Discoveries from Peru World Cinema

A woman who lives in a lighthouse takes action against her childhood sweetheart who runs a beach hotel.

Rita discovers that she is the victim of a scam in the purchase of a piece of land and denounces the woman who manages the place. Without finding justice, Rita joins other scammed people to face the situation.

Short film.

In a wealthy bourgeois home live Doña Trinidad, her children Carlos, Pedro, and Graciela, and three grandchildren. The elderly woman is accustomed to ruling the lives of her family, but also to overlooking their faults. She loves her granddaughter Inés, who is an orphan. She must listen to the complaints and worries of her grandson Carlos, who is a businessman in crisis. Her grandson Raúl, a medical student, is in love with a young woman who doesn't notice him and prefers other companions. His disappointments lead him to seek compensation in morphine injections. The grandson Pedro, who was fired from his job, receives a lottery ticket as payment for a debt, which wins a prize of fifty thousand soles. In turn, another of Doña Trinidad's luxuries, Enrique, comes to his mother's house to lament his weakness of character, which causes him marital problems.

Maria visits her mother's apartment for the first time after her death, intending to put it up for sale. Once inside, she encounters objects from her childhood that remind her of a significant event from her past.

Didactic process explaining how movement is achieved in cartoons.

Short film.

Iván is a blind man who lives with his wife, Mercedes. They lead a quiet and peaceful life, but an event is about to change everything. Iván will undergo an operation that will restore his sight, something he has always longed for. However, little by little, he will discover that the world he is about to see hides a dark secret.

An inexperienced Assassin is hired by the Grim Reaper to carry out her work. As their alliance unfolds, the Assassin’s moral decay and the consequences of his decisions are monitored.

Julio is the best salesman in a company but at home he is “a weakling”. When he can no longer bear orders, he decides to take control of his life and face his most fearsome enemy, his wife.

Agustín, a young man about to start university, chooses the same major as his friends because he's still unsure of his path. But when they decide to pursue their true callings, he's left adrift. In his quest to find his identity, Agustín draws inspiration from new role models… without imagining that they will come to life and lead him into a series of hilarious and revealing entanglements.

Back to square one. A guy trying to quit his smoking habits.

It tells two parallel stories: The apparition of the Virgin of Urkupiña in Cochabamba so that a temple could be built for her, and the miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a non-Catholic family.

In a time without the internet or social media, Mónica battled the pressures of fame while starring in the beloved children's show Sube a mi nube. Though the show brought joy to many, it slowly consumed her, as she struggled with the weight of her mental health in a world that didn't understand her pain.

One of the oldest comedies in Peruvian cinema, it tells the story of Esther, a young woman with a troubled life who tries her luck in show business, though things don't go as planned. Directed by Ricardo Villarán and produced by Amauta Films, the film was well-received by critics and audiences at the time, as it was a lighthearted story that allowed actress Carmen Pradillo to showcase her talent as a professional singer. An interesting fact about this feature film is that it took the opportunity to critique the Lima entertainment industry.

A young man runs a newsstand, dreams of becoming a writer, and must find a way to gain recognition. He's forced to live in the newsstand. He discovers a strange box left outside. One day, he meets a schoolgirl named Andrea, who gives him hope, but he soon realizes things aren't so simple and must face life with a less naive perspective.

On a night steeped in fear and violence, Helena decides to take revenge on her mother, Magdalena. As the house becomes a labyrinth of memories, they are trapped in an intimate ritual where faith, silence, and guilt clash. What happens in that house not only challenges the bonds of blood, but also the boundaries between belief and denial.

Three lives in search of redemption intersect in the streets of Lima: undercover cop Gamarra’s desperate attempts to save his wife from a terminal illness gets him into trouble; bus driver Felix wants to be accepted into a religious sect after his involvement in a tragic traffic accident; and imperiled soccer club leader Narciso tries to secure his younger brother’s release from prison.

