Few films at this year’s festival are as equally inspiring and incendiary as Claudia Sparrow’s profile of Peruvian subsistence farmer Máxima Acuña. Through the titular subject’s efforts to maintain her family’s traditional way of life by fighting one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, Sparrow proves that anything is possible, even if the hard fought battles are far from over.
Máxima lives a simple life in the Andes alongside her family; raising sheep, guinea pigs, and various crops, not too far from the Yanacocha Mine, the second largest producer of gold in the world. Yanacocha is owned primarily by American corporation Newmont Mining (which last year was the most profitable producer of gold in the world) with other stakes in the claim tied to the Peruvian government and the World Bank. Newmont seeks to expand their operations to Máxima’s land, but they don’t have any legal claim of ownership. Since 2011, Máxima and her family have put up with psychological tortures, physical violence, legal threats, and constant surveillance from local authorities and Newmont stooges. Through it all, Máxima refuses to yield or sell out to a company that wants to use, abuse, and pollute the land her family has tended to for generations, inspiring many in the process to continue their own fights.
With Máxima, Sparrow finds a unique guide to the region and country’s issues surrounding mining. Not only does Máxima uncover massive abuses of power in the name of corporate profits, but a wider picture of other issues in the region, including the cover-up of a mercury spill that has devastated an entire community. Máxima exemplifies someone who’s fighting the good fight long after most people would’ve given up out of fear and frustration. There are plenty of other interviews here with scientists, activists, politicians, and even former Yanacocha employees who deliver irrefutable damning statements, but Sparrow never takes her eyes off Máxima’s tremendous story. It’s the right choice.
Saturday, April 27, 2019 – 5:45 pm – Isabel Bader Theatre
Sunday, April 28, 2019 – 10:30 am – TIFF Bell Lightbox 2
Sunday, May 5, 2019 – 3:30 pm – Isabel Bader Theatre
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