Southern District

In the posh Southern District of La Paz, a large house and garden are home to a family and its Aymaran servants. Carola has three spoiled children, teenagers Patricio, Bernarda, and the younger Andrés. Wilson is the cook as well as a type of valet to Carola and nanny to Andres, and Marcelina is the gardener. The film documents the lives – collective and indi- vidual – of these characters over the course of sev- eral days. But what makes this upstairs-downstairs tale unusual is that it is set against the backdrop of the larger social upheaval taking place in Bolivia, which just re-elected its first Aymaran president. The ensemble of mostly non-actors gives remark- ably natural performances while director Juan Carlos Valdivia uses a revolving camera – the film consists of 57 circular sequence shots – to cre- ate an observational effect that it at once detached and deeply involving.