Alejandra Amarilla: The Filmmaker Behind the Story of Landfill Harmonic

Introduction

Alejandra Amarilla is often introduced with six words: Steve Nash’s former wife. The description is accurate, but it leaves out the work for which she has the clearest independent public record.

The Paraguayan-born filmmaker originated the documentary project that became Landfill Harmonic, a film about the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, where children learned music on instruments fashioned from discarded materials. Amarilla was not the film’s principal director, as some online profiles incorrectly suggest. The film’s official credits identify her more precisely as its founder, executive producer and story concept creator.

That distinction matters. Landfill Harmonic grew from an idea Amarilla began pursuing years before its 2015 festival breakthrough. She wanted to tell a story from Paraguay, researched possibilities, traveled there looking for a subject and eventually helped turn the Cateura story into a six-year documentary production.

The result reached SXSW, won audience awards at SXSW and AFI Fest, and attracted thousands of crowdfunding supporters. Yet the deeper story is not simply one of festival recognition. It is about why Amarilla returned her attention to Paraguay in the first place, how the documentary changed as the children themselves became internationally known, and why the polished inspirational version of the story needs some qualification.

Quick Facts

Her Connection to Paraguay Came Before the Film

Amarilla was born in Asunción, Paraguay. In a 2016 Eye for Film interview, she explained that her interest in documentary work grew partly from frustration that people she met outside Paraguay often knew very little about her home country.

She initially considered making a broader documentary about Paraguay and the problems faced there. That idea eventually became much more specific.

Her childhood also gave her an unusually international frame of reference. In an interview with Arizona Foothills, Amarilla said she grew up living in different countries because of her father’s work with the United Nations. She singled out Nicaragua as particularly memorable and spoke positively about being exposed to different cultures, people and music.

That background helps explain why Paraguay later became more than a biographical detail in her filmmaking. Her stated purpose was not simply to find an interesting story. She wanted a story that could make viewers look at a country that received relatively little international attention.

In a Paraguayan interview with ABC Color, Amarilla said her desire to contribute intensified after a 2008 trip to northern Uganda. She had become involved with philanthropic work after moving to the United States, and she increasingly felt that film might offer a way to draw attention to social projects in Paraguay.

Social Causes Led Her Toward Documentary Work

Amarilla’s association with social causes predates the completion of Landfill Harmonic.

The film’s official biography says that in 2008 she traveled to Uganda with Athletes for Africa, where efforts included support connected with education, therapy and displaced families. It also identifies her as a supporter of the Women’s Global Empowerment Fund.

Her earlier screen work included the short documentary Unleashing Creativity, connected with Free Arts of Arizona. The official Landfill Harmonic biography describes Amarilla as a co-director of that project and says it documented the use of creativity and art in work with children. The DC Environmental Film Festival likewise describes her as having co-directed it.

That history is useful because it prevents Landfill Harmonic from looking like an isolated venture. Children, creativity and social conditions were already recurring subjects in the work Amarilla publicly supported.

How Landfill Harmonic Actually Began

The origin of Landfill Harmonic is more interesting than the simplified version often repeated online.

Amarilla did not begin with a finished plan to make a movie about an orchestra using instruments made from trash.

According to the documentary’s official production history, she contacted producer Juliana Peñaranda-Loftus in 2008 to discuss making a film about underserved children in Paraguay. The two traveled to Paraguay in 2009 to research possible stories.

Only near the end of that research trip did they hear about Favio Chávez, an environmental engineer and musician working with children in Cateura.

Amarilla later recalled that she asked to meet Chávez the following day. There she encountered his work with young musicians and instruments fashioned from discarded materials. She and Peñaranda-Loftus decided that this was the story they wanted to follow.

ABC Color’s account adds that Paraguayan researcher and producer Gisella Duarte was also involved in the project’s early research, while Amarilla and Peñaranda-Loftus worked from the United States on financing.

That chronology matters because it defines Amarilla’s contribution accurately: she helped conceive and initiate the documentary. She was not merely an executive producer brought in after another filmmaker had discovered the story.

Six Years of Filming Changed the Story

Documentaries built around real people rarely unfold according to schedule, and Landfill Harmonic became a clear example.

Amarilla and Peñaranda-Loftus returned to Paraguay in 2010 to film Chávez and the emerging Recycled Orchestra. During another trip in 2011, the filmmakers began following several of the children who would become central characters.

The production eventually took about six years.

