Best Peruvian documentary movies

Peru is a country steeped in cultural traditions that stretch back more than 1,000 years. But it's also a land of surprising natural riches.

After a painful breakup, Alberto discovers that he still has things to resolve related to his sexual orientation. In order to understand what "coming out" really means in a conservative and homophobic society, he will decide to talk to a dozen homosexual men, of different ages and backgrounds, with whom he discovers that there is no correct or unique way to accept oneself.

The long fight over the land, which demolished the wall between master and serf, continues to divide Peru to this day. But the 1969 agrarian reform marked a before and after in the country's story - a profound change that Peruvian cinema reflected and encapsulated, creating great imagination we continue to discover today. 50 years after the social experiments of the revolution, we ask ourselves whether Peru really messed up or not with Juan Velasco Alvarado.

A trip through the diversity of black and native Peruvian music. Character-driven film, one where the characters are integral to the nation itself. This movie delves into music and musicians, yet it's not strictly a musical; rather, it's a tapestry of seemingly disparate personal narratives woven together in a country also striving to define itself and sketch its identity

At the height of the Peruvian gold rush, Nélida, an Andean woman able to communicate with water spirits, uses her powers to prevent a mining corporation from destroying the body of water she considers her mother. A gold deposit valued at billions of dollars lies just beneath Nélida’s lakes and leads farmers and Latin America’s biggest gold producer into conflict.

The stirring and sensitive Runa Simi follows an indigenous Peruvian man and his young son in their ambitious quest to fully dub Disney’s animated “The Lion King” in their native Quechua — and, in the process, protect and rescue this disappearing Peruvian language.

Stories of love and heartbreak, marked by tragedy, intertwine in Imaza, a territory of the Peruvian Amazon jungle. There, the river separates two worlds that do not meet. In one of them, a vital treasure for the survival of the town is hidden, where a school houses a group of girls who share their hopes and despairs. In the other, hostility and uncertainty prevail. The river not only divides geographies, but also destinies. That is why crossing it is a challenge with unpredictable consequences. “El Huaro” is there to remind them of the price of their decisions.

An Andean master who appears and disappears wandering through different geographies of the Andes, like a spirit who would like to take a last look at the sacred mountains, converses with the water, the rocks, the men, in order to have a better idea of what is the disease that afflicts humanity in the present.

A storyteller, mime and actor, at the age of 86 years old, self-represents and tells the story of his life, moving between reality and fiction; showing us how art and imagination change the way we see life. A poetic journey between creation, play, loneliness and old age.

Miguel, a university student, is kidnapped in the middle of the street. After a month of torture, he is released under suspicious conditions. Thirty years have passed and he still wonders how he can be alive.

Documentary that studies the history, development, fauna and flora of the Peruvian coast.

In the year 2017, contestants from the TV show RuPaul's Drag Race arrived in Lima, Peru. This documentary is not only focused on that, but also on the local drag queens, their dreams, points of view, their art and their identities.

When filmmaker Lucia Florez is presented with the opportunity to join her mother’s research trip, about the new conceptions of motherhood in the Andean culture in Peru, she decides to film de experience as an opportunity to explore her own personal mother-daughter relationship around her queerness.

This document is a consecutive and linear collection of situations and characters (Mario Poggi, el Hon. Antonio Córdova Quezada) that are appearing without a greater objective than the search itself.

This is the story of Mr. Rafael Castrillon, a master toymaker with more than fifty years of experience and a former Mr. Peru in bodybuilding. His story is a one-way ticket towards the manufacture of the traditional (incomplete) wooden toy.

A theatrical work that talks about the disappeared in the years of political violence in Peru, is taken to present Andean communities. In each place of presentation, the fiction will be confronted with reality.

Short documentary about the peruvian punk feminist icon Maria T-ta. "A transgressor among transgressors".

There are many great chefs around the world. Only one is considered to be a National hero. Meet chef Gaston Acurio and follow him in a journey to find out the stories, the inspirations and the dreams behind the man that has taken his cuisine outside the kitchen in a mission to change his country with food. Let this journey take you into the world of Peruvian cuisine to discover the power of food in Peru. Because the people that are passionate enough to believe they can make a difference are actually the ones who do.

