Trama

In a traditional community high in the Peruvian Andes, a tender relationship between two teenage boys, Fausto and Chaska, leads to a violent confrontation with Fausto's macho father at the annual Takanakuy Festival.

On the 25th of December, Christmas day, in the middle of the Peruvian Andes, in a remote province of Cusco, at an altitude of higher than 3600 meters, occurs one of the most important festivals of the year for residents of Chumbivilcas. A practice established more than two centuries ago, was born as a form of rebellion against the Spanish conquest and religious imposition. Takanakuy is the struggle among the residents of the region to resolve the conflicts generated during the year, allowing them to start a new cycle in harmony. A necessary catharsis in a place where there is no presence of State, of the judicial system or of any type of governing force. Apart from that, the rite affirms, in its own way, the honor of each participant. Two masked men, each with a stuffed bird adorning his head, face each other with fists raised in the middle of a gigantic human arena. It was there that this fantastic adventurey, Takanakuy, began: in a bar in downtown Lima.—yusufpiskin

On the 25th of December, Christmas day, in the middle of the Peruvian Andes, in a remote province of Cusco, at an altitude of higher than 3600 meters, occurs one of the most important festivals of the year for residents of Chumbivilcas.

A practice established more than two centuries ago, was born as a form of rebellion against the Spanish conquest and religious imposition. Takanakuy is the struggle among the residents of the region to resolve the conflicts generated during the year, allowing them to start a new cycle in harmony. A necessary catharsis in a place where there is no presence of State, of the judicial system or of any type of governing force.

Apart from that, the rite affirms, in its own way, the honor of each participant. Two masked men, each with a stuffed bird adorning his head, face each other with fists raised in the middle of a gigantic human arena. It was there that this fantastic adventurey, Takanakuy, began: in a bar in downtown Lima.

This rudimentary system of justice, which for many may seem wild, made me reflect about the Andean man, his needs and his vision of life. Takanakuy is a ritual full of symbols that seeks to understand this Andean remote community, its traditions, its customs; in the end, concluded with certain peculiarities, it does not differ much from the typical macho Latin American society, patriarchal, where the superiority of man it is legitimized without being questioned/scrutinized.

In today's society, represented in the film, masculinity and the father figure are flanked by conservatism, prejudices, stereotypes and coldness. In this way, this film stands as a way to forgive and understand this social construction through Fausto, a child with an emotionally cold and distant father, who finds in Chaska the warmth he does not have at home. Takanakuy is a film about masculinity, but also about prejudice, which uses metonymy as a form of visual language, projecting and sublimating each image to awaken different sensations from our own experiences; a film that tries, through fiction, to reach a unique and particular conclusion.

The Takanakuy casting is made up of actors and non-actors, to genuinely express/represent the truth of the Andean man, filmed in the very town of Chumbivilcas. Filming there presented a unique logistical and ideological challenge, and reinforced the need to make a film that will serve as an anthropological document. This is a film that portrays masculinity, like an immense sky that beckons you to fly freely, but where many of us, at times, are nothing but a dead bird.