‘Yana-Wara’ Director on Violence, Nature and Spirits Both Good and Evil

In November 2021, just one week into filming “Yana-Wara” in the Peruvian Andes, tragedy struck. The film’s director, Óscar Catacora, died due to health complications. But his uncle Tito Catacora, who was a producer on the film and had collaborated with his nephew on two previous movies — including “Wiñaypacha,” Peru’s Oscar entry in 2019 — stepped in to finish “Yana-Wara.”

Now, three years later, the completed film is Peru’s submission for International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. As part of TheWrap Screening Series, Tito Catacora spoke with us about the film, a black-and-white drama in the Aymara language about a 13-year-old girl, Yana-Wara, from a small indigenous community in Conduriri, El Collao, Puno, Peru. Her story was inspired by a young person Óscar and Tito Catacora had encountered in real life.

“We live in an Andean area where we saw this girl who was … being abused. She claimed that she could see evil spirits at night,” Catacora said in Spanish via an interpreter. From there, emerged a protagonist beset by tragedy: Yana-Wara lost her mother at birth and her father a few years later. (Spoilers ahead.) When she enrolls in her community’s local school under the encouragement of her loving grandfather Don Evaristo (played by Cecilio Quispe Charaja), her teacher rapes and impregnates her. She then begins to suffer from what her village believes to be possession by the evil spirit Anchanchu. The film is bookended by Don Evaristo standing trial for an excruciating decision he makes to save his granddaughter.

For Catacora, it was important that the film reflect the specificity of Aymara culture while also addressing more universal issues. The spirit world, for instance, is central to Aymara beliefs. While benign spirits, or deities, might be embodied in mountains, there are also evil ones, like Anchanchu, who lives in a cave and controls wealth. “On one side we deal with evil spirits, which is very different from what Christianity preaches, for example. We’re not talking about the devil, Satan or Lucifer, just evil spirits,” he said.

“On the other side, we’re incorporating other themes such as gender-based violence, where unfortunately women are the victims. But this has been happening throughout history, in every culture. And still happens. … We also deal with other subjects, like justice — ordinary and community justice — also medicine and in this case, Andean medicine. Every culture has their own particularities, but as human beings we also have the same problems.”

“Yana-Wara” was shot entirely on location in the mountainous Conduriri region, with a cast made up entirely of local non-actors, including Luz Diana Mamami, the extraordinary young woman who plays the title character.

“We couldn’t work with professional actors because they only speak English or Spanish,” Catacora said. So they embedded themselves in the Aymara community, where a field producer eventually found Mamami. “She was (interested in) the opportunity, so we immediately spoke with her parents,” the director said. “After this, we had to train the actors — we have double the work in that sense. We have to train them to act and to perform the specific roles of their characters.”

Early in the film, Don Evaristo tells his granddaughter that everything surrounding them is living: wind, rivers, caves, rocks, even houses. The movie’s lush cinematography and spare soundtrack (there is no music) reflects this philosophy, with the setting, an area about 4,500 meters above sea level known as the Enchanted City, very much brought to life.

“In our culture, the Andean (person), the Aymara (person), his knowledge is bidirectional, not like the western (person), who is unidirectional, meaning that they see, make a judgment and then declare, ‘It’s a being,’ ‘It’s a house,’ etc.,” Catacora said. “Not the Andean, they’re bidirectional. He sees something and does some introspection. He feels, sees things through emotion. That’s why for us the rivers are living beings. So I have to feel: ‘Is this river happy, sad or angry?’ A house for example, I can see a house and make the assessment, ‘The house is happy, sad… I wonder if it’s hungry or thirsty.’

“Those were my thoughts for this film,” he continued. “I don’t hear music or song in nature. I just wanted to interpret, to feel and to make the audience feel how the house of the Anchanchu feels — how that cave feels. That’s the atmosphere I wanted to convey.”

Watch the full discussion here.

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