Original title: Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles
Year: 1987
Country: Switzerland / Peru
Region code: A/B/C
Content: Blu-Ray
EAN: 810161480395
Image: 1.33:1 (1080p)
HDR: -
Audio:
Spanish, English, German DTS-HD MA 1.0
Subtitles: English Subtitles
Rating: Not Rated
Genre: Documentary
Cast: Mario Vargas Llosa / Narrator
Director: Walter Saxer
Synopsis:
"Our Lord of the Miracles, Our Lord of the Miracles, is the name of a swamp-glittering prison colony in the remote Peruvian jungle on the Rio Sepa. This is the dumping ground where the worst prisons in the country send their toughest of the tough A bizarre island of freedom where tragedy and absurdity create a close-in world seemingly invented from feverish dreams. Here are murderers who survived the taking of hostages and the subsequent massacre at Lurigancho prison (documented in the film), and prisoners who have been done. 8 years extra time simply because their release papers were lost; there is one who fought his way from the highlands on foot, taking weeks to get here to serve his sentence. There is also a headhunter, a drug boss and 'the Invisible', the invisible one. The 65 year old, half-deaf prison director, Don Elias, in tropical clothing, and wearing a straw hat, calls them all 'mis angelitos', my little angels." -Werner Herzog
Having languished in a closet for more than 30 years, this newly rediscovered film is a unique documentary record of a bold and troubling experiment in criminal justice. A collaboration in between Walter Saxer, the producer of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, and the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles observes an open-air penal colony of the same name, created in 1951 by the Peruvian government in the Amazon jungle. Tasked with growing crops on these colonized lands, the inmates were permitted to roam freely, commune with their families, and dance and cook together, yet they soon found themselves in despair, abandoned and forgotten by their country and the world at large.
Restored in 4K by Cinematheque Suisse and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of Peru at the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory starting from the original 16mm camera negative and the sound preserved at Yacumama Films.
Extras:
