EXCLUSIVE: Producer John Dunton-Downer and his filmmaker friend Alberto Sciamma had spent many years aspiring to make a movie together, but it was only when the pair began to wonder what it would be like to shoot a feature film in Bolivia – a part of the world they had rarely seen on the big screen – that the beginnings of their new feature Cielo began to shape.
The film, which recently had its UK premiere at SXSW London to two packed screenings, follows Santa, an eight-year-old girl from the desolate Bolivian Altiplano, who embarks on a rollercoaster journey to take her mother from a life of misery into paradise. The two of them made a pact: When her mother passes, the girl would follow the stars and carry her body across the desert toward heaven, a place they believe is as physically real as any other.
Through the journey, she encounters a group of cholita wrestlers that help her on her way. Also, on that path, is initially her nemesis: A gruff policeman who arrests Santa but comes to suspect that she has magical powers. He soon sees that to achieve his own salvation, he must join Santa on her quest into the next world.
Sciamma writes and directs the visceral and cinematic film, which stars Fernanda Gutierrez Aranda, Fernando Arze Echalar, Sasha Salaverry, Carla Arana, Luis Bredow, Cristian Mercado and Juan Carlos Aduviri.
Dunton-Downer, Alexa Waugh, Bettina Kadoorie and Paola Gosalvez produce with Film Seekers handling international sales for the UK project, which was shot across 30 days in Bolivia last year. Deadline sat down with producers Dunton-Downer, Waugh and Kadoorie to talk about the project, their experience of shooting in a location with some of the most treacherous roads known to man and why they hope Cielo will inspire other foreign productions to take advantage of Bolivia’s natural beauty.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
DEADLINE: How did you all get involved with this project? What were the beginnings of how this project came to light?
ALEXA WAUGH: I worked with Alberto on a film called I Love My Mum and he approached me about three years ago because he and John were working on something they wanted to shoot in Bolivia.
JOHN DUNTON-DOWNER: Alberto and I have been friends for 20 years and we had talked about various projects over the years, and we initially wanted to make a Western there, because we thought it would be the perfect place for a horse drama as it has such a huge, wild frontier. I married a Bolivian and spent time there and I’m aware of the culture. Alberto and I started talking about how we could make Bolivia a great place to set a great film. He had this image of a girl with a bar across her shoulders, with a barrel on each side, as well as an image of a girls swallowing a fish. He has just a wild, open imagination and the whole thing started from there.
BETTINA KADOORIE: I was brought aboard later and when I read the script, I had never read anything like that in my life. At no point while I was reading it could I imagine what was going to happen next. And I found it so refreshing, because this was sort of just coming off the pandemic, and we had been oversaturated with all this content, and here I was reading something that was just so original, and I loved that I had no idea where it was going, and it was full of surprises and had this emotional pull on me. I read the script about six months after my mother passed away, and I was so moved by Alberto’s vision, and I was so moved by this little girl dragging this barrel across these vast locations. And it was already so inherently cinematic when I read the script, and then when you looked at photographs that they were sending me from Bolivia, it was incredible.
Cast and crew on set of ‘Cielo’ in Bolivia.
DEADLINE: Shooting in Bolivia is a big anchor for this film and this is a UK film shot on location there. I’m not aware of many international projects typically being shot there. What were the challenges or surprises of setting up a production in that country?
WAUGH: We worked with a local company that was incredible, and the crew were incredible. We only had a handful of HoD’s that traveled across to Bolivia. John, Alberto and I did a recce the year before to cast some of the leads, which we ended up having recast the following year as some of them had changed so much. But I would say the main challenge was the language barrier but also the fact that it’s not a full-time filming world there. A lot of the crew had other jobs that weren’t in film full time. But they were all amazing. I was staggered by how brilliant they were.
DUNTON-DOWNER: There were almost 100 people on this film and we all really bonded. Bolivia is not a country that people typically think about going to shoot in but that’s how the conversation about the entire project first began and we wanted to go there and find out why. There are no tax breaks. I even talked to culture ministers who were unclear on how the whole tax break system works. There have been some high-quality shorts and commercials shot there but there wasn’t the infrastructure. That said, because the country’s economic system is on a lower quantum, even without the tax breaks, it’s economically and financially a good location to shoot.
KADOORIE: I think one of the biggest challenges was the altitude. La Paz has the highest altitude of any city in the world, so we really felt it the first couple of days. But it’s also, such an extraordinary landscape, and it’s so diverse. Equally, we traveled across The Yungas Road [aka The Death Road} and while we had a great safety team in place, mentally driving to and from locations on this road was very challenging.
I have filmed in South America before and places like Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Costa Rica tend to have a much bigger pool for shooting films, but I do think Bolivians have been a bit short-changed there. As soon as we got there, we not only found talented crew and amazing actors but also an incredible diversity of landscapes. There are the salt flats, Altiplano and so much more. Alberto really tried to maximize all the locations we could get for the film and introduce this world that feels real and magical at the same time and Bolivia is the perfect place for that.
DEADLINE: John, when you spoke to the culture minister there, was there any indication at all that the country would consider introducing an incentive for foreign productions?
DUNTON-DOWNER: We talked about it, but we are hoping that this film could be a trigger to give them some more visibility. But it’s a process and involves explaining more about how the international industry works. At the moment, because there hasn’t been the infrastructure there, they just haven’t had experience of how the whole mechanism works. We’re hoping that by giving them some hand holding through the process of how it all works, that they might consider it because it does seem to those of us – with all of these compliments you’re hearing about Bolivia – that this could be a huge opportunity for them. But what Cielo is doing, in my opinion, is just showing the natural beauty of the country and the characters that live there. The conversation was there – I hope it will continue.