The Condor Daughter

Clara (Marisol Vallejos Montaño) is a young, smart and resourceful woman living in the community of Totorani, high in the Bolivian Andes. Her adoptive mother, Ana (María Magdalena Sanizo), has dutifully taught her the ancient ways of midwifery, including the tender Quechua songs that are believed to help safely usher newborns into the world. But while Clara loves, respects, and is expected to continue this tradition, she dreams of discovering the wider world on her own, and maybe even conquering the city with her gifted voice.

Writer-director Álvaro Olmos Torrico deploys an incredibly precise cinematic language to tell a tale as old as the medium itself — the tensions between tradition and modern life. In exploring how that clash can alter individual lives, Olmos Torrico offers a refreshingly insightful take on diversity in contemporary Bolivia, the impacts of colliding worlds, and the meaning of belonging to a place and time.

Cinematographer Nicolás Wong Díaz and sound designers Álvaro Rivero and Federico Moreira poetically render the textures of skin, dimly lit indigenous households, noisy city streets, and open landscapes in a way that is quietly enthralling, and the acting by both Sanizo and Vallejos Montaño sustains the narrative with deeply affecting performances, without ever overstating their emotions. At the end of her journey, it is a treat to see Clara becoming the woman she chooses to be.

DIANA CADAVID