Discoveries from Colombia World Cinema

A quiet and reticent teen returns to her village and painful past.

The difficult conditions in which salt mine workers work constitute the framework in which the intrigues develop. Both among the bosses and managers, as well as among the miners, there are good and bad. For this reason, an exploration inside the mine, a chaste and humble romance, become tortuous adventures that will be survived only by a miracle.

Era Oculta – “Hidden Era” unfolds in the vibrant city of Maputo, where Rastafari artist Phambi fights with securing his son’s education amidst the rhythmic beats of Mozambique. Constantly on the brink of expulsion due to payment delays, Phambi’s artistic journey becomes a compelling narrative, showcasing the challenges and triumphs of an artist navigating the unique landscape of Mozambique. The film amidst the vibrant art scene, two young women, allies to Phambi, play a pivotal role in supporting his artistic endeavors. They willingly pose for him, adding depth and inspiration to his creations. Their presence in the film not only highlights the collaborative spirit within the artistic community but also brings a nuanced perspective to the narrative, reflecting the diverse voices that contribute to the cultural tapestry of Maputo.

An extraordinary and necessary essay film constructed entirely out of a vast archive of news footage from the ‘80s and ‘90s, OUR MOVIE (NUESTRA PELICULA) is a response to the violent history that imprinted itself on the director in her formative years in Colombia. Images of blood spatters, bullet holes, coffins, and Colombians marching in the streets become an abstract net of quotidian sorrow.

Esteban decides to end his life by jumping from a bridge to a large water dam that transports him to a dream universe where he embarks on a purgatory journey in which he faces his past and his insecurities; As he progresses along this timeless path, Esteban remembers his remote house among the Colombian mountains where he works under the command of his father, who behaves like a despotic hierarch who governs this family, also made up of Esteban's wife and Juan who is their little son. This tour will be the way to better understand a betrayal that leads Esteban to death and the fear that Juan always had towards a myth of a natural disaster that could occur in these mountains.

The liberation campaign begins with the publication of the Rights of Man in New Granada. Later, Bolívar, at the Congress of Angostura, raised the idea of ​​Gran Colombia and began his journey of independence, which culminated in the Battle of Boyacá.

Nicolás is a well-known TV presenter and a frustrated writer who appears to lead a successful life, both professionally and romantically. However, just as he’s about to move into the wonderful new house he’s bought with his wife, he encounters an old soul who prompts him to question his monotonous life by recounting fantastic stories. Thanks to this strange new presence in his life and the rekindling of his old love for writing, Nicolás will search for true happiness.

It’s November 5, 1985. At 9:45 p.m., Miguel, a 22-year-old man, receives an unexpected visit from Paulina, a 70-year-old woman who claims she needs to use a phone. But as the minutes pass, Miguel realizes that Paulina is hiding a secret—and that their meeting is no coincidence. Their fates are bound by a dark and inevitable future.

The inhabitants of the City of Rage are turning into monstrosities. Abel has an affair with Robby, an angel who wants to be human, but she loves Eddy, a monster hunter. Abel does not accept loneliness and seeks answers. In the city of Fury, the apocalypse begins

An amateur director who has shot a hundred films since 1936. A photographer who has portrayed his life in black and white since 1925. A life recorded with a level of detail that seems to obey only the fascination of being alive.

This is a journey through the trajectory of the Colombian duo Aterciopelados by the hand of the singer Li Saumet. With exclusive interviews to them and their inner circle, as well as access to unpublished material, this documentary illuminates unknown details and reveals for the first time why they were separated for three years, the deep personal changes they experienced and the relationship that unites them.

‘A Vanishing Fog’ creates an emotionally deep mystical portrait of life’s end and beginning which are both born in the middle of life. The ancient sacred place Sumapaz Páramo in Colombia is the world’s largest Alpine tundra ecosystem and a source of drinking water for the capital’s 11 million residents who have to admire the protected mountain range with its mercilessly harsh climate from a respectful distance. Sumapaz, left outside human activities and the boundaries of law, has become a criminal backroad, the last barricades of which mountain guard F defends with his father and other natives.

Jaime Flórez, a shrewd provincial, has a stroke of luck when he is treated as a king in a town that confuses him with an important international diplomat.

Lina is about to trade her dream job in filmmaking for some snooze-ville gig that'll pay enough to please her fiancée. Enter her Uncle, a rascally womanizer set on turning a weekend in the La Calera into an eye-opening fling for his niece. Lina's not interested, of course, but then she meets the lovely David, who challenges her to make the toughest decision of her life.

