Opening the Earth: The Potato King

For my brother Aaron and I, this is more than just a documentary. This is a culmination of both of our careers intersecting to create one beautiful statement that we want to make to the world. Opening the Earth: The Potato King a passion project, a examination, and a declaration.
For years Aaron and I had talked about making some sort of small documentary or video series together. We both studied and loved photography and visual arts, but had never made anything together. Aaron was constantly finding interesting stories to tell in his region of Peru, but we had no effective way to share these stories. In 2016 I quit my job to pursue my passion of visual storytelling. While I was in Mexico, Aaron approached me and said he had finally found the story. I was fresh off wrapping what would go on to be my internationally award-winning short documentary The Bull. I was ready for the next step. With the help of our Producer and Art Director Jenna, we launched a Kickstarter Campaign to raise money to fund this film. Knowing that at the end of the day we still wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, funding or not, I took a flight down to Peru. We were two weeks into shooting when the Kickstarter was officially fully funded.
What we thought would take four months ended up taking 2 years. Once we saw the beauty of the imagery and the potential of this story, we enlisted the help of Paul J Lynch, a veteran filmmaker who guided us through the storytelling process. Throughout the next 2 years we experienced so much with the people of the Andes Mountains. We slept in their yards, herded animals with their children, drank Chicha(fermented corn beer) with their families, and of course harvested potatoes. Lots of potatoes.
Aaron and the Andean Alliance have been working in these communities for the last 10 years. The trust that these communities have for Aaron and his organization is the foundation for this documentary. The access we were able to receive would not be possible to anyone else, especially a filmmaker showing up out of the blue. Their trust is in the Andean Alliance is warranted, and you can see that trust in some of the vulnerable moments captured in the documentary.
Opening the Earth: The Potato King tells the story of Julio Hancco, the hardened potato farmer who lives as his ancestors did. He is getting older, and his culture is being list along with his strength.This film also tells the story of two Peruvian youth who are at opposite ends of the desire to leave their farming communities. But this documentary also tells another story, a message that transcends the individual and could apply to all indigenous cultures across the world. We aim to highlight the strengths and resilience of these cultures, and show the traditional knowledge that they posses. These communities have been living on and with the land for millennium. The knowledge that they have developed is scientific, based of of centuries of experimentation. As modern civilizations, we are overlooking this knowledge and we are losing all the benefits that these traditional cultures have to offer us. We shouldn’t view these communities and poor and needing our help, we should view them as allies, teachers to help us be better, more well rounded citizen of the earth. We should value and celebrate the traditional knowledge that they posses, and the culture they come from. This is the real story that we want to tell. A message bigger than us as Directors, a message bigger than our documentary. We hope you receive that message.

-Eric Ebner