Daughter of the Lake

At the height of the Peruvian gold rush, Nélida Ayay — an Andean woman who speaks with the spirits of water — leads the resistance of Cajamarca’s farmers against Latin America’s largest gold mine. Beneath her lakes lies a gold deposit worth billions, and with it the question that runs through the whole film: what is water worth?

I directed Daughter of the Lake over several years to tell this struggle from the intimacy of its protagonists, where water stops being a resource and becomes mother, territory and memory. For me it is a film about the dignity of those who defend life against extractivism.