‘Reinas’ Director Klaudia Reynicke on Making a Film About Peru’s Political History: ‘People Are Still Very Traumatized’

variety.com:

Matt Minton mminton@variety.com When working together on “Reinas,” a period piece set in 1992 Peru, director Klaudia Reynicke and her director of photography Diego Romero found themselves having to confront the country’s tense political climate.

This especially came into focus when filming the street protest scenes. Reynicke had to find a workaround when it came to featuring communist drawings on the walls: “That’s something you can’t do in Peru because people are still very traumatized by the terrorists who were Maoist.

So we had to think of specific scenes that we had to bring to Europe and do post-production special effects,” she says. The film is Switzerland’s entry in the Oscars International Feature race and follows two sisters (Abril Gjurinovic and Luana Vega) and their family who find themselves torn between leaving their home country and staying after their absent father, Carlos (Gonzalo Molina), re-enters their lives.

To pull off the scenes where the sisters are driving through the frantic city streets, Reynicke tried to secure permits. But shooting in Peru, especially Lima, poses difficulties without a strong film industry. “We had gone to the police and everything and they would just laugh at us,” Reynicke says. “Because they’re like, ‘Yeah, sure, you can have a permit.