Sembradoras de vida

Mothers of the Land
Mothers of the Land accompanies five women from the Andean highlands in their daily struggle to maintain a traditional and organic way of working the land. In the Andean worldview, women and the earth are strongly interrelated. Both, a women’s body and the earth’s soil are capable of giving and nurturing life. In the context of an ever-growing industrialisation of agriculture, the use of chemical pesticides and genetically modified seeds it is women, who, connected to the earth through bonds of sisterhood, take on the role of protectors.
by Álvaro & Diego Sarmiento Peru 2019 Spanish, Quechua 74’ Colour Documentary form

Crew

Directors Álvaro & Diego Sarmiento
Screenplay Álvaro & Diego Sarmiento, Annemarie Gunkel
Cinematography Diego Sarmiento
Editing Alex Cruz, Fabricio Deza, Diego Sarmiento
Music Horacio Camargo
Sound Design Fonica Studio
Sound Marco Panatonic
Executive Producers Álvaro & Diego Sarmiento

World sales

HDPeru

Produced by

HDPeru

Álvaro & Diego Sarmiento

The Sarmiento brothers, Álvaro (born in 1982) and Diego (born in 1984), are two Peruvian directors whose films champion the rights of native peoples and the cause of environmental conservation. Their feature-length debut, Río Verde. El tiempo de los Yakurunas (Green River. The Time of the Yakurunas) premiered in the 2017 Forum and was shown at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight. Diego has directed several short films, two of which screened at the Berlinale: Hijos de la tierra (Earth’s Children) in Generation in 2014 and El sueño de Sonia (Sonia’s Dream) in the 2015 Culinary Cinema. Álvaro, who is also a visual artist and screenwriter, is a recipient of the Bellagio Center Arts & Literary Arts Residency and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship.

Filmography (selection)

2008 Wanka Willka; 28 min., Video Installation 2011 Cerro de Pasco: Deep Grave; 49 min. 2014 Hijos de la tierra (Earth's Children); 15 min., Berlinale Generation K-Plus 2014 2015 El sueño de Sonia (Sonia's Dream); 15 min. 2017 Río Verde. El tiempo de los Yakurunas (Green River. The Time of the Yakurunas) 2018 Sembradoras de Vida

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2019