During that period, the circumstances surrounding the orchestra changed dramatically.

A teaser released online in 2012 went viral. Instead of functioning only as publicity for an unfinished documentary, it began affecting the lives of the people being filmed.

The children received invitations from abroad. International media began paying attention. CBS later reported that millions encountered footage of the orchestra online and that donations and support followed.

Peñaranda-Loftus explained that the response changed the story for both the orchestra and the filmmakers: the children were no longer simply participants in a small local music project. They were entering an unfamiliar world of international performances and media attention.

That is one of the strongest parts of Landfill Harmonic as a documentary story. The film’s own publicity helped alter the reality it was trying to document.

Nearly 5,000 People Helped Fund the Film

The online response also translated into measurable financial support.

A Kickstarter campaign for Landfill Harmonic ran from March 29 to May 15, 2013 with a goal of $175,000.

It finished with $214,130 from 4,976 backers, reaching about 122% of its target.

Those figures are sometimes presented online as though Amarilla personally raised $214,130. That wording is too loose. This was a crowdfunding campaign for the film involving a production team and thousands of supporters.

What the numbers do show is significant: considerable audience interest existed before the completed feature had won festival awards.

The public was not only watching the story. Thousands of people were willing to help finance its completion.

A Flood Forced the Filmmakers to Reopen Production

By 2014, production appeared to be nearly finished.

Then events in Cateura changed again.

Serious flooding hit the community, damaging homes belonging to people featured in the film. Amarilla said the production had already finished filming when the disaster forced the team to reopen production and send a smaller crew back to Paraguay.

The official production history confirms that filming had been wrapped but was restarted after major events affected the orchestra’s children and their community. Brad Allgood subsequently directed the film’s third act while working with Amarilla and Peñaranda-Loftus to maintain the existing story concept.

The flood prevented the documentary from ending as a simple success story.

International concerts had changed some opportunities for members of the orchestra, but the underlying community remained exposed to poverty, environmental risk and insecure living conditions.

That tension became essential to the finished film.

What Landfill Harmonic Is About

The documentary follows the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, whose musicians use instruments constructed partly from objects recovered from waste.

Cateura sits beside the landfill serving Asunción. When conventional instruments were scarce, Chávez and Nicolás “Colá” Gómez worked on creating playable instruments from available materials, including metal cans and other discarded objects.

The concept naturally produced an uplifting headline: children surrounded by waste making music from what others had thrown away.

But reducing the story to inspiration alone misses its harder questions.

The film deals with poverty, waste, educational opportunity and what happens when global attention temporarily lands on a community that continues facing structural problems after journalists and touring musicians leave.

That complexity also explains why the flooding mattered. The orchestra could travel abroad and receive applause while families back home remained vulnerable to conditions that music alone could not fix.

Amarilla’s Exact Film Credit Is Frequently Misstated

This is one area where many online profiles need correction.

Alejandra Amarilla was not the principal director of Landfill Harmonic.

The Film Collaborative lists Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley as directors, Juliana Peñaranda-Loftus as co-director and producer, and Amarilla, Rodolfo Madero and Belle Murphy as executive producers.

The film’s official website gives Amarilla the fuller designation:

Founder, Executive Producer, Story Concept Creator.

That credit is substantial enough without changing it.

Amarilla conceived the original project, took part in the early research that found the Cateura story, remained involved through years of production and helped establish the film’s direction. Describing those contributions accurately gives a clearer picture of her work than simply calling her “the director.”

From SXSW to AFI Fest

After years of production, Landfill Harmonic reached the international festival circuit in 2015.

At SXSW, it won the Audience Award in the 24 Beats Per Second category, a section devoted to music-related films. SXSW’s official 2015 award record names Landfill Harmonic as the winner and credits directors Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley.

Later that year, AFI Fest awarded the documentary its World Cinema Audience Award. The American Film Institute’s own results confirm the honor.

The Film Collaborative also records both prizes and lists the finished documentary at roughly 84 minutes.

These awards belong to the film rather than to Amarilla individually, another distinction sometimes lost in secondary profiles. Still, they validate the international reach of the project she had started years earlier.

Marriage to Steve Nash and Their Three Children

Amarilla’s life became publicly connected with professional basketball through her relationship with Steve Nash, the Canadian NBA point guard who won two league MVP awards during his playing career.

They were together for several years and married in 2005.

