In war-torn Peru, a mother embarks on a harrowing search for her missing son, navigating a perilous landscape that mirrors the depth of her grief and determination.

Alex Fischman Cardenas’s Ovejas y Lobos (Sheep and Wolves) is a gripping drama set against the turmoil of Peru’s armed conflict. When a mother’s son vanishes without a trace, her world collapses, propelling her into a desperate search through a country torn apart by violence and mistrust.

The film balances intimate human emotion with the sweeping weight of history, as the mother’s journey through Peru’s vast and unforgiving landscapes reflects both her personal anguish and the fractured state of her nation. Tense, urgent, and deeply moving, Ovejas y Lobos explores resilience, loss, and the unyielding strength of a mother’s love.

Ovejas y Lobos is set during the Peruvian armed conflict—how did you navigate telling such a politically charged story through such a deeply personal lens?

For me, the driving force behind this movie has always been the relationship between a mother and her son. When we hear about statistics, how many people have been displaced or killed by conflict, it’s easy to dismiss those numbers. It’s hard to feel empathy for those who become statistics. But for me, my cinema has always been about empathy and getting close to the relationships on screen. I hope that, if I did my job right, this is not just a story about the Peruvian armed conflict; it’s about a mother and a son who have to live through it.

The film captures the vast and often hostile landscape with striking emotion. How did the physical setting reflect Rosa’s internal struggle?

The landscape in the film serves as one of the story’s antagonists. Rosa is forced to navigate its vastness, and the mountains loom over her as an ever-present challenge. The sky is often on the verge of rain, and the terrain feels endless, hostile, and unpredictable.

This mirrors Rosa’s internal struggle: she feels small, powerless, and overwhelmed, yet she’s determined to do whatever it takes to find her son. The environment becomes a reflection of her emotional state and the immense challenge she has to overcome.

This film clearly comes from a very personal place—how did your own experiences shape the story?

When it comes to films, people often confuse plot with theme. I don’t have a personal relationship with the plot itself. I did a lot of research to understand it and treat it with respect. But my relationship to the story comes through its theme. The movie is about the tense relationship between a mother and a son, and that’s where I brought my own life into it. This film became an outlet for expressing my own dissatisfaction with how I felt growing up. In making it, I had a chance to reckon with those feelings and come to terms with the fact that, as imperfect as things were, there was unconditional love buried deep within.

The theme of not being heard is central—how did you approach that visually or symbolically in the film?

This is a film where characters want to shout from the top of their lungs, but their emotions and feelings are kept silent. There’s so much happening in their minds, but society teaches us to repress those feelings and hold them inside. These characters aren’t quiet, but they’re trapped behind a barrier. They have so much they want to say, but it either stays unspoken or is conveyed through subtext, and it’s left for the audience to engage with the piece to discover.

How did you work with the actress playing Rosa to bring out such a layered, emotionally intense performance?

The performance comes from everything we’ve discussed. Rosa has so much going on in her mind throughout the movie. Even if the story and her objective are clear and straightforward, she has to grapple with all those internal thoughts.

I think you see in the movie someone who is struggling with so much pain and love and hurt, balancing all of that with the single-focus mission of finding her son through different methods.

There’s a beautiful complexity in the way maternal love is portrayed—tender yet flawed. What conversations did you have around that while developing the script?

We never directly discussed it, but in retrospect, I think it was one of those things that was just implied throughout. Love was really the engine driving the story. It’s love that goes beyond any conflict. I think Sylvia, our lead actress, brought that love to life on screen.

Love doesn’t mean the absence of fighting—that happens in any relationship—but we wanted to portray the beauty and the tragedy in what a mother is willing to do for her son.

What were the biggest challenges in recreating this specific historical time and emotional atmosphere?

The biggest challenge was finding a location that was remote enough that we didn’t have to worry about modern society creeping into the frame. That was very difficult. We got lucky with the house we found, but even there, we had to be very selective about where we pointed the camera. A few inches to the right or left, and you’d see evidence of modern civilization.

This meant we had to be extremely controlled in our compositions, which gave the film a meditative feel.

Can you talk about your approach to sound design and music? There’s a haunting silence in places that feels heavy with loss.

Paulo Gallo, our composer, did something incredible with the score. We never wanted the music to tell the audience how to feel, but we did want it to build on layers of nostalgia and longing with an original tone. He nailed it, and the end always manages to pull at my heartstrings.

As for sound design, we wanted the silences to feel different in each scene. We used the wind and animals to contrast the pure silence. If the film had only one tone of silence, it could have become monotonous, but we wanted the silence to shift and adapt, growing in response to the emotional moments in the story.

What are the books, podcasts or even YouTube Channel that you recommend young filmmakers to get their hands on?

The last book I read was Deep End by Patricia Highsmith, and it was fantastic. She’s so good at getting inside the mind of her characters.

I’m really enjoying The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. They’re incredibly funny but also informative. It’s fascinating to hear how many of the classic shorts I grew up on were made in such a short amount of time under intense pressure.

I’ve been trying to spend less time on YouTube lately because it can be a black hole, but when I’m there, I’m probably watching something like Kenji Lopez-Alt’s cooking channel. I think it’s cool for filmmakers to have other passions besides cinema.

Can you share with us some of your favorite short films you’ve seen lately?

One of the best things about being on the festival circuit is getting to watch other short films. Not all of them are available online, but I’d love to shout out two that are.
A Crab in the Pool by Jean-Sébastien Hamel & Alexandra Myotte.
Christmas, Everyday by Faye Tsakas.