José Calcina as Virginio in Utama. Alejandro Loayza Grisi: 'We knew the best choice was always going to be to have natural people doing the acting' Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama pairs the sweeping landscapes of the Bolivian Highlands with an intimate story of love and life for ageing Quecha llama shepherd Virginio and his wife Sisa (real life husband and wife José Calcina and Luisa Quispe). With climate change affecting the water supply, life is increasingly tough, but they still don’t welcome the suggestion from their grandson Clever (Santos Choque), who comes to visit, that they should go back to the city with him. The film is playing in the Best of Fest section at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival this week and opens in the UK on Friday. We caught up with Grisi to talk about the themes and challenges of his film.
How difficult...
How difficult...
- 11/22/2022
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Meditative drama follows non-professional leads playing a farming couple being driven from their home in the Andean plateau by global heating
Bolivian director Alejandro Loayza Grisi started his career as a photographer then turned to cinematography; now he makes his feature debut with this slow and beautiful-looking drama set high on the Andean plateau. It’s a film that unfolds at such a measured pace that at times it felt to me like a piece of cinematic mindfulness or a concentration training exercise. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a voiceover gently interrupted proceedings, like a mindfulness app, to gently instruct us not to let our thoughts wander.
Utama opens with the staggeringly gorgeous image of an elderly man walking towards the sun rising golden over mountains. This is Virginio (José Calcina), whose weathered face is as cracked as the earth beneath his feet. Virginio spends his days tramping...
Bolivian director Alejandro Loayza Grisi started his career as a photographer then turned to cinematography; now he makes his feature debut with this slow and beautiful-looking drama set high on the Andean plateau. It’s a film that unfolds at such a measured pace that at times it felt to me like a piece of cinematic mindfulness or a concentration training exercise. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a voiceover gently interrupted proceedings, like a mindfulness app, to gently instruct us not to let our thoughts wander.
Utama opens with the staggeringly gorgeous image of an elderly man walking towards the sun rising golden over mountains. This is Virginio (José Calcina), whose weathered face is as cracked as the earth beneath his feet. Virginio spends his days tramping...
- 11/21/2022
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
You hear “Utama” before you see it: the sounds of wind interrupted suddenly by chimes tolling, underlying a simple black and white title treatment. The sound ushers us into the spectacular opening frame, the image of a man standing on an arid landscape, facing a magnificent golden horizon glowing in the distance, teeming with dramatic clouds. It’s in this image and these sounds that one can find the entire thesis of “Utama,” in which a man faces a formidable unknown.
“Utama,” which means “our home” in Aymara, is the debut feature of photographer and cinematographer Alejandro Loayza Grisi, and is the official Bolivian selection for the Best International Film Academy Award after winning the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It is a spare and yet unsparing film, and a bold artistic statement from an emerging filmmaker.
Non-professional actors José Calcina and Luisa Quispe,...
“Utama,” which means “our home” in Aymara, is the debut feature of photographer and cinematographer Alejandro Loayza Grisi, and is the official Bolivian selection for the Best International Film Academy Award after winning the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It is a spare and yet unsparing film, and a bold artistic statement from an emerging filmmaker.
Non-professional actors José Calcina and Luisa Quispe,...
- 11/3/2022
- by Katie Walsh
- The Wrap
Utama (Our House) Kino Lorber Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Alejandro Loayza Grisi Screenwriter: Alejandro Loaya Grisi Cast: José Calcina, Luisa Quispe, Santos Choque Screened at: Critics’ Link, NYC, 10/6/22 Opens: November 4, 2022 in New York’s Film Forum Nowadays in the U.S., people are divided between […]
The post Utama (Our House) Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Utama (Our House) Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 10/30/2022
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Exclusive: Alejandro Loayza Grisi and Santiago Loayza Grisi, the brother filmmakers behind Sundance prize winner Utama, have signed with Cinetic Media for management.
The title of the Bolivian filmmakers’ most recent work, which won the Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema Dramatic competition at Sundance 2022, translates to “our home.” The critically acclaimed eco-drama centers on an elderly Quechua couple in the Bolivian highlands that have been living the same daily life for years. During an uncommonly long drought, Virginio (José Calcina) and his wife Sisa (Luisa Quispe) face a dilemma: resist, or be defeated by the environment and time itself.
