Kiro Russo has a special connection with mining. The director maintains there not only excellent friendships created more than a decade ago, but also family ties that deeply connect him to an economic activity linked to Bolivia’s wealth and history.
“As a Bolivian, mining is very important to me and is very much connected to capitalism. I also have personal connections. My grandmother is from the Huanuni mining district. She comes from a generation of miners. My father also worked for many years in the mine as a safety engineer, my grandfather was an accountant in the mine, so the topic has always surrounded me in my life”, says the director, referring to his second feature film, The Great Movement.
The film began to take shape in 2016 with Max Bautista Uchasara, a person who enjoys the supreme admiration of Russo, a friend, a connoisseur of the hidden legends of La Paz, of the mines, a “real-life Caplin”, as he describes himself the director. to him.
Although the original idea went through a long 6-month process of creating and editing the script, the final result has the approval of Max, who also played a prominent role in the film.
The Great Movement
More than 270 kilometers separate La Paz from Huanuni, in the Bolivian department of Oruro. From this mining district, one of the most important in the Latin American country, Elder and 500 other miners marched to the Bolivian capital to demand the fulfillment of their labor rights.
To overcome need and uprooting, many of them were employed in a market. But the new adventure in the chaotic metropolis had numbered hours for the young Elder, who shortly after finishing the work fell seriously ill. An old woman, Mamá Pancha (played by Francisca Arce de Aro), comes to his aid and recommends that he go to Max, a healer who will do everything possible to help the Old Man recover.
The story of Rousseau’s film would probably have been different if he had not been moved by the spontaneity of real events. “While we were filming, those days in January (2019), the miners who had been walking for seven days, really. They are 500 unemployed children of miners who had died, and in that group were many of my friends. But I didn’t know they were walking and they saw me filming and came to me. They said to me: ‘Are you making a film?’ Then Julio César Ticona told me: “We are a big movement and you can film some things and maybe it will help you”. So I filmed some scenes, which are the most documentary parts of the film, but, at the time, I didn’t know that I would include them”, the director told AL DÍA.
The cast includes Max Bautista Uchasara (as the healer), Julio Cesar Ticona (the old man) and Francisca Arce de Aro.
Shot on Super 16mm at a socially and politically turbulent time in Bolivia, marked by the events that ended the term of then-President Evo Morales, El Gran Movimiento will be remembered by Russo as one of the most difficult projects he he had to shoot. . “I couldn’t cancel the shoot or anything because we had won the national funding and we had signed a contract that said we would film on a certain date. The film was out and there was a climate of total violence in those days. On the other hand, there was also a question as a director to see if I was filming the right thing, or what needed to be filmed at that time,” he added.
Self-critical of his films, the director expresses his satisfaction with the result and the political stance that the production exhibits without falling into the political-party war that, according to him, is still present in Bolivia.
In 2021, The Great Movement had its international premiere at the Venice Film Festival. To Rousseau’s pleasant surprise, it won the Special Jury Prize. In addition to that first prize, it has excelled in the official selection of international film festivals such as New York, San Sebastian, Hamburg and FICValdivia.
After debuting in more than 15 countries around the world, the Bolivian film premiered this month at the Lincoln Center Film Festival in New York and will soon be shown in Los Angeles and other US cities.
