Born in Lima, Peru, in 1946, Carlos Ferrand is one of the most prolific Latinx-Canadian filmmakers who ever worked with the NFB. In 1971, he joined Peru’s Gobierno Revolucionario de la Fuerza Armada (Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces), which implemented radical national reforms that had a profound impact on the country. He directed five films  between 1971 and 1973 that depicted the processes and results of the government’s agrarian reform program. In 1972, he founded the Grupo cine Liberación sin Rodeos alongside Marcela Robles, Raúl Gallegos and Pedro Neira, and made a series of about a dozen short films (1973–1976) that portrayed the life and experiences of the Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian peoples. Everything came to an end with a change in Peru’s government, and much of the material he shot  was incinerated. 

Ferrand was forced into exile, but he brought with him to Canada reels of the film he was working on at the time, Cimarrones. The Black History Society of Quebec urged the NFB to secure copies of this dramatic short: “for we feel that other organizations such as ours—concerned with history of education—would be interested in viewing it.” The quality and substance of Cimarrones opened the NFB’s doors for Ferrand. Since then, the director has worked on 22 NFB films, including six as director: Greetings: Te'skennongweronne – Yves Sioui Durand (2017); People of the Ice (2003, co-director); The Man Who Talks with Wolves (2001); Shadow Chasers (2000, co-director); Kwekànamad – The Wind Is Changing (1999); and Cuervo (1990).

Independently of the NFB, Ferrand has directed dozens of films that have been shown in academic settings and film festivals around the world, including Americano   (2007) and 13, A Ludodrama About Walter Benjamin (2016). Recently, he’s been the subject of many tributes and honours across the globe, e.g., a permanent exhibition of some of his photography   work at the prestigious Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid; a retrospective curated by the Lima Film Festival in 2018 that screened recently found and restored versions of the films he made with Grupo cine Liberación; and the inclusion of a restored version of his film Niños in a retrospective on the roots of Latinx-Canadian filmmakers, presented at the first National Gathering of Latin Canadian Filmmakers in Montreal in 2024.

Photo credit: Serge Clément