The Condor Daughter: Clara's Vindication

The Condor Daughter (La Hija Cóndor, 2025, Alvaro Olmos Torrico) screened in a morning slot at the Charles Chaplin theatre in Havana. Director Alvaro Olmos Torrico presented the film as a Bolivian/Peruvian/Uruguayan co-production that explores the Andean worldview of a Bolivian community, contrasting it with the personal dreams of a young apprentice midwife.

The film skillfully introduces its characters, deeply integrated into their customs and knowledge, establishing this synergy naturally and harmoniously from the outset. The primary premise here is that the activities and customs of the people who inhabit this village do not disrupt the natural cycle of life.

Amidst this contradiction, which doesn’t quite become a dialectical one, the old established order is represented by Clara’s mother, Ana, the midwife. A respected woman in the community, she attends not only to women’s births, but also to all kinds of situations and illnesses.

On the other hand, there’s Clara, her daughter, whose passion is music and singing. Their relationship will become strained as the story unfolds.

The director champions a reclaiming of nature, of a social construction that ignores urban development and eschews Western influence on the community. The village he presents is organized around a patriarchal order. Power is wielded by a sort of community leader who operates under precepts of control and the subjugation of women, among other things, but with a consultative dynamic that, perhaps, has a democratic veneer.

This community appears to be largely elderly, due to the desire of its young people to experience other realities and have the opportunity to pursue activities beyond agriculture. Initially, the contradiction between the new and the old is understood, giving meaning to this conflict through the abuse the community inflicts on its women.

Olmos strives to constantly beautify the screen, presenting the ritual that brings children into the world through Ana, the midwife, delivering aesthetically pleasing scenes in warm colours, enhanced by the musicality that little Clara’s voice brings to these stage settings.

In The Condor Daughter, everything is a ritual. From working the land and the women’s childbirth, to the images that unfold to portray this community in the Bolivian Andes. It is a film that reclaims ancestral knowledge and the connection with Pachamama (Mother Earth). Its ending, however, contradicts the film’s initial denunciation of the abuses against women, which are ultimately overshadowed.

The new does not prevail over the old. It simply follows tradition, which, while harmonizing with nature, deprives it of the innovative and emancipatory spirit that Clara’s character initially seems poised to embody.

This assertion, perhaps turning its back on women’s rights, is underscored by the director with more vibrant and luminous images, with a dreamlike quality. The final scenes blossom, a clear affirmation of their culture, but it neither emphasizes nor resolves the historical debt owed to its women, whom, besides being midwives in their community and fulfilling this role, are not recognized for their own paths or desires for emancipation.

The Condor Daughter ultimately becomes a film that, while finely crafted and possessing powerful images, is empty in its conception of the urgent gender needs and perspectives required today to more effectively address the need for a harmony guided by the knowledge of ancestral worldviews.

By Zoraida Rengifo
Edited José Teodoro
Copyright FIPRESCI