Rivers are the life­lines of the earth - VEINS OF THE AMAZON fills this notion with fervor by look­ing and lis­ten­ing to what the river means to the people living along its banks. The fer­ries on the Amazon in Peru carry any­thing and every­thing, sacks of rice and pota­toes, bananas, build­ing mate­ri­als, fur­ni­ture, bar­rels or live­stock, and the count­less people who need it all in the rain­for­est oth­er­wise untouched by any form of trans­porta­tion. 

The camera is often in the middle of it all. During the exit of a bull, which ten men barely manage, the camera some­times wob­bles. Then again it rests on the long shot of a col­or­ful­ly packed load­ing area, the sleep­ers in ham­mocks. When an entire vil­lage streams toward the dock­ing ship on the shore to sell snacks, fruits, drinks, life pul­sates.   

As the camera observes, con­ver­sa­tions mingle off-screen; with the dock worker or cook, the cap­tain or indi­vid­ual pas­sen­gers. The audi­ence becomes a silent par­tic­i­pant in the con­ver­sa­tion and learns what this artery of traf­fic means to the col­lec­tive of indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties. 

Alvaro Sarmien­to is a Quechua descen­dant doc­u­men­tarist, founder and direc­tor of HDPERU, a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion engaged in the pro­duc­tion of films in defense of native peo­ples’ rights and envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion in the Andes and the Amazon of Peru. Alvaro stud­ied Media, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sci­ence and Film at the Uni­ver­si­dad de Lima in Peru, Esta­cio de Sa Uni­ver­si­ty in Brazil and attend­ed a MFA in Film­mak­ing at Ohio Uni­ver­si­ty in the USA.   

Terje Toomis­tu is an anthro­pol­o­gist and a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er from Esto­nia, cur­rent­ly employed as a Research Fellow at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tartu, Insti­tute of Cul­tur­al Research, hold­ing a Noor-Eesti Grant award­ed by the Pos­timees Fund. Her prime areas of focus are gender, mobil­i­ty, and affect and her main areas of research exper­tise are Indone­sian gender and sex­u­al­i­ty and late Soviet non-con­formist youth.  

Diego Sarmien­to is born in Peru and a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er who stud­ied Media Pro­duc­tion at the Uni­ver­si­dad Catoli­ca in Lima and is a Berli­nale Tal­ents alumni.  

Direc­tors: Álvaro Sarmien­to, Terje Toomis­tu, Diego Sarmiento
Script: Terje Toomistu
Cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Diego Sarmiento
Edit­ing: Fabri­cio Deza, Álvaro & Diego Sarmiento
Pro­duc­tion: Álvaro & Diego Sarmiento
Dis­tri­b­u­tion: Pas­cale Ramonda