Animation movie with Amazon warrior wins award

Scene from “Ainbo: the Amazon Warrior”. Photo: Courtesy/Tunche Films

The Amazon has been inhabited by girls who are true heroines. First there was “Tainá, the Amazon Guardian”, launched in 2000 in the cinema and turned into a TV series. Now comes “Ainbo: the Amazon Warrior”, whose protagonist is a girl from the Shipiba ethnic group. It won first place for Best Animated Film at the Platinum Awards 2022 held recently.

The film tells the story of Ainbo, which means “woman” in the Shipibo language. At the age of 13, she decides to face, with the help of spirits, the illegal mining that threatens the Peruvian Amazon.

Director José Zelada says he was inspired by his mother, who was born and raised in the Shipibo-Conibo indigenous tribe.

Production company Tunche Films has announced yet another animated film based in Peru, this time with a story set in the Andes, titled “Kayara”, which will be released in October this year.

“I want to convey, in addition to the fun story for children, a message: the ambition of man for gold”, said Zelada in an interview with RPP Noticias (in Portuguese). “The amount of tons of gold that illegal mining extracts is so great that human being violates any moral value of nature.”

The director highlighted his intention for the animated feature film to invite boys and girls to reflect, to identify fragility, but also strength, in the character Ainbo.

When it was released in 2021, the film was shown for the first time in the Santa Teresita Shipibo community, to make children aware of the fight against illegal mining.

To fulfill her mission to defend the land of her ancestors, Ainbo is guided by her mother’s spirit and has the support of two friends, who are forest spirits incarnated in tapir and armadillo.

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