También la lluvia

Visionary filmmaker Sebastián (Gael García-Bernal) travels to Cochabamba, Bolivia, to shoot a film about the conquest of America by Christopher Columbus. Tensions rise on the set as a result of the Bolivian water crisis. In the layered movie También la lluvia, the dividing line between past and present and between facts and fiction, becomes blurred.

Sebastián is determined to review the myth about the genesis of western civilisation in America once and for all, by means of an historical epic that reveals Columbus’ gold fever and poor treatment of the indigenous population. But the local actors have other things on their mind: the water supply has been completely privatised and sold to an American multinational corporation. Five hundred years after Columbus went ashore, the region is again dominated by conflict, over water instead of gold this time. The film’s shoot is deadlocked and the film makers are forced to choose sides in the conflict.
In this film by renowned Spanish director Icár Bollaín (Te doy mis ojos), Paul Laverty, screenwriter for Ken Loach, compares the Bolivian water conflict of 2000 to the colonisation of South America by Columbus in 1492. The ingeniously interwoven storylines of También la lluvia draw an analytical portrait of the politics of filmmaking and the heritage of colonialism.