pa XVI and XVII of Tibet. The film also presents the spiritual life of Tibetan Buddhists in 1990s through interviews.

Procrastination is a collection of recorded images and situations; a timeless visual record of characters, places, and stories; all headed by a sort of family or cult, who film their lives in this homemade video where there is no apparent conventional logic.

Bolivian artist and filmmaker Luciana Decker Orozco delves into ancient and essential acts: eating, masticating and digesting. Her suggestive celluloid slips through mouths, intestines and entrails, as well as experiments in the catacombs of the human being and the Earth. Inspired by the avant-gardist and indigenist Peruvian writer Gamaliel Chumata, the surface and the underground, the real and the extraordinary, mysteriously merge together.

Estanislao, a war veteran with severe amnesia, returns home and faces his son Mario's resent. Mario had to take care of his mother, ill with terminal cancer. Sonia, Mario's wife, will try to bring the family together.

Counterpoint of images filmed during the confinement and the audio of comments and static from the local radio recorded live.

At the threshold of fantasy and magical realism, Barbara and Victoria explore two opposing worldviews. Navigating dreamlike landscapes, they seek to fulfill their dreams without fit into the mold.

Legend has it that many years ago, the Aña of light taught weaving and gave advice to the inhabitants of the place; on the other hand, the Aña of darkness caused sorrow and pain wherever they went. The daughter of the great Chieftain, Araberá, had married the god Colibrí; they were expecting their first child, who would defeat the Aña of darkness. The Aña decided to end the mother before the child was born. But the Toborochi tree offered to protect Araberá by hiding her inside its trunk, making her part of its essence and form.

An old Bolivian man nears the end of his life. He has property and status, but not contentment. Believing himself posessed by evil spirits, he opens his heart to reveal his anguish. His personal tragedy brings us close to every man's confrontation with the unknown, old age, and death.

The Palliri are the gleaners who recover, at the exit of the galleries in the mines, some pieces of minerals. Poor of the poor, Doña Helena works and lives in the highest mine in Bolivia, some 6,000 meters above sea level.ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

An intimate look at the life of a young lama as he aspires to live up to the reputation of his former incarnation. It also explores his moving relationship with the two people closest to him, his attendant and his spiritual master, both of whom were connected to him in his previous life.

The Wen brothers, Wen Pulin and Wen Puqing -- as director and cinematographer, respectively -- document the social conditions, customs, and spiritual life of Buddhist nuns in Minqiong mountain near Lhasa, China in the 1990s.