El Gran Movimiento, or The Grand Movement, is the second feature from the Bolivian director Kiro Russo. Starting out as a Vertov-esque cityscape, it eventually zooms into the lives of former rural miners (Julio Cezar Ticona, Israel Hurtado, Max Bautista Uchasara, and Gustavo Milán Ticona). They’re in La Paz to strike while also figuring out what to do for fun and work. Sometimes, they watch American wrestling matches, and at others, they break into the occasional inexplicable dance number. It shows their relationships with the female vegetable vendors with whom they now live and work temporarily like Mama Pancha (Francisa Arce de Aro).

And eventually, the film goes back and forth to show La Paz as an isolated city. It bills Russo as also its screenwriter which, at first, makes one wonder about its ‘script’. It seems, on the surface, like an avant garde documentary because these people feel more like subjects. Festival viewers are familiar with either a straightforward depiction or one that adds ‘art’ to otherwise uncinematic lives. The ‘fiction’, then seems more like impressionistic sketches of characters that it never introduces to us. The vendors talk about their anecdotes about promises and, of course, lies that others tell them.

And then, El Gran Movimiento switches back to the men and their faces that show their exhaustion. It makes conspicuous choices for when it pulls in and also when it pushes away, when the miners disappear within the crates storing the vegetables that they now have to carry. Even within the shadows, the camera, grainy as it is, again captures bodies not used to this new work, as it is good at catching these things in most moments but not others. The film has that dance sequence that divided festival viewers, hiding the faces of these amateur actors. Faces would help show their commitment, and hiding them reinforces what this film’s haters call its obtuseness.

I already wrote about Russo’s mostly successful attempt at a yoyo effect in El Gran Movimiento, one where it shows the miners in La Paz and occasionally, showing a miner in the woods. Scenes like this make for delightful filler, beautiful detours in a film that’s short of ninety minutes. And then it’s back to depicting the miners, maybe striking, maybe moving on from that profession. They become leaves in a forest, a face and a voice among many others in La Paz. Every move they make is a step towards adapting and surviving in a world that is changing.

Watch El Gran Movimiento on OVID. We an In The Seats champion streamers big or small because we’re cool like that.