Fausta, we are told, suffers from ‘the milk of sorrow’, a melancholy transmitted through her mother’s breast milk. For Fausta’s mother, like many in her village, was raped during the years of Peru’s bloody civil conflict in the 1980s, and Fausta still lives with the consequences of the violence.

Intimate, political, and quietly sublime, The Milk of Sorrow is a beautifully shot story about female identity in war-torn Peru. Emotionally affective all along, the film earned young director Claudia Llosa the first nomination to the Academy Awards® for a Peruvian film. Plus a Golden Bear!