A Piece of Sky

The Amazon flows lazily through the goldmine-gashed landscape of northern Peru. Using real eyewitness accounts, directors Bénédicte Liénard and Mary Jiménez tell the story of a young woman who winds up in the clutches of forced prostitution when her initially hopeful attempt to escape the constrictions of her village goes wrong. Step by step, she is robbed of her moral and physical integrity. The film reconstitutes a space of dignity and returns voice and identity to a fate formally made nameless. With its powerful imagery, the girl’s traumatic odyssey embodies the destruction of life in a capitalist world in connection with horrific natural devastation.

On the banks of the Ucayali river, in the Peruvian rainforest, three generations of the same family struggle to survive through their handmade production of coal. After an accident that burned her feet, the grandmother leaves the family, with the hope of dying somewhere else, far away from the coal. Left alone with her juvenile son, Nancy keeps on struggling. Will she be able to hold her family together?

A handful of migrants without papers decide to start a hunger strike. Day by day, overcoming the violence that they inflict upon themselves, they discover the greatness of their true cause. From this realisation they learn to affirm their common humanity.