Literary tradition of Peru has enjoyed wide recognition in Latin America for years. Cesar Vallejo’s poetry, essays by José Carlos Mariategui, novels by Mario Vargas Llosa: these are just some of the writers and works that have inspired reflection on Peru in the last century. The same cannot be said about Peruvian cinema, which so far has been falling behind its counterparts from Argentina, Chile or Columbia.

Films from Peru may appear in film magazines and get screened at international festivals; however, from the perspective of Polish and European audience Peruvian cinematography is still fairly unknown and – to an extent – exotic. Yet, it definitely deserves to be discovered and presented to audience beyond South American festivals.

Tramway Film Festival’s ambition is to leave behind the beaten tracks of cinematography and reveal to the audience some novel, previously unknown horizons of the cinema. That’s why immediately after the first edition I made a decision that the main figure of this year’s Cinemundo section will be Peru.

The selection process took several months, over which I watched nearly two hundred works from Peru. In a few cases reaching films and their authors proved quite a challenge. Interestingly, I noticed immediately that compared to Lithuanian cinematography, which we showcased at the first edition of the festival, the proportions of genres changed dramatically: there were many more experimental, hybrid and documentary films than feature films.

I realize that I’ve managed to explore only a tiny portion of Peruvian cinema. I selected the eleven films for the Cinemundo non-competition section single-handedly to ensure coherence of the programme. My intention was to present a spectrum of artistic expression in line with the main idea of the festival, which welcomes vision, creative boldness, and mutual permeating of feature and experimental cinema.

The films that passed the selection process were produced between 2018 and 2023. Authors from Peru have the courage to experiment, e.g. by taking an intriguing first-person camera perspective as a vantage point. They create polyphonic protest songs drawing from the tradition of materialistic cinema and references to Peruvian mythology. A jungle, a dream, a ritual. A poetic dialogue with animals. Monuments, looming mountains, wafts of smoke and birds flying overhead. Everything seems interconnected and mutually permeating: people and the land, mountains and the sky, light and darkness.

Watching white hailstones falling on a dark patch of land is no different than watching a group of people singing and waving flags in the streets. Peruvian film authors don’t avoid current politics and social issues. Their films lead us to constantly protest against injustice and harm.

It’s no surprise that artists in Peru speak up about public issues. The country’s turbulent history includes a civil war, guerilla terror, and political murders. In recent times the country has seen more waves of protests, including filmmakers who expressed their disapproval of plans to limit public financing of cinematography and impose censorship.

Let’s hope that the current conflict won’t hamper the development of cinematography in Peru, especially that interesting grassroots initiatives have emerged in recent years. One of them is desistfilm, a magazine that premiered in 2012 as an independent platform for film critique. The magazine is addressed at home and international audience. Desistfilm authors envisioned the magazine as a window that would showcase films and filmmakers of Peru’s audiovisual community, which has been slowly stepping out of the shade. Articles are published in Spanish and English in order to reach international audience.

In addition to the film production itself and film critique, film festivals also play a vital role in forming prospective authors and audience of art cinema. Lima Alterna International Film Festivaloffers space to present the best international films, with an emphasis on works distinguished by non-conventional narratives, alternative production processes, novel forms, narratives and visual innovations across feature, documentary and hybrid genres, as well as video art and film experiments by emerging authors and contemporary masters.

I would like to express my utmost thanks to Mónica Delgado of desistfilm and Farid Rodriguez Rivero of Lima Alterna for their great help, as well as all Peruvian directors whose films I had a chance to watch; thank you for taking me on this fascinating journey into the unknown.

Bartosz Reetz, founder and artistic director of Tramway Film Festival

List of films selected for the non-competitive section Cinemundo:

• After the dust | Colectivo Silencio | Peru | 2022 | 25’ | Polish premiere
• Animal Within | Ivonne Sheen Mogollón, Rebeca Alván | Peru | 2018 | 12’ | Polish premiere
• As I wait | Nicole Remy | Peru | 2020 | 6’ | Polish premiere
• Center, Ring, Mall | Mateo Vega | Netherlands | 2023 | 17’ | Polish premiere
• La fuente de agua | Irma Cabrera Abanto | Peru | 2019 | 3’ | Polish premiere
• Notes on Connection III | Andrea Franco | Peru, USA | 2021 | 12’ | Polish premiere
• Summits and ashes | Fernando Criollo | Peru | 2020 | 17’ | Polish premiere
• The distance of time | Carlos Ormeño Palma | Peru | 2021 | 19’ | Polish premiere
• The oblivion of mirrors | Miguel Ángel Calderón | Peru | 2022 | 17’ | Polish premiere
• To cut a tree in a green moon | Felipe Esparza Pérez | Peru | 2021 | 9’ | Polish premiere
• Where is Marie Anne? | Yaela Gottlieb | Argentina, Peru | 2022 | 6’ | Polish premiere