Our friends at Vans have been teasing a new short documentary, ImillaSkate – The Cholita Skaters of Bolivia since March of this year and I’ve been eagerly waiting for it to drop ever since. It’s unique. It’s inspiring. And it’s a story that unarguably needed to be told.
The film focuses on ImillaSkate—the Cholita skaters of Bolivia who fearlessly blend tradition and rebellion with skateboarding being used as their main tool. Skating in their traditional pollera skirts, these rippers are rewriting the rules one session at a time, and we love to see it.
“This documentary is a love letter to Bolivia, to sisterhood, and to every person who’s ever been told they don’t belong,” say the filmmakers. Check the teaser below.
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Directors Rebecca Basaure and Mariano Carranza traveled to the Bolivian city of Cochabamba to “center the collective and their role in the community for the short documentary ImillaSkate – The Cholita Skaters of Bolivia, created with Optimist,” Nowness, the exclusive streamer of the doc mentioned on its site.
“Challenging gender stereotypes through their contradictions, while making space for indigenous pride, the young women carve out a story of rebellion, reclamation, and radical joy against a landscape where racial prejudice and gender violence remain an ever-present concern.”
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You can watch the full documentary via Nowness right here. Trust me when I say it’s not something you want to miss. Skateboarding is a lot of things to a lot of different people, but to ImillaSkate it’s everything. If I were you, I’d stop what you’re doing and watch the film. My only complaint? I wish it was longer! It’s that rad. We need more of this in skateboarding, if you ask me. This is as real as it gets.
About ImillaSkate
Reconnecting with their ancestry while finding sisterhood through skateboarding, ImillaSkate is an indigenous female skate collective based in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba – bonded through clothing as a symbol of cultural pride. Finding their feet in the foothills of the Bolivian Andes, the young women join a rising number of cholitas, adopting the traditional pollera as a reclamation of indigenous heritage and the female strength carried through Aymara and Quechua traditions.