Tato just moved back home penniless. He decides to sell his bedridden mother’s house. Now he must build a replica of his mother’s bedroom to create the illusion that she is still in her home.

Sofia encounters with an old friend from her childhood, Mar. Both girls become inseparable, until that bond becomes so strong that Mar starts to develop a dependency for Sofia.

Witnesses recount the shocking 1996 hostage crisis in Lima, Peru, where rebels held scores of high-level figures captive at an ambassador's residence.

When a man tells his friends that he is gay and asks for the appropriate emotional support, one of them, the most conservative, decides to try to reverse the situation. From there, a series of comic situations are unleashed that will take the group through different emotional stages that will help them reinvent friendship.

Manolo is an adolescent who dreams about making movies. It's 1968 and, among his friends, he spends his last year before entering university on the beach and listening rock music. But his life changes when he met a hippie young girl: Emma. Now, with the intention to win her, Manolo will start to make unlucky decitions.

Ella – well she has a name too – Luna (Patricia Garza), is actually about her much older husband and painter Alfredo (Paul Vega), and his choice of actions/reactions after she decides to leave him for a lover that he wasn’t aware of. Alberto has been going through a creative crisis and is under pressure to complete a series of paintings for a forthcoming show. It is nevertheless also plain to see that he’d been treating Luna, who’s also his model, largely as an object of desire and obsession – capturing with camera her every movement in the house when she’s not posing for him, and memorising her every physical feature, moles and warts included – he’d apparently counted twenty seven moles on her body. When Alfredo tracks down and entraps the lover she’d wanted to elope with (Rómulo Assereto), he’ll discover that they both have more in common than merely desiring the same woman…

Saul receives a double invitation to his cousin's wedding. Having a polyamorous relationship with two guys, he will have to decide which weighs more, the social or sentimental value.

The making of a soldier in Peru. A group of young men, some of them teenagers, voluntarily enlists in a rigorous military program within the Peruvian Armed Forces. They are driven by their desire to engage in an ongoing armed conflict in the VRAEM, an area with military intervention framed by a 'war on drugs' policy. They aspire to become ‘men of war’ and embark on a transformative journey from hopeful adventurers into soldiers. Amidst the violence in the secluded military environment in Peru, intimate moments unfold beyond a prejudiced gaze, where compassion and care blossom among them.

Jacinta, an Andean indigenous woman, returns to Chongomarca with the mission of finding her husband, Wasaberto. Upon her return, she stumbles upon a multinational construction company that will build a hotel in her modest home.

An American woman travels deep into to the Amazon jungle discouraged with her marriage & on a quest for adventure, nature and a new sense of belonging. She unexpectedly meets Noe, an amazonian painter who teaches her what true belonging really means.

Lima, 1988. Two brothers are left alone at home while there is a blackout. One is asthmatic, and the other is afraid of what is hiding in the dark.

Edwin and Luigi, two best friends who are 9 years old and come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, are forced to part ways after learning that Luigi's family is moving to Italy. Together, they try to stop it from happening.

For centuries, dried fish has been Norway's main export. The Lofoten Islands, above the Arctic Circle, were once synonymous with cod fishing. Fishermen, entrepreneurs, and artisans tell us the story of Henningsvær: a vibrant community in an extreme environment.

A short film by Rafael Arevalo.

A family longs to be on a TV show which does in-depth exposés of different real families every week. When they are finally selected they decide to change their lives completely so that the audience sees them as they want to be seen, not as they really are.

Alicia and Eduardo married in love, bought a beautiful house, and adopted two cute hedgehogs while they waited to become parents… Then they wondered if that was really what they wanted.

Pedro is a quiet, hermetic and absolutely orderly guy. He gets up early to go to work serving the public. He also likes to cook, listen to music and go out to kill at 2 am. Gabriel Barba is the policeman in charge of looking for this unstoppable killer. However, he has problems that distract him: he is in love with Angela, a prostitute with whom he lives and whom he cannot touch, because she, in revenge for not fulfilling everything she promised him, does not allow him to do so. A dark and intense story, where satisfaction becomes the motive for violent events, occurring in a universe plagued by characters trapped in their own labyrinth.

