About the Film
Off to a strong start with a world premiere in this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Peruvian writer-director Melina León’s first film, Song Without a Name, is based on real events from the tumultuous period of the Shining Path guerillas in the 1980s, as well as the testimony of adults who were kidnapped as newborns and sold by a child trafficking ring for adoption in Europe.
Georgina, a poor woman from a Quechua village high in the Peruvian Andes, journeys to Lima, the capital, to give birth in an austere clinic that offers free care. The child is taken from her for routine health checks, never to be returned. Unceremoniously expelled from the clinic, Georgina comes back to look for her baby, but finds that the clinic too has vanished. Rebuffed at every turn by the authorities, her search eventually takes her to journalist Pedro Campos, whom we follow as the two try to unravel the mystery.
Through their nightmarish quest, the film explores the class divisions and the race-based social hierarchy of Peruvian society, the indifference of the bureaucracy, and the political corruption of the times.
Filmed in a surreal monochrome, Song Without a Name abounds in poetic, enigmatic sequences, often set with nothing more than silence or the sound of the wind in the high mountains, giving the film a vaguely Bergmanesque feel. This dark mood is further intensified by experimental composer Pauchi Sasaki’s masterful atmospheric score, combining the soundscape of Peru with traditional charango folk music. A gem of artistic unity.
Nicole Guillemet
