When Óscar Catacora’s 2017 film “Wiñaypacha” (“Eternity”) was released, it marked the first feature film to be produced entirely in Aymara, the language of the Aymara people from the Andean region. A poetic exploration of a changing world that was anchored by the beautiful vistas of that oft-inhospitable landscape, it announced the young Peruvian writer-director (barely 30 at the time) as a promising talent. Sadly, Catacora passed away in 2021 when he’d just begun production on his follow-up, “Yana-Wara.” Finished by his producing partner and uncle, Tito Catacora, the intriguing tale of justice in a small indigenous community lacks the raw lyricism of the younger Catacora’s earlier work.
“Yana-Wara” is titled after its central character, a young orphan girl who has been found dead. The question is not whether her grandfather Don Evaristo (Cecilio Quispe Ch.) has killed her. That much is clear. It’s whether his killing of his teenage granddaughter (played by Luz Diana Mamami) was warranted, punishable — and in either case, to what extent. The question is put to a council of indigenous leaders who clearly want to mete out justice for what’s taken place. They are treated to the tragic backstory of Yana-Wara, a girl who was, if we are to believe Don Evaristo, meant for a life of suffering had he not intervened.
From the moment she was born, Yana-Wara was seemingly cursed. Her mother died giving birth and her father died years later, leaving her in the care of Don Evaristo. The old man treated the unusually quiet girl with temerity, unsure how best to care for her. By the time he leaves her in the care of the local school where he hopes she’ll blossom, he has to contend with the fact that her teacher Santiago (José D. Calisaya) abuses his position to take advantage of her.
Santiago outright violates Yana-Wara in the classroom (in a scene tastefully shot so as to avoid actually showing viewers the rape that occurs off-camera). A pregnant Yana-Wara, just as mute and emotionless if not more so than before, forces her small community to contend with Santiago’s crime in a way that’ll no doubt baffle North American audiences — but which tests the ways in which the film aims to portray the Aymara people’s fraught justice system with unvarnished candor.
Fully immersed in the world of the Aymara people, “Yana-Wara” blends the mystical with the mundane. It turns Don Evaristo’s account of his granddaughter’s life into a story of evil done by both men and nature, by fallible systems and fearsome spirits. Shot in black and white (by both Catacoras as well as Julio Gonzales F.), the film is beautiful to look at. Rocky formations, imposing mountains and foggy vistas make for some indelible images. Indeed, the film is often best when it lets its natural environment stand on its own. The Andean landscape, devoid of its natural greenery, is turned here into an alienating backdrop that makes “Yana-Wara” at times look like a horror film where lurking evil can be found in both caves and in men’s lustful gazes.
It may well be that Yana-Wara had become the victim of Anchanchu, an evil force that begets endless tragedies in those it haunts (so insists Don Evaristo). But throughout, it is also clear that she suffers as much at the hands of the men who rule her life. It’s a man who loved her, after all, who eventually takes her life, no matter how merciful he thought that choice was.
The murky ethical questions “Yana-Wara” grapples with (especially as it sidelines its central female character, intentionally obscuring if not outright ignoring her interiority) would be more intriguing and fleshed out if the Catacoras’ film had stronger performers. Just as in “Wynaypacha,” Óscar and Tito opted to work with nonprofessional actors, members of the community who were no doubt cast to bring a sense of authenticity to this harrowing story. Yet barring the work of Mamami, who keeps Yana-Wara at a remove by offering opaque facial expressions meant to allow characters and viewers alike to read into her behavior whatever one might wish, the bulk of the performers here present quite stilted performances.
There is an awkwardness to their acting throughout. Calisaya, in particular, never quite sells the complexity of his violent, abusive teacher. All of that works against the very story being told. This is a fable-like tale about competing ideas of justice and agency, of mercy and fate — about gender violence and the very choices men continue to make about women’s lives. Yet the complications inherent in such questions — in Yana-Wara’s life, really — are rarely glimpsed in these otherwise self-conscious performances.
One is left to wonder what “Yana-Wara” would have looked like in the hands of the young Peruvian filmmaker had he lived to complete the film. On the page, Catacora’s script is intriguing, asking thorny questions that cut across cultural differences in intentionally uncomfortable ways. Yet the finished film never quite lives up to those difficult questions it raises. Stunted by the work of its actors, this plaintive vision of the Aymara people remains at a remove, stronger as a provocation on paper than as a morality tale on the screen.
