Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Peruvian Andes’ snow-capped mountain range and crystal-clear lakes, Through Rocks and Clouds (Franco García Becerra, 2024) follows eight-year-old alpaca herder Feliciano. He spends his quietly monotonous days with his companions Rambo, an old and faithful dog, and Ronaldo, a young alpaca whose hairstyle closely matches that of the kid’s favourite Peruvian football player. While Feliciano patiently monitors his national team’s World Cup qualifying matches, the activities of a mining company endanger the traditional lifestyle of his village, casting a shadow over this nestled community’s future.
At the heart of Becerra’s tale of unhurried resilience, supernatural beliefs and ancestral traditions lies an interest in highlighting the socio-environmental issues affecting the indigenous community of Rumicancha, which the relentless bulldozer of modernisation is putting at risk. By adopting the traditional Quechua language and the young protagonist’s perspective, as well as his relationship of genuine love and tenderly mutual care with Ronaldo, the film sheds light on an entire existence of people, places and ways of life suddenly in danger of disappearing, coated under the stark beauty of the natural landscape they are enveloped in and its feignedly apparent peacefulness.
In fact, despite the sweet, lively presence of alpacas and Feliciano’s rascally innocent curiosity towards the world, an ever-present sombre and dreadful feeling of death lurks throughout. Sustained by a cheerfully melancholic and thunderously menacing (and at times overly suggestive) score and by a cinematography alternating between warmly pastelled hues and luminously washed-out nuances, Becerra’s work exudes an eerily constant sense of threat, ready to violently explode at any moment.
Massimo Iannetti is a film programmer and writer based in London.