Sowers of Life

Sembradoras de vida (Peru, 2019), by Peruvian directors Diego and Álvaro Sarmiento, shows five women from the Peruvian Andes in their daily struggle to maintain an organic and natural way of working the land. In the Andean worldview, women and the land are strongly interrelated. Both the earth and the woman's body are capable of giving life, and it is they who, in sorority, assume the role of protectors.

The justification of the SIGNIS jury at FINCA 2020 for this award expresses the following:

For her story, in which the women of the Peruvian Andes are protagonists and work the land with full respect for nature; for their awareness of the paradigm shifts that new types of cultivation mean and their harmful effect on life cycles; for the defense of their culture, attentive to the future of the fruits of their own bellies, their daughters and sons, all this expressed in an audiovisual way with a balanced narrative, careful photography and good sound work.

The organizers of the International Environmental Film Festival (2020) expressed: “It is undeniable that the change in the ecosystem that our planet is experiencing, largely associated with the current pandemic, has causes linked to human activity. Cinema, in this sense, has the possibility of representing and spreading transformative stories that allow us to reflect on the causes and possible solutions to this emergency, which leaves us only a decade to be reversed, from the collective and transversal action of citizens. ”