A flock of flamingos has been flying over Bogota in the past few days. Nobody knows where the birds came from, but it's clear that they are lost. Julian is also lost: he has been working in a call centre for five years, living on autopilot, and feeling completely disconnected from life. A mysterious phone call at work pushes him to disappear without a trace. Jungle follows Julian's last days in Bogota, his interactions with the people who mean something to him, and his final journey towards oblivion.

Sentimental and costumbrist drama. "Triumphant production of Colombia Films. Starring Italian actress Mara Meba. The beautiful landscapes that are admired are copied with taste of the charms of the Cauca land and the one of a group of seagulls in the Cauca river is a surprising effect and that much would like to have them the European movies". (Diario del Comercio Newspaper, August 26, 1926)

Two taxi driver friends make a promise to the Virgin of Carmen: if Colombia qualifies for the 2014 World Cup, they’ll travel to Brazil to cheer for their team. When the miracle comes true, they must find a way to raise the money and make their dream a reality.

Rocio, a Colombian immigrant living in New York, is forced to work as a cleaner. After a phone call with her family, she learns that her grandmother is severely ill and is about to pass away. While communicating at a distance becomes more difficult, Rocio will use technology to say farewell her grandmother.

Jacobo gets up at dawn, has breakfast, saddles his horse and walks leisurely along the path that leads him to the pasture where he milks his cow. Have potato broth for lunch. Return to milking in the afternoon. At night he listens to the radio until he falls asleep.
 Every day the same routine. Jacobo retraces his steps without looking at a landscape that he knows by heart, until the day when this landscape is disturbed by a strange presence, an impossible object that forces Jacobo to stop, to look. Something breaks in Jacobo's predictable world.

Leonardo and his son Joaquín, 5 years old, travel to an out-of-town marriage, Joaquín does not know that who will marry is his own father, and with a woman who is not his mother, the difficult revelation will bring problems to the connection between father and son, but it will also question Leonardo's decision to marry.

Chicha emerges from the soil for her metamorphosis, only to find the avocado tree where she was born gone. Determined to create a forest, she waits for a new tree to grow, unaware her life will be too short to see it flourish.

In 2018, a group of filmmakers calling themselves "Los Quietos" set out to make a film essay on a hypothetical syndrome of stillness in the Republic of Colombia. To this end, they invite Colombian documentary master Luis Ospina, presidential candidate Gustavo Petro and writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez to give them clues to delve into the history, geography and idiosyncrasy of Colombia, a country that, paradoxically, has very little of stillness. For unknown reasons, the project remained unfinished.

Fabiana is a mother whose husband is ill, so she has to take care of the household and face the rough world of cab drivers, while her husband has to take care of the housework, where he is not able to get a foot on the ground.

AND WHAT DOES YOUR MOTHER DO? is a humorous film which cleverly uses the technique of speeded-up action to expose basic inequalities built into the traditional family structure, which lay the bulk of responsibility and pressure on women.

From road rage to couples fighting during the pandemic, comic Ricardo Quevedo examines the absurdity of the situations that try our patience.

Ten young women who used to live on the streets of Bogotá close their eyes and conjure Alis. This documentation of delicate conversations depicts the imaginary friend evolving into a surface for the projection of personal experiences and a proxy for nascent dreams.

Two communist lovers prepare to move to the Ukraine and work on a collective farm. Meanwhile, a celebrated pop singer visits their small town, and secrets are revealed.

Three young people experience some surreal adventures in a neighborhood in the city of Bogotá

A young woman recalls memories of an indigenous person from Nudo de los Pastos, between Ecuador and Colombia, and reflects on the pollution that threatens her land.

Register of the events which occurred between 9 and 15 April 1948 in Bogota as a result of the assassination of political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán

Romero, a retired fisherman and a forgotten hero by the community, lives isolated in his home, surrounded by ghosts of the life he couldn't have, spirits that materialize before him as his real family. Alcoholic and schizophrenic, surviving on a daily basis. But deep down he feels the time has come to regain what he lost several decades ago, when he brought the oil curse to his own island, the lush Ciudad del Carmen. At the same time at the mysterious Estero Pargo, the goddess Ixchel has been reborn and seeks to mate with humans in order to continue the cycle of life.

While her father has just been publicly accused of bribery, Mélanie goes partying on a week-end with some friends, in the luxurious house of her parents. A moment, out of time and away from reality. A race to excess, where nothing is prohibited.

