First Run Falls Ill to ‘Altiplano’

Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth’s sumptuous looking Altiplano has been picked up by the First Run folks. Since it preemed in the Critic’s Week section, the film has followed in the same path as their debut film Khadak – heavy festival play and multi-territory sales.

War photographer Grace, devastated after a violent incident in Iraq, renounces her profession. Her Belgian husband, Max (played by Olivier Gourmet) is a cataract surgeon working at an eye clinic in the high Andes of Peru. Nearby, the villagers of Turubamba succumb to illnesses caused by a mercury spill from a local mine. Saturnina, a young woman in Turubamba, loses her fiancé to the contamination. Ignorant of its true source, the villagers turn their rage on the foreign doctors, and in the ensuing riot Max is killed. Grace sets out on a journey of mourning to the place of Max’s death. Saturnina takes drastic measures to protest against the endless violations towards her people and her land. Grace and Saturnina’s destinies merge. Altiplano is a lyrical and probing film about our divided but inextricably linked world.