Bearing Witness to a Vanished Lake and the People Who Still Row: First Time Directors Talk ‘Qotzuñi’ [VIDEO INTERVIEW]
When filmmakers Michael Salama and Gaston Zilberman traveled to Bolivia, they thought they were documenting the disappearance of Lake Poopó. “We even came to the story wanting to tell a story about a lake that dried up,” Salama recalls. But everything shifted when they met the Uru authorities. “We realized that this wasn’t a story about a lake, but it was a story… about the people on that lake.” What followed became Qotzuñi, a 13-minute film that functions as both cultural testimony and environmental warning.
Their first major creative decision set the tone. “Not adding any outside experts… not adding anything that they don’t tell us,” Zilberman says. The intention was simple: the Uru should narrate their own history. Working closely with Florencio, then the community’s highest authority, they built the film from within. “It wasn’t us saying, ‘Oh, we want to do this,’ but really being open to listen what they want to share.”
It was Rufino, the first person seen in the film, who reshaped their understanding of what Qotzuñi could be. “He allowed us his home… he showed us a museum… to remember the Urus Qotzuñi culture.” During editing, they realized he wasn’t just a guiding presence — “he had to also be in the film.”
The movie’s emotional core emerged late in production, during a journey across the dry salt flats. In the middle of the lakebed, they found the Uru’s abandoned boats — including Florencio’s. “He gets on the boat and says, ‘Hey, can you take a picture of me? Because I don’t know if I’m going to come back here.’” That moment opened the door for others to climb aboard, forming the image that defines the film. “They keep rowing, although there’s no water, because they want to maintain their traditions… their essence, as Florencio says, as people of the lake.”
When asked what Qotzuñi means to them, both directors see the title as an emotional hinge. Salama says, “One of the most important components… is that last line that we’re all people of the same lake… How can I reconsider my own connection to the natural world around me?” For Zilberman, the title reveals a universal pattern: “It’s impossible to deny… it happens all around the world… It’s not that the lake dried up for the Urus, it dried up for us too.”
Though rooted in environmental crisis, the filmmakers avoided framing Qotzuñi as a lecture on climate change. “The film is not overtly a film about climate change… that’s where the personal component is so important.” Their hope was to create the emotional entry point first, then offer resources through “our website… a whole virtual museum… a whole impact project.”
Production was stripped-down and physically demanding: “Me with one camera and a lens, and Michael with the directional recorder,” but that minimalism gave them agility and intimacy. Authenticity was further protected through written agreements with community leaders to ensure the film, post-production, and impact campaign remained a collaboration. “This is worth… when it actually changes something down there in Bolivia.”
Scored by Carlos Carti, whose compositions are rooted in Lake Titicaca, the film extends its themes musically too. “I do think that there’s something… that really resonates,” Salama says.
With Qotzuñi, the filmmakers don’t just document a vanished lake. They transform the viewer into what Zilberman calls a necessary witness: “Now you’re a witness, you know that and you know that’s happening.”
Qotzuñi is still seeking distribution but is available in the Academy portal.
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