For centuries, the Uru indigenous nation called Bolivia’s Lake Poopó home, living on floating islands and relying on the lake’s rich waters for food and cultural continuity. However, in the early 2000s, their way of life faced massive disruption. Pollution and water diversion caused by industrial mining, combined with intense drought, led to the complete disappearance of the lake by 2016. The struggles of the last Urus of Lake Poopó became intense as they confronted the loss of their home and fought for access to clean water. Despite the hardships, they remained steadfast in their identity, still calling themselves the Qotzuñis, the ancestral word that means “people of the lake.”
Their story is told using their words in the documentary “Qotzuñi: People of the Lake,” which was co-directed and produced by Michael Salama, a 2019 Pelham Memorial High School graduate. Working closely alongside his directing partner, Gaston Zilberman, Salama transformed what was originally his thesis at Princeton University into the documentary. Now, the film is eligible to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Salama said he was working on “a thesis about rural communities in highly arid regions who have seen the negative sides of climate change, drought and intensive mining operations. A fellow student of mine grew up in Oruro, Bolivia, the city nearest Lake Poopó, and he told me that his family runs an advocacy group that fights for environmental reparations for Andean communities. Through his father, Teo Blanco Mollo, who is an Aymara community leader, lawyer and engineer, I was able to come into contact with the Uru community, officially known as the Three Uru Communities of Lake Poopó. In a meeting with their authorities, I presented a case of why I would like to enter the Uru community and learn about their story. I wanted to bring it to an international level.”
The film seeks change through increased awareness of the issues caused by industrialization and climate change in the Andean region and through donations that support the cause.
“The goal of the film is to achieve on-the-ground impact,” said Salama. “We have already been able to, through the film, raise a few thousand dollars that have been used to purchase school supplies for the Uru educational cooperative, which serves the Three Uru communities.”
“Qotzuñi: People of the Lake” screened at the DOC NYC film festival in November 2024 and won the Grand Jury Prize in the shorts competition, qualifying it to be nominated for the Oscars in that category. It’s also been shown at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival and the ACT Human Rights Film Festival. It will play at the Pelham Picture House on Thursday.
“The Academy Awards qualification is a massive honor, one which I personally never anticipated,” said Salama. “It wasn’t even a slight consideration in making this film. While we are excited to pursue the Oscars campaign as much as we can, we do not want it to get in the way of the project’s true goal—on-the-ground impact. As far as we can take the film with the Academy, we hope that it will be another way to bring attention to the issue.”
“We want to be able to build food-security infrastructure, mostly in the form of raised-bed agriculture and aquaponics,” said Salama. “Currently, many international NGO’s work in the Bolivian Amazon, but there is a relative absence of international humanitarian aid in the Bolivian Altiplano, despite the need and calls for action. We are trying to change that.”
This is not Salama’s first encounter with media success. In 2010, he and brothers Jordan and Jonathan created the bilingual children’s series “The Lulus.” The videos have amassed more than 500 million views since they launched and gained 920,000 subscribers worldwide.
“I always had an interest in multimedia storytelling,” he said. “I’d done video production and editing with my brothers since I was very young, but my desire to seriously pursue filmmaking really started with this film, when I realized I could easily combine my passions for research, storytelling, environmental justice and change, visual arts and music into one.”
He said he plans to work “on a number of other projects, including with small communities in New York State [that] have been affected by comparable issues. On a larger scale, I am working to build a patchwork of stories that highlight the effects of water-access issues on small, often indigenous communities across the globe.”
(Salama was one of the co-founders to the Pelham Examiner in May 2018.)