The couple had twin daughters, Lola and Bella, followed by a son, Matteo, born in November 2010. A day after their son’s birth, Nash publicly announced that he and Amarilla were in the process of divorcing and said they had already been living separately for several months.

The divorce was finalized in late 2011.

A later dispute involving custody and relocation received extensive media coverage. In September 2013, an Arizona judge approved a settlement between the former couple and ordered the agreement sealed.

Because the final settlement was sealed, speculation about its private terms should not be treated as established fact.

The same caution applies to sensational rumors that circulated around the breakup. Reliable reporting confirms the separation, divorce, children and subsequent court proceedings; it does not establish many of the personal allegations recycled on gossip sites.

Why Her Age and Net Worth Should Not Be Stated as Facts

Searches for Alejandra Amarilla frequently produce an exact birth year, age, net worth, height and current relationship status.

The evidence behind many of those answers is poor.

Amarilla herself confirmed that she was born in Asunción, and reputable film organizations repeat her Paraguayan birthplace.

A sufficiently strong source for her exact birth date or birth year, however, has not been established.

For the same reason, internet estimates assigning Amarilla a specific personal net worth should not be presented as factual. No authoritative financial disclosure supporting those figures was located.

Her education and current relationship status are similarly under-documented in reliable public sources.

Leaving those fields out is more accurate than filling a Quick Facts table with numbers copied from sites that do not show where the information came from.

What Is Alejandra Amarilla Doing Now?

Amarilla’s public profile has become much quieter than it was during the release cycle for Landfill Harmonic.

Current professional and film-festival material still identifies her primarily with Landfill Harmonic and her earlier social-cause work. The DC Environmental Film Festival continues to list her as a producer associated with the documentary, while the film’s official website continues to identify her as its founder, executive producer and story concept creator.

Reliable public evidence of a newer major film project is limited as of 2026.

That does not establish that Amarilla has stopped producing, supporting causes or working privately. It simply means an evidence-based profile should not invent a new career chapter where the public record does not provide one.

Why Alejandra Amarilla’s Public Story Is Often Misunderstood

The easiest version of Amarilla’s story begins with a famous husband and ends with a divorce.

The documented version is more substantial.

She was born in Paraguay, developed an international outlook early in life, became involved with social causes, and began searching for a way to use film to draw attention to children in her home country. That search led her and Juliana Peñaranda-Loftus to Cateura in 2009.

What followed was not instant success.

There were years of filming. A viral teaser changed the subjects’ lives. Nearly 5,000 crowdfunding supporters helped finance the project. Flooding forced production to restart. The finished documentary then reached major festivals and won audience awards.

Seen in that sequence, Amarilla’s place in the story is clearer. She was not simply the former spouse of someone famous who happened to attach her name to a documentary. She was involved from the project’s conception.

Final Thought

Alejandra Amarilla remains a relatively private public figure, and that creates room for weak biography sites to fill missing details with unverified ages, financial estimates and assumptions about her present life.

The strongest evidence supports a more focused story.

Amarilla was born in Asunción and wanted to draw wider attention to Paraguay. She initiated the documentary project that eventually became Landfill Harmonic, helped identify the Cateura story, stayed involved through a six-year production and served as the film’s founder, executive producer and story concept creator. The documentary later earned audience awards at both SXSW and AFI Fest.

Her marriage to Steve Nash is an established part of her life. It is not the most informative explanation of what she did with her own public platform.

FAQs

Who is Alejandra Amarilla?

Alejandra Amarilla is a Paraguayan-born filmmaker and producer best known as the founder, executive producer and story concept creator of Landfill Harmonic.

Where was Alejandra Amarilla born?

She was born in Asunción, Paraguay. Amarilla confirmed this herself in an interview with Eye for Film.

Did Alejandra Amarilla direct Landfill Harmonic?

Not as its principal director. Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley are credited as directors, while Juliana Peñaranda-Loftus is co-director. Amarilla is credited as founder, executive producer and story concept creator.

What is Landfill Harmonic about?

It follows Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, whose young musicians play instruments constructed from discarded materials recovered around their community’s landfill.

Was Alejandra Amarilla married to Steve Nash?

Yes. Amarilla and Steve Nash married in 2005. Their divorce was finalized in late 2011.

How many children do Alejandra Amarilla and Steve Nash have?

They have three children: twin daughters Lola and Bella and a son, Matteo.

How old is Alejandra Amarilla?

A reliable primary or authoritative source confirming her exact birth date or birth year was not found, so an exact age should not be stated as established fact.