“The premise of Song Without a Name is at once fact-based and the stuff of shadowed, surreal nightmares, and Peruvian writer-director Melina León’s artfully affecting debut feature splits the difference: Earthy with social detail from a despairing period of Peru’s recent history, it’s also shot, scored and styled like the most beautiful of bad dreams. The film’s wistful, elegiac tone, immaculate monochrome cinematography and compassionate focus on disenfranchised indigenous women will inevitably prompt surface-level comparisons to Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma”….. But León’s far more modestly scaled Latin American period piece is entirely its own film, meshing vérité-style technique with passages of dark, folkloric reverie, as its characters’ investigation of a single kidnapping spirals into a heady vortex of
institutional corruption.”
Guy Lodge, Variety
“With gorgeous monochrome visuals and rich musical layers, the film is evidence of a strong new directorial voice, ear and eye. Song Without a Name is above all an exquisite audiovisual experience.
— Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter
“A beautifully shot and viscerally acted drama capturing one of modern
Peru’s most divisive epochs.”
— Carmen Paddock, One Room with a View
SYNOPSIS
Based on harrowing true events, SONG WITHOUT A NAME tells the story of Georgina, an indigenous Andean woman whose newborn baby is whisked away moments after its birth in a downtown Lima clinic – and never returned. Stonewalled by a byzantine and indifferent legal system, Georgina approaches journalist Pedro Campas, who uncovers a web of fake clinics and abductions – suggesting a rotting corruption deep within Peruvian society. Set in 1988, in a Peru wracked by political violence and turmoil, Melina León’s heart-wrenching first feature renders Georgina’s story in gorgeous, shadowy black-and-white cinematography, “styled like the most beautiful of bad dreams” (Variety). SONG WITHOUT A NAME is a “Kafkaesque thriller” (The Hollywood Reporter) that unflinchingly depicts real-life, stranger-than fiction tragedies with poetic beauty.
A 2019 Cannes Camera d’Or nominee, SONG WITHOUT A NAME, and winner of more than 30 international awards including “Best Film” at the Lima Latin American Film Festival and “Best Film by an Emerging Director” at the Munich Film Festival, the Latin American period piece has garnered raves around the world. Guy Lodge of Variety wrote that the film “prompted surface-level comparisons to Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma…but León’s far more modestly scaled Latin American period piece is entirely its own film, meshing vérité-style technique with passages of dark, folkloric reverie, as its characters’ investigation of a single kidnapping spirals into a heady vortex of institutional corruption. León’s world-building remains mesmerizing, steeped as it is in local lore, rituals and haunting traditional music.” Wendy Ide of Screen Daily also notes there are similarities to Roma “which go beyond the striking black and white photography. Both films deal with social hierarchies in Latin American countries which divide the population along racial lines; both feature wrenching depictions of interrupted motherhood. “
SONG WITHOUT A NAME (CANCION SIN NOMBRE; 2019)
Directed by: Melina León
Written by: Melina León, Michael J. White
Cast: Pamela Mendoza, Tommy Párraga, Lucio Rojas, Maykol Hernández,
Lidia Quispe
Produced by: Melina León, Michael J. White, Inti Briones
Co-Produced by: Rolando Toledo, Rafael Álvarez, Patrick Bencomo,
Andreas Roald, Dan Wechsler, Jamal Zeinal-Zade
Cinematography by: Inti Biones
Music by: Pauchi Saski
Genre: Drama
RT: 96 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Sound: Stereo 2.0 and 5.1. Surround Sound
Color: Black & White
Language: Spanish and Quechua with English subtitles
