Gregorio

An Andean family moves from their ancestral mountain village to Lima in order to find work, and they experience a culture shock at the noise, confusion, and inhuman sprawl of the city. When the father dies, the son, Gregorio (Marino León de la Torre), must work as a shoeshine boy, making a long daily trek from the shantytown slums to the city center. Working on the streets, he befriends a gang of street punks and is lured into a life of petty crime. The film begins in Quechua and switches abruptly to Spanish upon arrival in the metropolis, and the story is occasionally interspersed with scenes of a slightly older Gregorio facing the camera and telling what he has learned from his experiences. Thus the film has a documentary feel to it, which the filmmakers gradually move away from in the next two films in the series, Juliana and Anda, Corre, Vuela.