Alejandra Amarilla: The Filmmaker Behind Landfill Harmonic and Her Life Beyond Steve Nash

Alejandra Amarilla helped bring the story of a remarkable youth orchestra in Paraguay to screens around the world. The children played instruments made from old items found near a landfill. Their music became the heart of Landfill Harmonic, a documentary that began with her idea. She is also known as the former wife of NBA star Steve Nash, but her film work has a story of its own.

The film took years to make. It follows young people who found joy and purpose in music, even as their families faced hard daily lives. Alejandra Amarilla helped start the project and stayed involved through its growth. Her work shows how a simple question about helping children became a major documentary.

Who Is Alejandra Amarilla?

Alejandra Amarilla is a filmmaker and executive producer from Paraguay. On Landfill Harmonic, she is credited as the founder, executive producer, and creator of the story concept. She worked with a larger film team to tell the story of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura.

She was married to basketball star Steve Nash from 2005 until their 2011 divorce. They have three children. Sports fans may know her name from news about their marriage, but her creative career and support for social causes have a life beyond that link.

The Trip That Changed Her Film Idea

In 2008, Alejandra Amarilla contacted filmmaker Juliana Peñaranda-Loftus. She wanted to create a film about children who lacked access to many basic chances in her home country. The two women had an idea, but they had not yet found the right people to follow on camera.

They traveled to Paraguay in 2009 to explore possible stories. Near the end of that trip, they heard about a teacher who was helping children learn music with instruments built from scrap. That teacher was Favio Chávez, who worked with families in Cateura, near a large landfill outside Asunción.

The children were not learning with costly new violins or cellos. People in their community found ways to make instruments from old materials. They turned what others threw out into tools that could create music. That small but striking idea gave the filmmakers a way to explore much larger questions about life and opportunity.

Instead of trying to tell the story of a whole nation, the filmmakers could follow a group of children and a teacher. They could watch how skills grew with practice and how the group changed over time. The children would be people in the film, not just faces used to make a point.

Back to Cateura to Begin Filming

Alejandra Amarilla and Peñaranda-Loftus returned to Paraguay in 2010 to film Chávez and the young players. He had become the leader of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura and had helped create a music school. The group offered children a place to practice and work together.

The crew went back again as the project grew. In 2011, they followed children who would become key figures in the finished movie. That gave the story time to unfold. A concert could show what the group could do on one night, but many months of filming could show the work that made the music possible.

This was a story that could not be planned one scene at a time. Young people changed as they learned. Families made choices about school and work. Events in the town affected daily life. The camera had to follow what happened rather than force life into a neat script.

How Recycled Instruments Opened a Door

A musical instrument can cost more than a family can afford. Lessons, travel, and repairs can add even more. In Cateura, adults found another path. They reused items from the landfill area to make instruments children could play. Their work helped lower one barrier to music.

The objects caught people’s eyes, but they were only the start. A child with a violin still needs lessons and time to practice. An orchestra must learn to listen, keep pace, and work as one group. The music grew because people kept showing up and putting in the work.

The story also changed how some viewers thought about waste. A discarded item may seem to have no value. In skilled hands, part of it can serve a new purpose. That does not make the daily hardships of living near a landfill disappear. It does show what local knowledge and teamwork can achieve.

Alejandra Amarilla chose a story that could be seen and heard right away. Viewers could look at the unusual instruments, hear the music, and then get to know the children behind it. That made a hard subject easier to enter without making the lives on screen feel simple.

A Small Online Video Drew Worldwide Interest

The film team shared an early video in 2012. It spread widely online and brought the orchestra to the notice of people far from Paraguay. The children began to reach larger crowds and new stages. The project now had more to follow than the early days of lessons close to home.

New members joined the film team. Graham Townsley worked as a director. Brad Allgood joined later, first as an editor and then in further film work. The documentary took about six years to complete. The team returned to the story after major events affected the orchestra and its community.

Those extra years gave the film a wider view. It was no longer only about a group learning to play. It also followed what happens when a small local project suddenly attracts worldwide attention. The young musicians had to grow up as their world changed around them.

Her Exact Role in Landfill Harmonic

The finished film was a group effort. Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley directed it. Juliana Peñaranda-Loftus was a co-director and producer. Alejandra Amarilla was an executive producer alongside Rodolfo Madero and Belle Murphy. She is also credited for the story idea and as the project’s founder.

These are different jobs on a film. Directors shape the story on screen and guide key choices in making the movie. Producers help put the work together. An executive producer may help support the project and keep it moving. The original idea can be a major part of that long process.

Alejandra Amarilla helped bring the people and the purpose of the project together at its start. The film then grew through the work of many people, including the children, their families, teacher, and crew. Each had a part in making the finished story possible.

