Best Peruvian documentary movies
A curated collection of popular documentary movies from Peru.
Sigo siendo (2013)
Sigo siendo (2013)
A trip through the diversity of black and native Peruvian music. Character-driven film, one where the characters are integral to the nation itself. This movie delves into music and musicians, yet it's not strictly a musical; rather, it's a tapestry of seemingly disparate personal narratives woven together in a country also striving to define itself and sketch its identity
Maria T-ta (2018)
Maria T-ta (2018)
Short documentary about the peruvian punk feminist icon Maria T-ta. "A transgressor among transgressors".
Lima grita (2018)
Lima grita (2018)
Lima Grita is a Peruvian music documentary that juxtaposes places and moments from within the city of Lima's underground experimental music scene. The film offers an immersive experience into a soundscape made up of characters, conversations and poetic events.
Grito Subterraneo (1987)
Grito Subterraneo (1987)
El Grito Subterráneo is a record of the resurgence of Peruvian "subte" rock. The birth of the "Second Wave", a movement that began in the 80's and did not stop until the early 90's, was the hotbed in which bands like Voz Propia, Leuzemia, Eutanasia, María Teta, Kaos, Flema, Narcosis, among others, burst into the scene.
Víctor Jara in Live in Lima (1973)
Víctor Jara in Live in Lima (1973)
Concert by Víctor Jara at Panamericana Televisión in Lima, Peru, on July 17, 1973. This is one of the last audiovisual records of Víctor Jara. Two months later he would be assassinated by the Chilean military dictatorship.
Revolution and Land (2019)
Revolution and Land (2019)
The long fight over the land, which demolished the wall between master and serf, continues to divide Peru to this day. But the 1969 agrarian reform marked a before and after in the country's story - a profound change that Peruvian cinema reflected and encapsulated, creating great imagination we continue to discover today. 50 years after the social experiments of the revolution, we ask ourselves whether Peru really messed up or not with Juan Velasco Alvarado.
Un viaje hacia nosotros (2021)
Un viaje hacia nosotros (2021)
Spanish actor Pepe Viyuela embarks on a personal journey on the trail of his grandfather Gervasio, a soldier in the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War.
About Everything There Is to Know (2021)
About Everything There Is to Know (2021)
A group of filmmakers arrives in Santiago de Chuco, a town in the Peruvian highlands where the poet César Vallejo was born. With the excuse of a casting, the filmmakers appropriate the theater and the inhabitants of the place arrive, revealing little by little some lives embraced by the aura of the poet, who died in Paris seventy years ago. All of them, inhabitants and filmmakers, are confused between verses, stories and poetry. Fantasy emerges and characters like the blind Santiago-who rings the bells always warning something-; or the young musician Elder - whose desires loom like a cornucopia-trace a liminal path between fiction and reality.
Perú: Tesoro Escondido (2017)
Perú: Tesoro Escondido (2017)
Peru is a country steeped in cultural traditions that stretch back more than 1,000 years. But it's also a land of surprising natural riches.
Círculo de Tiza (2020)
Círculo de Tiza (2020)
A storyteller, mime and actor, at the age of 86 years old, self-represents and tells the story of his life, moving between reality and fiction; showing us how art and imagination change the way we see life. A poetic journey between creation, play, loneliness and old age.
Los Ojos del Camino (2017)
Los Ojos del Camino (2017)
An Andean master who appears and disappears wandering through different geographies of the Andes, like a spirit who would like to take a last look at the sacred mountains, converses with the water, the rocks, the men, in order to have a better idea of what is the disease that afflicts humanity in the present.
El huaro (2024)
El huaro (2024)
Stories of love and heartbreak, marked by tragedy, intertwine in Imaza, a territory of the Peruvian Amazon jungle. There, the river separates two worlds that do not meet. In one of them, a vital treasure for the survival of the town is hidden, where a school houses a group of girls who share their hopes and despairs. In the other, hostility and uncertainty prevail. The river not only divides geographies, but also destinies. That is why crossing it is a challenge with unpredictable consequences. “El Huaro” is there to remind them of the price of their decisions.
Desaparecido (2022)
Desaparecido (2022)
Miguel, a university student, is kidnapped in the middle of the street. After a month of torture, he is released under suspicious conditions. Thirty years have passed and he still wonders how he can be alive.
Pacificum: Return to the Ocean (2017)
Pacificum: Return to the Ocean (2017)
Documentary that studies the history, development, fauna and flora of the Peruvian coast.
