What question did this study set out to answer?

This analysis aims to explore how cinema represents the violence of Peru's Internal Armed Conflict and its effects on societal memory.

March 2, 2026

Film as political act: Genre and typologies of violence in Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict in Magallanes (del Solar 2015) and NN (Gálvez 2014)

Key Points

This analysis aims to explore how cinema represents the violence of Peru's Internal Armed Conflict and its effects on societal memory.
Analyzed two films, Magallanes and NN, for their portrayals of violence and trauma.
Examined the impact of cinematic representation on public memory regarding the Internal Armed Conflict.
Identified specific typologies of violence portrayed in the films, focusing on state actions.
Both films highlight state-perpetrated violence during the Internal Armed Conflict.
Cinematic representations help preserve and articulate societal memory of past traumas.
The films engage viewers with the ongoing effects of the conflict on Indigenous communities.

Abstract

Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict (IAC) raged from 1980 to 2000, with the violence mostly occurring in the Andean highlands. In the past two decades, Peruvian filmmakers have turned their attention to offering cinematic portrayals of the impact of this trauma on their society, specifically on Indigenous communities. How does cinema’s unique ability to preserve and articulate memory serve to further the conversation about the IAC in a post-conflict society? In this article, we analyse two recent Peruvian films – Magallanes (Salvador ) and NN (Héctor Gálvez 2014) – to determine the impact of representing this violence and trauma on screen. We find that these films portray specific typologies of violence during the IAC that were largely perpetrated by the state. In doing so, the films bring this aspect of the IAC back into a fading national stream of consciousness. As a result, these films become a political act in a society that is forgetting its recent past.

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