Eternity

Óscar Catacora's 2018 Peruvian film is cited as the first feature shot in the Aymara language. An elderly couple living at four thousand metres in the Andes wait for their son, who went to the city and never came back. Winter food runs low, the animals die, the woman's sight fails. The film tells this not as tragedy but as a slowly advancing reality. Catacora drew on the lives of his own grandparents and cast family members in the roles. The shooting conditions are part of the film: cold, thin air and isolation pass into the image. It is a spare but clear answer to the question of what happens to those left behind by rural migration. The director died in 2021 at thirty-four. Who it's for: viewers interested in cinema made in indigenous languages, in slow cinema and in Andean culture. Who it's not for: anyone wanting plot and dialogue, or avoiding content about the death of animals and abandonment in old age.