Mamá (2020)
Mamá (2020)
When filmmaker Lucia Florez is presented with the opportunity to join her mother’s research trip, about the new conceptions of motherhood in the Andean culture in Peru, she decides to film de experience as an opportunity to explore her own personal mother-daughter relationship around her queerness.
Drag Invasion (2020)
Drag Invasion (2020)
In the year 2017, contestants from the TV show RuPaul's Drag Race arrived in Lima, Peru. This documentary is not only focused on that, but also on the local drag queens, their dreams, points of view, their art and their identities.
La Chucha Perdida de los Incas (2019)
La Chucha Perdida de los Incas (2019)
This document is a consecutive and linear collection of situations and characters (Mario Poggi, el Hon. Antonio Córdova Quezada) that are appearing without a greater objective than the search itself.
Pasaje de ida (2020)
Pasaje de ida (2020)
Castrillón, master toy maker with more than sixty years of experience and former Mister Peru in bodybuilding. His story is a one-way ticket to the manufacture of traditional wooden toys
I'll wait until they call my name (2021)
I'll wait until they call my name (2021)
A theatrical work that talks about the disappeared in the years of political violence in Peru, is taken to present Andean communities. In each place of presentation, the fiction will be confronted with reality.
Finding Gastón (2014)
Finding Gastón (2014)
There are many great chefs around the world. Only one is considered to be a National hero. Meet chef Gaston Acurio and follow him in a journey to find out the stories, the inspirations and the dreams behind the man that has taken his cuisine outside the kitchen in a mission to change his country with food. Let this journey take you into the world of Peruvian cuisine to discover the power of food in Peru. Because the people that are passionate enough to believe they can make a difference are actually the ones who do.
Shirampari: Legacies of the River (2022)
Shirampari: Legacies of the River (2022)
In one of the most remote places in the Peruvian Amazon, an Ashéninka boy must overcome his fears and catch a giant catfish using only a hook to start his journey as an adult.
Animal Within (2018)
Animal Within (2018)
Humans, Animals, Earth, Wind and Water, converge with the same energy of a filmic fire, which crosses and relates them. By the appropriation of educational images of 16 mm films, which in the past were used to educate us, Animal Within evokes a poetic collision between images of the human and the animal.
Conversaciones II (2007)
Conversaciones II (2007)
An intimate look at the female universe, a journey in time through evocative images and the personal stories of women from the same family. The personal search of a daughter in the life of her mother and grandmother, contrasting the dreams, ideas and experiences of three generations.
Green River: The Time of the Yakurunas (2017)
Green River: The Time of the Yakurunas (2017)
The lush green of the foliage forms a quivering reflection on the surface of the Amazon. According to the legends of the indigenous people of the region, the Yacurunas live beneath the water, in submerged cities that are the mirror image of human ones. Yet the film deals neither with mythical creatures nor with legends, catapulting viewers instead right into the midst of this incredibly green world.
mal de ojo (una limpia) (2019)
mal de ojo (una limpia) (2019)
Ritual. The night and a room. The skylight.
Miss Universe in Peru (1982)
Miss Universe in Peru (1982)
A documentary which shows the struggle of many women surrounding the Miss Universe 1982 pageant hosted by Peru. The government invested a large sum of money in this event, during a time the country suffered an acute political, economic and social crisis. On the other hand, we can appreciate the denigrating use of the women's image in publicity.
Identidad (2019)
Identidad (2019)
“Identidad” is an introspective journey about what it means to be born in Peru in the early 1980s, when the worst economic, social and political crisis in its history began. This trip results in a look, perhaps hopeful, about a recent moment of social change and transformation whose essence was reflected in what happened around the return of the Peruvian Selection to the World Cup after 36 years of failures.
Iniciación al Cinematógrafo (1970)
Iniciación al Cinematógrafo (1970)
The exhibition that is the subject of this documentary consisted of a set of unconventional apparatuses, images and experiments of a kinematic nature that were related to each other in the exhibition space.
Persistence of the memory (1998)
Persistence of the memory (1998)
In 1971, some young Peruvian playwrights founded the group Yuyachkani, a Quechua word which means: "I am thinking, I am remembering. 25 years later, in 1996, the group celebrates its anniversary, performing a retrospective of its most important works, which allows them to think and remember about the scene they have traveled
Robles Godoy (1999)
Robles Godoy (1999)
An approach to the Peruvian director Armando Robles Godoy's way of seeing cinema. Images from "Espejismo" (1972), "La muralla verde" (1970), "Sonata Soledad" (1988) are commented by the director, complemented by the testimony of close friends, collaborators and critics of his work.