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Brothers In Strife: Compadre, Amber Benham

Amber Benham

What does it mean to call someone a brother? This question resonates with Swedish director Mikael Wiström after having befriended Daniel Barrientos, a strong-willed man who struggles against polio and the severe poverty that threatens his family in Lima, Peru. Over the course of his more than 30-year friendship with Daniel, whom he calls hermano, Wiström is met with the challenge of understanding how much responsibility he must take for the inequality in the two men’s lives. Compadre is the second of Wiström’s films to document the extraordinary poverty faced by the Barrientos family.