emilywes56 Review of Song Without a Name

Song Without a Name (2019)

A contribution to the rise of indigenous cinema

[10/10 · 20 January 2020]

Melina Leon's feature directorial debut Song Without A Name (Canción Sin Nombre) screens in Directors' Fortnight and is the first film by a female Peruvian director to play in Cannes. In general, films that are focused on indigenous people, not in a Hollywood-like fictional presentation, have always been a bit on the back burner of cinema. The film portrays the indigenous culture of the impoverished Peruvian people in a realistic, informative light and is a moving portrayal of a serious situation encountered in indigenous (and other) communities. This film's existence is very important because it presents a story and a thematic that is rarely arguable in cinema, the stealing of indigenous people's children. In our case, the mafia with the complicity of Peruvian judges stole indigenous women's babies and sold them abroad for profit. Our story is being filmed from the point of view of our main character, Georgina. The film can be subjective and at the same time neutral at the political situation, but never without clever hints. We are aware that this kind of human trafficking continues to this day, but we are failing to acknowledge that this was happening on a massive scale in the minority groups of indigenous people, all across the American continent. This international incident continued for years, but people never were vindicated from this heinous and unjust crime. Newcomer and activist Pamela Mendoza plays Georgina, an Andean woman whose baby is stolen at a fake clinic in the late 1980s. The story takes place against the backdrop of the government's fight against the Shining Path guerrilla group. Director Melina Leon says that the spate of baby thefts happened in 1981, but because she was too young to remember she chose that the story should take place in 1988. She says that there were hundreds of them who were stolen and sold in Europe.