Naš dom (Utama)

Bolivia, Uruguay, France , 2022, 87'
Directed by: Alejandro Loayza Grisi

Cankarjev dom Cinema Naš dom (Utama)

Screenplay: Alejandro Loayza Grisi
Cinematography: Fernando Epstein
Cast: José Calcina (Virginio), Luisa Quispe (Sisa), Candelaria Quispe (Elena), Placide Ali (Eugenia), Félix Ticona (Estanis), Santos Choque (Clever)
Festivals, awards (selection): Sundance 2022 (Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award), Cyprus 2022, Malaga 2022 (Best Iberoamerican Film, Best Director, Best Music, Special Critics Award, San Francisco 2022, Transylvania 2022, Istanbul 2022

A festival favourite, Utama is a visually arresting, vividly coloured story about an elderly couple’s struggle to remain alive in the drought-ravaged Bolivian highlands.

On the parched expanses of the Bolivian Altiplano, Virginio and Sisa, an elderly Quechuan couple played by non-pros and a real-life couple, eke out a basic existence as llama farmers (“Utama” is Quechuan for “our home”). An extended drought has made an already challenging subsistence into a precarious struggle for survival. When the couple’s grandson, Clever, comes to visit from the city, they refuse to flee to the city. Would sacrificial offerings to the gods help? Is it true that when a condor feels it has become useless, it goes to the top of a mountain, folds its wings, and abandons itself to the void? In the world of Utama, the parched land, the flaming sunsets and majestic mountains fuel our imagination and imbue everyday realities with a mythical quality.

I have more of a knack for images, rather than words. Silence can say so much more than words, and glances definitely say a lot more because the way people look cannot conceal what they feel. I wanted to use all of that, glances as well as silence, and I wanted the unexplored landscapes to talk, too. Likewise, I thought that in a relationship involving a couple who have lived together for so many years, which is the case for the protagonists, you wouldn’t need to talk a lot, because everything is said through small gestures or expressions.
Alejandro Loayza Grisi

Alejandro Loayza Grisi
A Bolivian filmmaker born in 1985. His debut feature, Utama, premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Dramatic Competition. Loayza Grisi first built an artistic career in still photography, holding exhibitions, issuing publications and winning two national awards in Bolivia. He started out on his filmmaking career as a director of photography.

Filmography (selection)
2022 Utama (Our Home)

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