Bolivian Indians challenge American intelligence services in a classic Latin American political film. Screening as part of the film programme Tashkent-1970. The Festival That Never Was.
Blood of the Condor
- Date:
- 17 Jul 2025,
20:30–21:50
- Age restrictions
- 18+
Yawar Mallku
1969, Jorge Sanjinés
Bolivia
70 minutes, Quechua with Russian subtitles
Starring: Marcelino Yanahuaya, Benedicta Mendoza, Vicente Verneros Salinas, Felipe Vargas
T
The marriage of Ignacio, an elder of the Quechua indigenous community, is falling apart: his wife can’t get pregnant. In the big city, his brother Sisto is struggling to find money for a blood transfusion for the dying Ignacio. Between these dramas fit a bloody revenge, a police massacre, and a sinister plot by the authorities and American humanitarian organisations to sterilise Bolivia’s indigenous women.
Shot from Blood of the Condor, 1969
Blood of the Condor is raw: technically stripped-down and incisive, yet with a throbbing humanist heart.
— Jon Dieringer, Screen Slate
The film’s release provoked mass protests in Bolivia and the expulsion of the Peace Corps from the country. This revolutionary drama, both in its fervour and its language, was fundamental to the formation of Third Cinema, which brought together many of the key directors of the Global South in the 1970s.
