Bolivia has selected Diego Mondaca’s debut feature Chaco as its contender for the 93rd edition of the Academy Awards in the Best International Feature competition. The film starring Fabián Arenillas, Raymundo Ramos, and Omar Calisaya, had its world premiere last January in the Bright Future Competition at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and has played in numerous film festivals since then.
Set in 1934, during the war between Bolivia and Paraguay. the film follows a small group of indigenous Bolivian soldiers, under the commandment of a retired German General, who wander in the Chaco desert looking for the Paraguayan enemy that they haven’t seen for months, and that they will never find. The monotonous grey landscape of the forest confuses them. The lack of water and food pressures them and all of their decisions are wrong, weakening the group’s spirit and generating a violent and quarrelsome environment between all of them, officials and soldiers, to the point that they try and get rid of one another. They are overcome by despair and constant uncertainty.
This is the 12th time that Bolivia selects an Oscar candidate, yet the South American country has yet to receive an Academy Award nomination.