According to the documentary’s official film history, the work began with her contact with Peñaranda-Loftus in 2008. That timeline places her role at the start of the film, years before it reached festival crowds.

What the Documentary Shows

Landfill Harmonic follows the Recycled Orchestra as its story spreads beyond Paraguay. The young players find themselves on a much bigger stage while still facing the needs of their families and town. Favio Chávez guides the group through lessons, concerts, and new challenges.

Music brings joy into the film, but the story also deals with waste and poverty. A good show does not make those problems go away. The film keeps the town and the children’s lives in view, even when the orchestra gains fame. That makes the music feel part of a real world rather than a quick happy ending.

The film lets viewers watch the small acts behind a performance. Children must learn a piece, listen to each other, and build trust as a group. Their instruments are unusual, but the care they put into playing is familiar to anyone who has learned music.

The finished documentary runs 84 minutes, according to its distributor. The story includes both the joy of performance and the strain that comes when a community faces a natural disaster. It asks viewers to see the young players as full people with lives beyond the stage.

Recognition at Film Festivals

The movie reached festivals in 2015 and earned several awards. It received audience honors at South by Southwest and AFI FEST. It also won a Humanitas Prize for Best Documentary. These honors helped more people learn about the orchestra and its home.

An audience award means people who watched the film at a festival responded to it. The viewers did not need to know Paraguay well before the screening. The music gave them a way to enter the story, and the children’s lives gave them reasons to stay with it.

The film had many makers and many subjects. The awards recognized their work as a whole. Alejandra Amarilla helped launch the idea, but the result also rested on years of work from the orchestra and the people who filmed it.

For verified film credits and awards, The Film Collaborative’s official listing names the directors, producers, cast, and festival honors. It also sets out the basic story viewers will see in the film.

Other Work With Youth and the Arts

Alejandra Amarilla’s interest in helping children did not start with the orchestra. In 2008, she traveled to Uganda with Athletes for Africa. The visit supported efforts for former child soldiers and families in camps. That work included needs such as education and care.

She also supported the Women’s Global Empowerment Fund. Its programs seek to give women more chances to improve their lives. The work covers areas such as access to support, social ties, and ways to earn a living.

She co-directed Unleashing Creativity, a short film made for Free Arts of Arizona. It looked at how making art can help people during hard times. That focus has a clear link to the music story in Cateura. Both projects place art in the middle of lives where help and care can matter a great deal.

Alejandra Amarilla used film to make these stories easier for others to see. Her work was not only about a finished movie. It also involved choosing people and causes that deserved more attention.

Marriage and Family With Steve Nash

Alejandra Amarilla married Steve Nash in 2005. He was then one of the NBA’s leading players and became a two-time Most Valuable Player with the Phoenix Suns. The couple were together during an important part of his sports career.

Their twin daughters, Lola and Bella, were born in 2004. A son named Matteo was born in November 2010. Soon after that birth, Nash announced that he and his wife had been living apart for several months and were ending their marriage.

The news received wide coverage because Nash was a major sports figure. He spoke about wanting to care for their children as the family went through change. The marriage ended in divorce in 2011.

In 2013, reports said the former couple had settled a child-custody matter in Arizona court. That was a later event in their shared family history. It came while Amarilla’s film work was moving ahead toward completion.

The main dates put their relationship in order. They married in 2005, announced the split in 2010, and divorced in 2011. They share three children. These family facts are part of her story, but they do not replace her own work in film.

A Creative Career Beyond Sports Headlines

The period after the marriage also included important years for the documentary. The team kept filming, the orchestra reached more people, and new parts of the story took shape. In time, Landfill Harmonic became a movie that could travel far beyond its first online video.

The film gave Alejandra Amarilla another kind of public identity. Instead of appearing only in news linked to an NBA player, she spoke about music, children, and Paraguay. Her work reached people who cared about documentary film and the power of the arts.

What stands out is the choice to stay with a story for years. An early idea can be exciting, but a film takes far more than excitement. It takes a team, many trips, planning, and the will to finish what was started. Her project went through those stages and found an audience.

The Legacy of Alejandra Amarilla’S Film

Landfill Harmonic keeps a record of a group of young musicians who made art with what they had. Their instruments were made from scrap, but their work took real skill. The film helped viewers far away hear them and see the place they came from.

Alejandra Amarilla helped make that record possible. She began with a wish to tell a story about children in Paraguay. She found an orchestra that offered both a strong sound and a deeper view of daily life. The full team then spent years bringing that story to the screen.

Her past marriage to Steve Nash will always be part of how some readers know her name. Her role in Landfill Harmonic gives them something else to know: she helped bring a small orchestra from Cateura to the attention of viewers around the world.

For another look at a family tied to a famous sports career, read Dinah Mattingly and her life with Larry Bird on Turquoise Moon Homes.