A group of filmmakers arrives in Santiago de Chuco, a town in the Peruvian highlands where the poet César Vallejo was born. With the excuse of a casting, the filmmakers appropriate the theater and the inhabitants of the place arrive, revealing little by little some lives embraced by the aura of the poet, who died in Paris seventy years ago. All of them, inhabitants and filmmakers, are confused between verses, stories and poetry. Fantasy emerges and characters like the blind Santiago-who rings the bells always warning something-; or the young musician Elder - whose desires loom like a cornucopia-trace a liminal path between fiction and reality.

Fidel Castro employed a vast spy network that helped him remain in power.

Lima Grita is a Peruvian music documentary that juxtaposes places and moments from within the city of Lima's underground experimental music scene. The film offers an immersive experience into a soundscape made up of characters, conversations and poetic events.

The lush green of the foliage forms a quivering reflection on the surface of the Amazon. According to the legends of the indigenous people of the region, the Yacurunas live beneath the water, in submerged cities that are the mirror image of human ones. Yet the film deals neither with mythical creatures nor with legends, catapulting viewers instead right into the midst of this incredibly green world.

In one of the most remote places in the Peruvian Amazon, an Ashéninka boy must overcome his fears and catch a giant catfish using only a hook to start his journey as an adult.

An intimate look at the female universe, a journey in time through evocative images and the personal stories of women from the same family. The personal search of a daughter in the life of her mother and grandmother, contrasting the dreams, ideas and experiences of three generations.

Humans, Animals, Earth, Wind and Water, converge with the same energy of a filmic fire, which crosses and relates them. By the appropriation of educational images of 16 mm films, which in the past were used to educate us, Animal Within evokes a poetic collision between images of the human and the animal.

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

Spanish actor Pepe Viyuela embarks on a personal journey on the trail of his grandfather Gervasio, a soldier in the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War.

Ritual. The night and a room. The skylight.

A documentary which shows the struggle of many women surrounding the Miss Universe 1982 pageant hosted by Peru. The government invested a large sum of money in this event, during a time the country suffered an acute political, economic and social crisis. On the other hand, we can appreciate the denigrating use of the women's image in publicity.

“Identidad” is an introspective journey about what it means to be born in Peru in the early 1980s, when the worst economic, social and political crisis in its history began. This trip results in a look, perhaps hopeful, about a recent moment of social change and transformation whose essence was reflected in what happened around the return of the Peruvian Selection to the World Cup after 36 years of failures.

The exhibition that is the subject of this documentary consisted of a set of unconventional apparatuses, images and experiments of a kinematic nature that were related to each other in the exhibition space.

In 1971, some young Peruvian playwrights founded the group Yuyachkani, a Quechua word which means: "I am thinking, I am remembering. 25 years later, in 1996, the group celebrates its anniversary, performing a retrospective of its most important works, which allows them to think and remember about the scene they have traveled

An approach to the Peruvian director Armando Robles Godoy's way of seeing cinema. Images from "Espejismo" (1972), "La muralla verde" (1970), "Sonata Soledad" (1988) are commented by the director, complemented by the testimony of close friends, collaborators and critics of his work.

El Grito Subterráneo is a record of the resurgence of Peruvian "subte" rock. The birth of the "Second Wave", a movement that began in the 80's and did not stop until the early 90's, was the hotbed in which bands like Voz Propia, Leuzemia, Eutanasia, María Teta, Kaos, Flema, Narcosis, among others, burst into the scene.

Casire is a peasant community on the slopes of the Sara Sara Volcano in the south of Peru. Two hundred people still live in the community. The film narrates the story of the Volcano´s spell on the community, when she discovered that incestous relationships were practised there. She erupted, leaving the village in ruins, but being a female herself considered the men guilty and allowed only the women to remain in the village. The film tells what happens after the Spanish conquest when the Christian decided to put an end to the Volcano’s power to cast spells, and the state of the village nowadays.

Almost 250 years ago, an Indigenous noblewoman named Tomasa Ttito Condemayta gathered together over a thousand women to fight against the Spanish colonial rulers. In present-day Peru, female followers of all ages bring gifts to her resting place where they dance and celebrate together to draw strength and courage or request protection and good grades. A mockumentary in tribute of this special heroine.

