Clara’s voice is pure, but her thoughts are complicated in “The Condor Daughter,” as she sings an ancient hymn as part of helping her aunt Ana (Maria Magdalena Sanizo), a midwife in the Andes, deliver a baby, unsure of the world she’s bringing the infant into. The tradition of welcoming a child with a song is a beautiful part of the Quechua community that’s lived in the Bolivian side of the mountains for centuries, but Clara (Marisol Vallejos Montaño) has long had a suspicion that her voice could carry a great deal more if she moved to the city, even before getting her hands on a radio that not only opens up horizons about where she could get airplay, but the world in general that she’s been largely unaware of from dutifully accompanying Ana on her visits to expectant mothers.
It’s a bumpy road for the two when Clara decides she must find out if she can breathe any easier at the lower altitude, particularly when women aren’t expected to have much of a future besides having children in the male-dominated culture and kept in line with the threat of punishment. (One particularly wrenching scene in the film involves the cutting of a young woman’s precious locks when she is thought to have stepped out of line by an elder.) However, in Álvaro Olmos Torrico’s captivating drama, a path is cleared to see how both Clara and Ana reconcile wanting to preserve their heritage with the recognition that they can’t keep doing things the same way they’ve always been done if they want their culture to survive as Clara’s decision to leave sparks soul searching for them both.
The film, which draws on the extraordinary natural light to be found at the top of the Andes for some breathtaking images, is radiant in other ways as it moves from the rural climes of Bolivia to its urban center as Ana searches for Clara, unable to carry on her own practice without her and when she can’t understand why Clara would want to leave, it brings up as many questions to ask of herself as she has for anyone else about her whereabouts. Although it’s noted that condor only eat dead animals as more and more of the birds circle overhead where Ana resides, Torrico shows there are still vibrant parts of a community where women harmonize as they plant potatoes and see their music as a form of protection for their children, an idea central to Ana’s rituals as a midwife, and as Clara takes the talent that she has and applies it a new way, “The Condor Daughter” exemplifies how honoring a tradition while interrogating it can be the foundation for something even better. When the film recently made its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Torrico and Montaño, with the assistance of a translator, spoke about making a film that could speak to multiple generations in their native Bolivia, making the music for the film and taking it as a vital sign that their own shoot was circled by condors.
How did this come about?
Álvaro Olmos Torrico: My previous film, “Wiñay” was a smaller production, and it connected me with the mountains. From that moment I filmed there – and it was very guerrilla-style, I was very surprised with the environment and the people, and I was determined that my next film would be there. And a producer introduced me to a midwife. She didn’t speak Spanish, but many times I visited her without a translator and we could spend the whole day and we understood each other very well. One day I found out she passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, which was very sad, and it brought up the question, what happens when all the midwives pass? What’s going to happen with all that knowledge?
What was it like to find an actress for that role of the midwife Ana?
Álvaro Olmos Torrico: It was very hard because I was looking for a some natural actress but she had to be older and the way that Ana speaks is very sage, wiser, deeper. One day I was very stressed that we couldn’t find Ana, but in the outtakes of the people that they didn’t choose from the casting, I saw Maria [Magdalena Sanizo] and [I thought] “This woman looks like maybe she can do it. Let’s call her.” She used to work as a broadcaster, like an elocutor in Quechua [which] was perfect for me because she knows how to speak loudly, and then she came and she told me that she belongs to this area also in the mountains and she was born there. So I started to work with her on the emotions and the feeling of how to be Ana and connect her with the mountains and the places that she already knows and [that way she] connected with the story.
Marisol, how did you get involved?
Marisol Vallejos Montaño: Actually, I wasn’t an actress, but I identify a lot with my character because I come from her culture. I work in a musical group, which I advertise on social media and that’s where they found me.
Álvaro Olmos Torrico: Actually, the band plays in the climax of the film.
Were you already familiar with this traditional Quechua music?
Marisol Vallejos Montaño: I was born and raised in [the Quechua] community, but there was also a process with an instructor to get closer to the instruments and how to perform the music. I had already some idea because I come from the culture, but in that work with the instructor, she brought up a more spiritual side to it and a deeper relationship to the music.
