‘Heroínas’, the short film with which Peru seeks the Golden Bear at the Berlinale

The cult that a group of women pays to the Peruvian warrior Tomasa Tito Condemayta gives life to heroinesthe debut film by the filmmaker Marina Herrera representing Peru in the 72nd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival.

The short film, which will premiere in the German city on February 15, is dedicated to the forgotten historical figure of this female chief who was in command of the intrepid women of the Altiplano who fought in the great rebellion of Túpac Amaru II against the colonial regime. , in 1780.

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The film narrates, in Quechua and Spanish, the rituals and venerations carried out by women from the Andean districts of Acomayo, Acos and Sangarará around Tomasa’s skull, which Natividad Villafuente, 94, treasures in her living room.

To do this, the young Herrera, daughter of a Catalan mother and Puno father, opted for a false documentary, a hybrid genre that starts from a fictitious premise, Tomasa’s skull, but that integrates the real stories of women from the area, who imagine that the skull really exists and they reveal their wants and needs to the camera.

“That’s why it’s so believable, even not (only) for someone from Berlin or Barcelona, ​​but also for someone from Acos or Acomayo,” explains the filmmaker in an interview, who assures that the choice to make a fictional documentary came from the ” influence” of the master’s degree that concluded in 2014 in the Catalan capital.

One by one, the believers come with devotion to pay homage to Tomasa’s skull, which inspires them with courage and determination, in the hope that their dreams will come true.

“(They talk) above all about the subject of studies and professions, of positions of power, which in reality all conclude that the opportunities for a woman, especially in an area a little further away from the big cities (… .), are much smaller than those of men,” says Herrera, 30.

Almost unintentionally, only female faces appear from the first scene to the last of the film. “It was not a decision as such, it happened naturally. Several scenes were removed in the edition and suddenly they were only women,” she maintains.

The idea of heroines It started in a conversation between friendsencouraged by a contest held by the Directorate of Audiovisual, Phonography and New Media (DAFO) on the occasion of the celebration of the bicentennial of Peru’s independence.

Herrera was clear, from the beginning, that he wanted to work with “these representative figures of the peoples, with the collective memory beyond historical memory” and finally he opted for “La cacica de Acos”, a precursor of Peruvian independence that She led an army of women who pushed the Spanish back at key points during the Túpac Amaru rebellion.

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“Later, when the royalists capture her, they masculinize her so they can judge and condemn her, because at that time they couldn’t do it with women. They condemn her to be decapitated and quartered to send a part of her body to each of the places where she was cacique,” says the filmmaker, who took the ending of Tomasa’s story as the starting point for her short.

“The story starts from there, from that head that arrives in the town of Acos. What happens to this head 200 years later?”, he wonders.

In the DAFO contest, Herrera’s short was selected as one of the 10 winning projects and, although its premiere was scheduled for 2021, the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic extended the calendar.

“We resumed production in May (last year), but with another script, which was adapted to the temporary circumstances because one thing is to write a script for 2019 and another thing is to imagine your film full of masks. (…) Due to the covid we also had to cancel this shoot and finally (we resumed) the first week of August ”, he details.

Now, heroines It competes alongside 20 other nominees in the selection of short films at the Berlinale, which has previously recognized Peruvian films such as “Retablo”, “Sembradoras de Vida” and “Las malIntentos”. (I)