THE SONG OF THE BUTTERFLIES / EL CANTO DE LAS MARIPOSAS
A film by Núria Frigola Torrent
(Peru, 2020, 60 min. In Spanish and Munuka with English subtitles)

Winner of the Best Ibero-American Film award at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and an official selection at the Hot Docs, Havana, and Seattle film festivals, The Song of the Butterflies spotlights indigenous histories of storytelling and processes of collective memory, trauma, and healing in the Peruvian Amazon.

A nuanced depiction of contemporary indigenous life, Frigola Torrent’s debut documentary follows Rember Yahuarcani, an Indigenous painter from the White Heron clan of the Uitoto Nation in Peru. Rember left home to pursue a successful career in Lima, but when he finds himself in a creative rut, he returns home to his Amazonian community of Pebas to visit his father, a painter, and his mother, a sculptor. Through the stories and dreams of his parents and his grandmother, he confronts the horrors his community faced as a result of the rubber boom in Peru, immersing himself in the past so that he can rediscover his own creativity.

Premieres Monday, August 30 on PBS at 10pm (check local listings)