In Search of an Audience: Cinema of Northern Peru, the Case of Omar Forero

One of the distinctive features of twenty-first century Peruvian cinema is the greater visibility of films made outside Lima. Small but significant numbers have secured festival screenings, won awards and critical praise. Omar Forero, from the northern city of Trujillo, is one such example of success: his third feature, Chicama, won five awards at the Lima Film Festival in 2012, including “Best Peruvian film” as voted by the national film critics association. His subsequent feature project Casos complejos [Complex Cases] (2018) received a further funding prize and a premiere screening at the twenty second Lima Film Festival. This chapter discusses Forero as an auteur with a global mindset, and reviews his position as disruptor of the centre-versus-periphery, Lima-versus-regional, dichotomy of filmmaking in Peru.