AllMovie

Art and cultural heritage brings two women together and teaches them a number of lessons about the land that gave them life in this documentary from filmmaker Mitchell Teplitsky. Cynthia Paniagua is an American dancer whose ancestors came from the Peruvian Andes. Eager to learn more about her history, Paniagua begins studying with Nelida Silva, who has an extensive background in Peruvian folk dancing. Encouraged after working with Silva, Paniagua travels to Peru to attend a dance institute there, but find the atmosphere too academic and makes her way to the Andes to meet authentic practitioners of Peruvian folk traditions. Meanwhile, Paniagua and Silva meet again when the latter sponsors a dance festival in the village of Llamelin, and they compare notes on how Peruvian dancing is embraced in different ways by different levels of society. Soy Andina (aka I Am Andean) was screened as an official entry at the 2007 Los Angeles Latino Film Festival.