Utama is currently playing at the San Francisco Film Festival, and has been acquired by Kino Lorber for a theatrical release later this year. Alejandro wrote the film, which also marked his feature directorial debut. Santiago produced under their shingle Alma Films, where they’re partnered with their filmmaker father,...
The title of the Bolivian filmmakers’ most recent work, which won the Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema Dramatic competition at Sundance 2022, translates to “our home.” The critically acclaimed eco-drama centers on an elderly Quechua couple in the Bolivian highlands that have been living the same daily life for years. During an uncommonly long drought, Virginio (José Calcina) and his wife Sisa (Luisa Quispe) face a dilemma: resist, or be defeated by the environment and time itself.
Utama is currently playing at the San Francisco Film Festival, and has been acquired by Kino Lorber for a theatrical release later this year. Alejandro wrote the film, which also marked his feature directorial debut. Santiago produced under their shingle Alma Films, where they’re partnered with their filmmaker father,...
- 4/20/2022
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Wide open skies, quiet drama and loveable llamas are the hallmarks of quality shining out from Alejandro Loayza Grisi's drama, which is impressively measured for a debut feature. He whisks us to the Bolivian Highlands, where the arid earth speaks more than a thousand words to the challenges of the climate crisis and opens his film with just one of many simple but stunning images, of a man in silhouette as the sunrise splits the far horizon like an inferno.
The man is Virginio (José Calcina) an ageing Quechua shepherd, who daily takes his llamas out to graze, their bright pink wool tassels shining almost neon in the sun. Grisi has a background in photography and though the images are moving here, there's often a stillness to them and they are no less perfectly composed, whether it is the llamas, with their odd squeaky toy-like cry in the heat haze or the interiors.
The man is Virginio (José Calcina) an ageing Quechua shepherd, who daily takes his llamas out to graze, their bright pink wool tassels shining almost neon in the sun. Grisi has a background in photography and though the images are moving here, there's often a stillness to them and they are no less perfectly composed, whether it is the llamas, with their odd squeaky toy-like cry in the heat haze or the interiors.
- 2/2/2022
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
When one is asked to picture those who are most impacted by global warming, the imagination flashes to Inuits on a melting ice floe or Maldives natives threatened by rising tides, not Bolivian shepherds who graze their livestock on the Altiplano, nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. But the residents of these remote highlands are also endangered, as director Alejandro Loayza Grisi reveals in his sublime, quietly elegiac feature debut, “Utama,” focusing on an elderly couple who refuse to relocate to the nearby city of La Paz, even as mountain glaciers melt, rains become less reliable and their herd of llamas slowly succumb to dehydration.
Played by actual couple José Calcina and Luisa Quispe, long-married Virginio and Sisa share a small mud house without electricity or running water. Fetching water has always been a chore for Sisa — that’s her responsibility, Virginio sternly reminds her, whereas he handles the animals — but lately,...
Played by actual couple José Calcina and Luisa Quispe, long-married Virginio and Sisa share a small mud house without electricity or running water. Fetching water has always been a chore for Sisa — that’s her responsibility, Virginio sternly reminds her, whereas he handles the animals — but lately,...
- 1/28/2022
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Condor Entertainment acquires French rights
Paris-based Alpha Violet has picked up worldwide sales rights excluding Bolivia and Uruguay to Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s anticipated Utama and will show footage at the virtual Cannes market next month.
The sales agent has licensed French rights on the Bolivia/Uruguay drama to Condor Distribution, whose slate includes Quo Vadis, Aida?, and First Cow. Buyers have been tracking the Alma Films production since it won three key awards at Films In Progress 39 in Toulouse earlier this year.
Currently in post, Utama is expected to land prestige festival slots this year and is set against...
Paris-based Alpha Violet has picked up worldwide sales rights excluding Bolivia and Uruguay to Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s anticipated Utama and will show footage at the virtual Cannes market next month.
The sales agent has licensed French rights on the Bolivia/Uruguay drama to Condor Distribution, whose slate includes Quo Vadis, Aida?, and First Cow. Buyers have been tracking the Alma Films production since it won three key awards at Films In Progress 39 in Toulouse earlier this year.
Currently in post, Utama is expected to land prestige festival slots this year and is set against...
- 5/19/2021
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
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