Emilia, a young widow, is traveling by river to Islandia with her young daughter, Irina, in the 1950s. Because the river is low, they are stranded in Santos, a small town in the Peruvian Amazon. The time they spend there is enough to change the course of their lives. Emilia is the first teacher the town has had. Fifty years later, her legacy remains.

An aging self-proclaimed prophet who revisits his past as a spiritual guru after an eager young follower entices him to return to preaching.

In 1781, the revolutionary amaru-kataristas occupy the highlands of southern Peru. Sapa Inca, the last descendant of the Aymara Incas, and his wife Gregoria, decide to continue the indigenous insurrection against the Spanish oppressors. However, in a tumultuous time, obsession for the libertarian cause, love in times of chaos and betrayal among the brotherhood, will unleash a series of tragedies.

Roque is a young archaeology student who, through the mysterious carved figures on a gourd, seeks to uncover the macabre death of his family and the curse of his village. Aided by Wallallo Karwincho, a Wanka god reincarnated as an old man, he will confront Don Macario, a man condemned to live without a soul, punished by the mountain spirits.

On January 9, 2023, in Puno, at the height of peaceful protests against the government of Dina Boluarte, police killed 21 protesters.

Peruvian anthropologist and painter Ediberto Jiménez visits the villages of the Chungui people in the Peruvian highlands. During the 1980s, these people suffered terribly at the hands of the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path, as well as the Peruvian counterinsurgency forces.

A group of young people discovers that time itself is beginning to break apart. As reality changes and history is rewritten, they learn they are part of a select group known as The Essentials—guardians destined to protect the timeline. To save the past, present, and future, they must stop a powerful enemy before the fate of the world is changed forever.

A box delivery boy drives around the city until an intense pain in his spine stops him. A wrong delivery, the sale of a car and an unexpected accident will mark a sudden turn in his destiny.

Santiago is a jazz musician wounded by the death of his wife, who will try to help Marcelo, a street musician, pass a musical audition. After encountering some problems, he will attempt to demonstrate the true value of his music.

What does it mean to be a trans woman? What should a trans woman be like? There is no one way to be one. In this mini-documentary, Frida Morgana shares her life, her passion for basketball and heavy rock, and how she helps others discover their identity.

Aga, an Inuit woman who is holding on to life in her deathbed undertakes a mysterious journey, travelling through different people who have close ties to the sea.

A man performs a ritual with raw meat.

Christian, a kind, respectful young man who works from home, has a mental disorder and easily becomes obsessed with women, impacting the life of Verónica, a young YouTuber who will wish she hadn't exposed her life so much on social media.

Perico leaves the orphanage. Innocent and naive, he falls into the hands of people who rob him, but he is saved by Pepe, a roguish boy with a good heart. With him he begins a friendship that will lead him to different adventures, among which he will meet love, music and his idol Vico and his band Karicia

Briana has just turned 12 and notices that her friends are starting to like boys, which triggers insecurities about her own personal and bodily development. She is confronted with various situations that make her feel seen by others, after a frank conversation about her insecurities with her older sister, Briana realizes that growing up doesn't mean not being herself.

The diverse manifestations of Peruvian craftsmanship using ancient knowledge, executed by regional artists in stone, ceramics, wood, and metals.

Short film.

A streamer chef improvises a Nikkei Makki recipe based on his ignorant instincts.

An alcoholic private detective faces her biggest challenge yet when a married couple hires her to find their missing daughter. While investigating her disappearance, she'll remember her own story, her mother and the reasons on why she left her family home.

This documentary, an output of an ITTO Fellowship award, conveys compelling efforts to improve fire management in the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes.

A film made in Junin.