Deep in Peru’s Amazon region, the Marañón River is home to a vast network of spirit villages ruled by the Karuara, or “People of the River.”
2024 · 1h17m · Canada, Peru
Spanish
English subs
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About the Film
Deep in Peru’s Amazon region, the Marañón River is home to a vast network of spirit villages ruled by the Karuara, or “People of the River.” Through enchanting hand-painted animation that fills the frame with vibrant compositions, we are transported inside the river world, where spirits lounge in hammocks made of boa constrictors and smoke sardines wearing stingray hats and catfish shoes. Laughing children ride to school on giant turtles and play football with inflated blowfish. Behind their playfulness, however, the Karuara are also metaphysical ecologists maintaining the delicate balance of life in the waterways.
For centuries, the Kukama people have depended on their rivers for survival. But, in a world that continuously puts a price tag on nature and humanizes the corporations responsible for the cultural genocide that is taking place, a federation of women, led by Mariluz Canaquiri, decide to fight back and file a groundbreaking lawsuit demanding the river, too, be recognized as a legal person with rights.
Upcoming Screenings
About the Director
Stephanie Boyd
Stephanie Boyd is a Canadian filmmaker and writer who has been living and working in Peru since 1997. Her documentaries have been broadcast on the Sundance Channel, Al Jazeera, CBC Country Canada, KBDI Colorado, Outside TV and other networks and have won more than 30 international awards. Her latest film, Karuara, People of the River, was coproduced with a Kukama indigenous women’s federation and radio station and premiered at Hot Docs 2024.
Miguel Araoz Cartagena
Miguel is a visual artist who was born in 1977 in Cusco, Peru. “And that is how the rivers came to be” is his first animated film. Miguel has worked with indigenous painters in Peru’s Amazon for more than a decade. During the past 4 years Miguel and his partner, Stephanie Boyd, have given dozens of painting workshops to school children in Kukama villages, generating over 500 paintings. This art provided the inspiration for the animation. Miguel and two other painters from Cusco created over 2,000 paintings for this short, and learned 2D animation techniques along the way (none of them had experience in animation before). The Kukama God was modelled by Don Jose Huaymacari, the film’s narrator and a wise storyteller and elder. Miguel’s paintings have been exhibited in more than 25 shows in France, Switzerland, Uruguay, Brazil and Peru. Two of his most popular works are part of the permanent collection in Cusco’s Qoricancha Museum, the Inca’s Temple of the Sun, and have been reproduced in numerous publications, including a recent book and exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. His latest short film AND THAT IS HOW THE RIVERS CAME TO BE (2019) is selected in competition at Annecy IAFF.