Álvaro, you said you were attracted to filming in the mountains, but often that limits the amount of crew and equipment you can bring with you. Was that a style of working you could embrace?
Álvaro Olmos Torrico: Actually, the place is very comfortable and the landscape looks harder [to film in], but it’s not really. Because of the conditions of the mountains, I had to trust fully on Nicolas [Wong], the cinematographer, [in terms of equipment] and because of the conditions of the shoot itself, we didn’t want to bring that much equipment, so it was smaller gear. But there’s good paths there. We had heavy rain on the first day of the shoot and we thought, “Oh, this is not going to work,” but at the end of the day, we saw a condor and Aniceto [Arroyo], who is from the community and one of the producers, said that he is the leader of the pack of condors, and that the condor came to give permission and to wish them good luck with the shoot. From there, everything flowed very well and the [working] atmosphere with the team was wonderful. I think that contributed to us all being very committed to the movie.
Marisol, what was the first day of filming like for you?
Marisol Vallejos Montaño: It was unique and new because I had never acted before, but I really liked the organization and everything about the cinema that I didn’t know before.
Now that I know that this was your actual band, what was it like to reunite with them for the shoot in the city?
Marisol Vallejos Montaño: It was awesome because I reconnected with them at a moment where nobody knew me as an actress, but I was able to have them by my side on stage. And the movie could have been super traditional folk music [all the way through], but the reality is that there is this modernity even in the fields, so the story reflects the wide range of modernity that exists in current Bolivia.
It sounds like you may have mentioned it with the first day of shooting, but was there a particularly crazy day of the production you were pleased to pull off?
Álvaro Olmos Torrico: Yes, if there was another moment where it was very hard to shoot. The scene with the leader [of the Quecha community in the mountains] cutting this young woman’s hair was very tough. Tough for me because I felt that as a director, I was cutting her hair [myself]. It was a bummer for everybody [on set] because it had a deep impact on the actress and it was a really, really tough scene to shoot. The people on the crowd [were largely nonprofessionals] from the community, but the actress is from the city and she speaks Quechua, so she was very happy at the beginning, talking to the extras and [telling them ahead of time], “Okay, I’m going to cry. I’m gonna be upset, so you don’t worry and if you can, actually swear and insult me.” And they were like, “No, no, no, no, no.”
[Cutting hair as a form of punishment is] a very common practice in some communities, and it shouldn’t be, but it happens in places, in countries like Bolivia and other areas or countries in Latin America also. When the scenes began, it was very hard, and the people were very astonished. They thought that the punishment was real, looking for answers as if this is really happening and why this is happening. Then we had a little dialogue with the leader of the community who said, “Why you’re doing this to this woman?” And we had to say, “No, don’t worry. As [the actress] said, this scene is fiction. Don’t worry.” But when the actress was crying and upset, everything looks like it was real at that moment, and for us too.On the other side [of that question], we came out with two wonderful scenes that were not in the script. The main image of the film with Marisol looking through the window and the scene when she [listened to] the radio for the first time, those two scenes were not in the script but they found them while shooting and they became really, really good finds during the shoot.
What’s this like getting to the premiere with this movie?
Álvaro Olmos Torrico: It’s very exciting because it’s my first time in Toronto and I used to attend European film festivals, but this is very new for me. But it’s very good because it’s a big festival with big commercial and creative repercussions. We don’t have any support or funding in Bolivia, but we try our best to make good films and I think represents how I and my generation see our country now. It’s a country that only just celebrated 200 years of independence, so at this moment we don’t have solid identity as a country. Everything is a contrast. Everything is mixed in Bolivia and we need to know about the past to learn about the future and I think this film represents the voice of our generation, not the youngest actually, but the new generation of filmmakers and maybe the youngest will see things a different way, but in our [perspective], this is what we see and how we understand our own country and being in important film festivals like Toronto is an honor.
“The Condor Daughter” does not yet have U.S. distribution. It will next screen at the Vancouver Film Festival on October 3rd at the VIFF Centre at 1 pm, October 9th at 3:15 pm at the Fifth Avenue Cinema and October 11th at 9 pm at the Granville Island Stage, and the Chicago Film Festival in October.