10 Best Movies from Bolivia to Watch First

10 Essential Films from Bolivia

Ranked native cinema in Bolivia’s own creative voice.

1. 

   1. El Cementerio de los Elefantes

   2009

   Drawn from the writings of Bolivian chronicler Víctor Hugo Viscarra, this stark drama follows a man who checks into a notorious La Paz drinking den known as the elephants' graveyard — a place people go to drink themselves into oblivion. A raw descent into the city's underbelly.

2. 

   2. My Friend

   Mi socio · 1983

   A weathered truck driver and a quick-witted shoeshine boy strike up an unlikely friendship as they journey together across Bolivia, from the lowlands of Santa Cruz up to the high Andes of La Paz. A warm road movie about companionship.

3. 

   3. The Principal Enemy

   Jatun auka · 1974

   In an Andean peasant community long ground down by the abuses of local landowners, a violent act lays bare the utter failure of official justice, and the villagers begin to reckon with who their true enemy is. Jorge Sanjinés's militant indigenous drama.

4. 

   4. La nación clandestina

   1989

   Cast out years earlier from his Aymara community, a man returns carrying a great ceremonial mask of death, resolved to perform a ritual dance to the very end. Jorge Sanjinés's haunting meditation on identity, exile, and belonging.

5. 

   5. Utama

   2022

   On the parched Bolivian altiplano, an elderly Quechua couple who have herded llamas all their lives face a punishing drought and their grandson's pleas to move to the city. Whether to stay or to go becomes a question of dignity and love. A quietly beautiful drama.

6. 

   6. Amargo Mar

   1984

   This Bolivian historical drama revisits the War of the Pacific, in which the country lost its coastline and its access to the sea — a wound that still shapes the national memory. A somber period piece.

7. 

   7. Pseudo

   2020

   A jobless, desperate La Paz taxi driver assumes the identity of a passenger and takes over his next assignment, only to discover he has stepped into the shoes of a hired assassin marked for a high-level target. A tense thriller of mistaken identity.

8. 

   8. Sena/Quina, la inmortalidad del cangrejo

   2005

   Two small-time hustlers from opposite corners of Bolivia scrape by on petty scams, until a chance turn sends their lives spinning in an unexpected direction. A picaresque comedy about survival and friendship.

9. 

   9. American Visa

   2005

   After his application for a U.S. visa is refused, a mild-mannered Bolivian professor desperate to reach his son in the States slides into a world of crime — and into an affair with a woman from the lowlands. A bittersweet drama about longing and reinvention.

10. 

    10. Wara Wara

    1930

    In the 16th century, a peaceful Inca community is destroyed by conquistadors, and a young noblewoman named Wara Wara flees into the mountains, where a Spanish soldier comes to her aid. Bolivia's oldest surviving feature, a silent historical romance.