Yajaira, a young but strong Embera woman, lives with her daughter Maria in a violent Bogotá neighborhood. Haunted by dreams of the jungle, she longs to return to the village she once called home. After a tragedy strikes, they have no choice but to leave. Jhon, a charismatic young gang member, joins them on their dangerous journey to the Andágueda River, driven by motives he keeps hidden. Donde Comienza el Río is a poignant, poetic film where a perilous escape becomes a journey of healing. As the jungle reemerges through memory and dream, masks fall and reality is touched by the magic of Yajaira’s inner world.

In a small property in the Colombian field, the ambition of a woman against a defenseless girl transforms in death for the woman. As tradition, the funeral one is carried out in the small house. The girl, who lives alone, it is accompanied for the nearer neighbors. With a big fright for the the dead one, without light and without any communication, the night arrives. At the same time, the solitude... the girl suspects that the woman's bad intentions have not ended up.

El Flaco returns to Medellin after hiding for some months in London because he was threaten. Things did not change much.

Former Sergeant Diogenes Hernandez owns the Universal, a precarious detective agency private in the Centre of Bogotá, which is based in the same apartment where he and his wife Fabiola inhabit. His nephew, Clemente Fernández, who works at the Agency, maintains a romance with Fabiola, without trying to hurt the feelings of his uncle, but driven by the need to alleviate their empty urban and anonymous man.

A secret agent fights to overthrow a political organization that uses questionable methods to maintain power. A fight for freedom and hope.

A sunny morning in Buenos Aires. All seems quiet, but then an odd race begins: a variety of people are after a backpack. A little army of seekers surprises us at every corner. Suddenly, a lonely bureaucrat (Mapache) is involved in this adventure, and new, mysterious and unknown people start to populate his life, all running around the popular Argentinian city to obtain the backpack which seems to be crucial to his own fate, according to the words of his new accomplice, magician and tarot reader Luminitsia.

Samuel, the last free-diving fisherman, has lived isolated in the island of La Aguja since he was abandoned by his wife and son 15 years ago. His life is disrupted when his son shows up now as Priscila, a transgender prostitute from the streets of Santa Marta, Colombia.

Mexican feature film

Thirteen-year-old Bobi lives in a small town in southern Chile. He was born with a strange condition: from the waist down, he has dog legs. His life is turned upside down when he meets Carlos, a man in his fifties who has recently lost his son and suffers from mental health issues.

Far from being a film about life in the gangs of Medellín, El Bolero de Rubén is a tragedy set to the rhythm of boleros where Marta, after fifteen years of waiting for her boyfriend to get out of jail, is consumed by the walls of her half-finished house; at the same time, her dream of becoming a singer takes her through imaginary places that reflect her frustration, rage and fear. Based on the homonymous play.

This short film explores the relationship between a man and a woman in a funeral. After the event, the couple faces tensions due to the lack of public recognition of their relationship. An argument reveals insecurities and unmet expectations.

The anecdotes lived with Pimpi conclude in a tragic experience for his family. The story takes place in a small town in the middle of the Colombian Pacific jungle. Past and present mix to form a story where the town and its inhabitants are witnesses of the struggle of black people.

A short documentary film that delves into the life of Eleggua Luna, a karmairi-mokana-motilona Afro-Caribbean trans woman born in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, to delve into the constant struggle that black, trans and indigenous people live in Abya Yala as a result of colonization.

A man lives in the forest, in the midst of a pack of dogs. He feeds them, cleans them and takes care of them as if they were his own. When, one day, one of them disappears, the man has no choice but to go out and look for it.

Thirteen-year-old Daniel is home alone and his mom instructs him to not go out after school. Soon boredom, loneliness, and pressure from his friends lead Daniel to venture outside, where he meets a four-legged friend.

Gus, Julius and Nicole are childhood friends who reconnect as they approach their forties. In an intense weekend, they seek to understand what has happened with their lives and the world around them.

Two filmmakers travel around impoverished sectors of the cities of Bogotá and Cali in search of the images of abjection needed to complete a documentary commissioned by German TV. Meanwhile, another camera captures these “vampire” filmmakers feeding off the misery of their marginal subjects.

The story of the creation of the world from Nueva Venecia, a town adapted to life on the water like no other. Through oral tradition, we navigate between the harsh reality of subsistence and the dense darkness of an ecological context that gives no respite and constantly seeks to remind us of our limited human time.

The life of four families located on the outskirts of the city of Bogotá united around a single ritual: cleaning their clothes.

Laura eventually works for a group of obscure characters with whom she must settle an outstanding account, her activity is to leave some recorded messages to some numbers that they dial, the situation becomes complicated when she arrives home and finds that one of the messages that caused her great impact by recording it, was directly to her partner.