ABOUT
United Notions Film began with two filmmakers and one camera in Mauritania. Twenty years later it is a studio and a lab working between Bolivia and Australia. This is the story.
2005. Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw work together for the first time. They travel to Mauritania and make Between the Oil and the Deep Blue Sea, an investigative short documentary about corruption in the oil industry. 2006. They found United Notions Film.
2009. Stolen, a feature documentary about slavery in the Sahrawi refugee camps, premieres at the Sydney Film Festival. It screens at 80 festivals, including Toronto, wins 16 awards and airs on PBS. The film causes international controversy.
2015. The Bolivian Case premieres at Hot Docs. Three Norwegian teenagers are arrested in Bolivia with 22 kilos of cocaine, and the film follows how the media shaped each of their cases. It is shortlisted for the Premios Platino and the Premios Fénix and is distributed across Latin America. Producer Redelia Shaw joins UNF.
2016. People with disabilities march across the Andes to La Paz to demand a pension. UNF films the protest.
2017. The Fight, the short film of that march, is released worldwide by The Guardian and wins a Walkley Award. Bolivia then passes a law that grants a monthly payment and labour inclusion to people with disabilities.
Cocaine Prison, filmed over four years inside San Sebastián prison in Cochabamba, premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. It wins the Audience Award at Cinelatino in Toulouse, airs on the PBS WORLD Channel and is picked up by Amazon Prime.
2021. Prison X, Chapter 1: The Devil and The Sun, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. It is a virtual reality experience set in a Bolivian prison and a founding work of Neo-Andean Futurism. It is selected for Cannes XR, Games for Change and SIGGRAPH. After Prison X, UNF launches koa.xyz, a computational creativity lab.
2022. El Martadero, a leading cultural centre in Cochabamba, invites UNF to create its first physical installation. Violeta uses AI to imagine her female ancestors, the Awichas. The eight large acrylic portraits enter the centre's official collection.
2023. La Lucha, the feature film of the march, premieres at BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia and screens at SXSW Sydney. It later wins the NYWIFT Award for Excellence in Directing at its New York premiere, at ReelAbilities and the Museum of the Moving Image.
2024. Las Awichas becomes an augmented reality installation, co-produced with King's College London for GLOW. It shows on the Strand and in the Arcade gallery, with tullmas woven by Bolivian artisans and 3D-printed animals.
La Lucha premieres in Bolivia in the central plazas of Cochabamba, La Paz and Potosí, with sign language interpretation. Thousands attend.
La Lucha airs on PBS.
Prison X is released on Steam.
Yasmeen Hitti, scientist and creative systems engineer, joins UNF to develop embodied AI systems.
2025. Las Awichas wins Best Interactive / Immersive Documentary at the AIDC Awards. Las Awichas VR premieres at Surreality, at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) in China. Huk the Jaguaress, an AI installation created at the Mila Québec AI Institute residency, premieres at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and shows at NewImages Festival in Paris. It is part of Huk, an ongoing project. Todo Nace Desde Lo Pequeño, a live performance where Andean cosmology meets AI, premieres at El Martadero in Cochabamba.
2026. UNF launches sala.red, investigative tech journalism from Bolivia, and sala.video, independent film distribution.
UNF is creating Yakumama, a robotic whale installation. It is set to premiere at MozFest 2026 in Barcelona.