Sundance: In 'Utama,' home is where you die

by Cláudio Alves

Before he became a film director, Alejandro Loayza Grisi was a still photographer. Looking at his debut feature, Utama, it's easy to see the remnants of a photographer's sensibility, now transmuted into cinematic storytelling. Along with DP Barbara Alvarez, Grisi has framed the Bolivian highlands as a presence more important than any human. The cliché of the landscape being a character is not only present but transcended, to the point that the natural vistas become something of a cosmic deity. They're titan-like, cracked earth making up a wrinkled visage. The river is its mouth, once a gaping maw spewing life. Nowadays, it's just the sliver of a grimace, growing thinner, drying into oblivion.

This land is dying, and so are its people…

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