POV is proud to announce the national television premiere of Catalan-Peruvian filmmaker Núria Frigola Torrent's debut documentary, El canto de las mariposas (The song of the butterflies), as part of POV's 34th season. Produced by Rolando Toledo, the film will premiere on Monday, August 30, 2021 on PBS at 10 p.m. ET (check local listings) and on pov.org. The documentary will also be available to stream for free on pov.org until October 29, 2021. The song of the butterflies is Frigola Torrent's first feature film as a director after producing the film Hija del lago by Peruvian filmmaker Ernesto Cabellos in 2015.
Winner of the award for Best Ibero-American Film at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in 2020, and an official selection at the Havana Film Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival, La Canción de las Mariposas highlights the indigenous stories of narration and collective memory processes. Frigola Torrent's first documentary, a nuanced depiction of contemporary indigenous life, follows Rember Yahuarcani, an indigenous painter from the White Heron clan of the Uitoto nation in Peru. Rember left home to pursue a successful career in Lima, but when he finds himself in a creative rut, he returns to his Amazonian community of Pebas to visit his father, a painter, and his mother, a sculptor. Through the stories and dreams of her parents and grandmother, she confronts the horrors her community faced as a result of Peru's rubber boom, diving into the past to rediscover her own creativity.
