PERU
THE MILK OF SORROW [La teta asustada]

The terrorism in 1980s Peru, is inventively and poetically explored in Claudia Llosa's masterful film, winner of the Golden Bear at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. A Peruvian folk belief has it that women who suffered rape and torture during this time of unrest were thought to have passed along their traumas to their babies through their breast milk (the film's title translates, literally, as "the frightened teat"). So it is with Fausta, a wary and withdrawn young woman who lives in fear of the fate that befell her mother, and has even improvised a kind of chastity belt to protect herself. She works two jobs, one at her uncle's wedding service in the barrio, the other as a housecleaner for a haughty concert pianist in a posh part of Lima, and the lessons learned from these two very different mentors gradually help her to overcome her fears.

DIR/SCR/PROD Claudia Llosa; PROD Antonio Chavarrías, José Maria Morales. Peru/Spain, 2009, color, 95 min. In Spanish and Quechua with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Fri, Sep 24, 6:00; Sun, Sep 26, 3:00