At the end of May 2024, a group of filmmakers gathered in Yungay, Peru, to start recording The End of the World, a short, fictional account of the 1970 landslide that buried the town in its entirety. Our crew featured specialists from all over the world — Chile, Venezuela, Italy, the United Kingdom and, of course, Peru — working alongside logistical experts and actors recruited from the community. We also hired four young interns to create and curate “behind-the-scenes” footage for social media. Filming coincided with the fifty-fourth anniversary of the landslide that came down from Peruvian’s tallest mountain, the Huascarán, and starred two actors who witnessed the catastrophe.
On the first day, we filmed scenes near the highland village of Yanamito, where we cast André Roque as Florentino, one of the child protagonists. André’s school excels in the region for running performance workshops with its students, and has recently been been awarded a prize by the Ministry of Education for a project that advocates sustainable agricultural practices. Conditions were perfect. It was as though the light and the landscape were made appear on film. We welcomed the early morning with an offering of thanks to Huascarán for his hospitality and guardianship in challenging terrains. The day was long, bright, and productive. A particularly memorable scene was the recording of a folk song written and sung by Juana Jiménez that laments the disaster of 1970.
Day two centred on the procession in Yungay that takes place every year as a means of commemorating the landslide. The people of Yungay march through the town, led by the local priest, a large brass band, and a wooden cross shouldered by a local dignitary. Floral offerings are made by the town’s most important institutions, including its schools, chapels, health centres and police force. The procession stops to pray at the alfombras, or rugs, made from coloured sawdust that depict images and symbols of local significance. While the crew filmed among the hustle and bustle of these religious rites, our interns created a storyboard from archival materials that recounts the history of the landslide. That afternoon, we moved to the tranquility of the municipal theatre to record a sequence with a suprise appearance from our fixer, Jorge Leon.
The final day of filming took place in the Campo Santo, the location of the buried town that is now a site of intangible heritage. In the middle of the site there are manicured gardens that form the shape of a cross. From its edges stretch meadows covered in wildflowers, home to chattering birds and insects, and scattered with boulders disloged from the snow-topped mountain that overlooks the scene. The crew worked hard in the sweltering heat to capture this rugged beauty and the childrens’ adventures in the wilderness. As the day drew to a close, we eagerly awaited the golden hour that would paint the glaciared peaks a pinkish-red and make the perfect finish to our film. The final shot was of Epifanio, played by survivor Jorge Flores, looking up at the Huascarán from the hillside cemetery where many lives were saved. Facing the mountain that consumed his hometown, Jorge’s emotions were palpable.
Making the film presented us with a wonderful opportunity to learn from the first-hand accounts of the disaster survivors and to better understand their relationship with the natural environment in an area prone to landslides and earthquakes. Working across generations allowed us to foster conversations about memory, heritage and local history from multiple perspectives. Many yungaínos were excited to hear that we were filming in their town and that international audiences would learn about their stories of struggle and resilience. The film is now in post-production and we look forward to our first screenings, due to take place this autumn.
Photos: Alonso López