Robles Godoy narrates the childhood of his father Daniel Alomía Robles and the birth of his melody "El cóndor pasa".

A collection of multiple home videos depicting an intimate glimpse at a group of friends throughout a four year span.

Specifically, it tells the story of the Special Intelligence Group (GEIN), created in 1990 to control the actions of said terrorist group, identify its leaders, modes of operation, supply networks and chains of command in order to definitively dismantle its actions. at a time when the Shining Path was adding forces in the interior of the country; The GEIN had the mission of hitting the strategic commanders who resided clandestinely in the capital, an area that this group did not control territorially.

Documentary directed by Armando Robles Godoy.

Documentary made by a team of Soviet filmmakers in order to pay tribute to Peru and the Revolutionary Government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado. It is a journey through different regions of the country together with archive images.

One of the most important experimental documentaries produced in Peru. It highlights the difference between the social classes before 1968, which was intended to justify the military coup of the Revolutionary Government under the slogan "Tierra sin Patrones" (Land without Bosses).

Short film about street soccer players on the eve of the 1982 Peru-Uruguay match

Testimonial documentary from 1989 that portrays the harsh reality of hundreds of migrant girls and young women who must travel to the city in search of work as domestic workers

Fictional reconstruction of the famous “Huayanay Case” that highlighted the age-old opposition between the official country and the real country.

Juan Torres lives in an isolated house in the shore of an Amazonian river. With a wisdom learnt from life itself, from nature itself he tells us his story.

A dramatic reconstruction of a turn-of-the-century incident involving African slaves in South America.

A documentary short about a town floating on a river in Iquitos, Peru.

The drama of the children of Ayacucho, forced to emigrate to the capital due to the extreme violence exerted on them by the protagonists of a conflict that is alien to them. They will remember through their testimonies the land they left behind: the landscape, their houses, their friends, their dead…

An audiovisual discourse that clearly denounces the impunity of those responsible for the kidnapping, murder and disappearance of nine students and a professor from La Cantuta.

Combines documentary and fiction to show the situation of minors prosecuted in military courts and before faceless tribunals, and unjustly sentenced for terrorism to sentences ranging from 15 years to life imprisonment.

Concert by Víctor Jara at Panamericana Televisión in Lima, Peru, on July 17, 1973. This is one of the last audiovisual records of Víctor Jara. Two months later he would be assassinated by the Chilean military dictatorship.

In the community of Chacán, a group of people say goodbye to one of their own

In Úcupe, Chiclayo, the horsemen had the custom of going out to capture wild donkeys that came down from the highlands to the coast in search of fresh pasture. Master Urita made the leather lassoes, while Jaime Rivas, the outstanding lazerote, led the patrol together with Segundo Rivera, the fastest amarrador in the world.

An irrigator in northern Peru transforms sugarcane into sweet cane, inspired by the poetic narration 'Hay Sí, Santiago Paisi' by César Calvo

Immersion in the artistic restoration work carried out in the convent of San Francisco de Lima.

Documentary that refers us to one of the most important characters in Peruvian culture: José Carlos Mariátegui. The figure of the Peruvian intellectual and politician is remembered and reconstructed by those who were part of his most intimate circle of friends and collaborators.

The community of Maras in Cusco extracts natural salt from a complex of pools. According to legend, the salt flat was formed by the tears of the Inca Ayar Cachi who was buried by his brothers before he came to found Cusco.

Record of images of the great city of our jungle, before its recent urban expansion.

Gaston Aramayo and Victoria de Aramayo show their art and craft as puppeteers with the Kusi Kusi group.

A critical account is given of the two stages of the military government of the seventies: Between General Velasco Alvarado and General Morales Bermudez. Based on photographic, graphic, journalistic, radio and audiovisual records

The Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces of Peru wanted to promote active recreation and sports activities that reclaim the past and project the country towards modernity. Thus, the Chasquis Race was organized to rescue the ancestral figure of the Inca's personal messenger who, through a system of posts, transported information throughout the Tahuantinsuyo.

Lucifer and Derrepente, are danzaqs (dancers) of Tijeras from Huancavelica, who perform an Atipanakuy (competition).

The streets of Lima become empty as the national football team plays the qualifiers for the 1974 World Cup.