Discoveries from Colombia World Cinema

Glimpses of life through a camcorder filming happy, sad and nostalgic moments

Luisa falls in love for the first with her neighbor Anna while she spends her summer vacation at the beach with her family. At the same time, Luisa will find out something about her parent's relationship that will make her question her ideals of love and inevitably grow up.

Fabricia enters an abandoned building and her presence seems to bring the place to life. But soon she discovers the space is dominated by strange machines that trap her inside. Only the power of her unique imagination will help her make her way out.

Colombia, rainforest, early 20th century. A frog is collected as a field sample by a scientist who wishes to isolate the active principle of Yagé. The frog is subjected to a severe test that exceeds the fragility of its body.

A mythical love story between a girl and a fish. Catalina Luango is swallowed up by the waters of a swamp. Her family tries to rescue her from the underworld called Chimbumbe. Adaptation of a legend of oral tradition from San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia.

View of the murder of her mother, Laura decides to talk to her spirit, to tell her who killed it. Therefore, leaving murder to find out in the afterlife.

This is a shocking documentary where the audience will meet Jhon Jairo Velazquez Vasquez known as Popeye or Alias JJ, Pablo Escobar’s right-hand man until he decided to surrender to justice to save his life. After serving a twenty-three year prison sentence he became the only survivor from the Medellin Cartel. Velazquez has called the public opinion attention because of his controversial statements before the justice and the media, involving Escobar with high government members, the police, and criminal organizations worldwide. Through interviews with witnesses, victims of the Medellin Cartel and different public opinion figures, this documentary intends to contrast those stories that have made Alias JJ famous.

Due to an unfortunate mistake with laboratory samples, a young husband is diagnosed as suffering from the terrible disease of leprosy. In his distress he decides to leave home.

A film about two apocalyptic sissies between Bogota, Berlin and Cartagena. One is a dancer, the other a Filmmaker. What starts as a documentary about a dancer, transforms slowly into a performance for film. The performances they create play with the in-between, male female, and the appropriation of spaces and expectations projected onto them.

The spectacled bear inhabits the Andes mountain range from Colombia to Argentina. This bear is imposing, curious and, despite its size, agile as a monkey. It also plays an essential ecological role in the regeneration of forests.

Worlds Burning Amid the Shadows is a generational embrace born from the encounter between an adult woman and a group of young people. This journey through darkness, bodies and lights, proposes a playful experience, from the formal and the narrative, in which the symbolic plane becomes a battlefield and the prevailing need for freedom can be satiated from minimal acts such as dancing, smoking or makeup.

Martillo, tells the story of Pablo’s sexual awakening, a student at a boys' school where Sister Edwin teaches discipline with an iron hand. At home, Pablo lives in a different world. His father is a plastic surgeon and shamelessly exposes him to his sexual world and that of his lover. His mother is dead and Albina, his nanny, takes care of him like a son. At thirteen, Pablo is confused. When he discovers Sister Edwin's secret, he will leave his innocence behind.

Accompanied by the light of ancient and distant stars, we will walk sideways with the BLUE CRAB mom through the mangroves of Colombia, we will submerge into the Cauca River to swim along the STRIPED CATFISH mom on her journey to navigate against the river’s murky current, and we will travel across the hazy Paramo Del Sol while we follow the path moulded by the PUMA mom’s footprints. Among forests of water that speak with the sky, murky and torrential river streams, and mountains that dwell among clouds, we will witness their luminous apparitions in the dome of the Planetarium.

In the Medio Atrato region of Chocó, Ana Panesso and her community grow sugarcane and make viche, an ancestral beverage that was once prohibited but now is in vogue. Through food, river trips, and music, viche and its knowledge not only shape people s daily lives but also raise the question of a just future, where viche serves as food, sustenance, and identity for Black families.

Brigitte Baptiste is a female transgender ecologist whose groundbreaking research has challenged scientific and social conventions for years. With the help of tracking, archive footage and digital animation, the film weaves an intimate soliloquy and a richly nuanced portrait around an extraordinary protagonist, whose refreshing ideas about life, family and current issues may, perhaps, rekindle hope for the future of our planet.

Iris says goodbye to her imaginary friend, amidst a Caribbean dream surrounded by iconographic characters from the carnival of Barranquilla.

Every July, coinciding with the arrival of a beautiful woman, the town of Palomar witnesses the appearance of the headless man. Tired of the curse, Plinio Parejo is determined to defeat him, even if it means confronting the town's very own priest.

Father and son are looking for a gift for Mother's Day. She dreams of “putting color” on the television, so it would be the most appropriate gift. However, indigenous malice and the desire for originality leads them to change appliances and prevent the gift from being repeated.

Guerri is a well-known thug, after playing a role as a non-professional actor in a movie, he should make a decision between auditioning for a new film or to participate in a robbery planned by his friends the same day.

Without knowing the secret that its inhabitants keep, a couple of journalists visit a fishing village, La Almeja, to investigate the strange death of a little girl.

In Bogotá there are several areas that do not have any support from the State and their people must struggle to provide for themselves. In these communities there is no infrastructure, no development programs in public services, and total neglect in the area of social security. The problem derives from a process of accelerated urbanization that has overwhelmed any planning attempt. No one is more aware of this reality than the people who suffer from it; so, they decided to organize themselves and with imagination, with daring, and above all with decision, diverse groups face and solve their problems themselves. Education, health, and recreation are some of the sectors where the inhabitants of Bogotá work and seek ways to progress.

Prominent scientist Rodolfo Llinás meets with his grandchildren, children, wife, childhood friends and current collaborators to investigate the great mysteries of life from the everyday and the human, in a journey from the brain to love, death, illness, art and religion.

Buitraguito promotes a clothes store with his microphone. At the same time, dreams with his first single as a Popular singer. With his friend Manolo, a clown who promotes a restaurant dressed as a clown, they decide to make the CD.

In a large space mining colony, Eve has to pass the most difficult test of all. With only one free hand and unable to use her emergency thrusters, she will have to do everything possible to survive.

An intrepid Andean weasel prepares to participate in the harvest festival. However, he will have to muster up his courage and face rejection from humans who consider him an unpleasant rodent in order to surprise them with his dancing skills.

Miguel's routine work in the family laundry will be altered in unexpected ways with the arrival of a client who, in the intimacy of the back room, will test more than just his expertise with delicate garments.

A deceived woman makes a pact with the devil to curse her unfaithful lover.

Authorities have prohibited access to a forest on the outskirts of the city. Strange vegetation has infested the area, and those who have been questioned report sightings of rare species, human-sized birds, or figures that appear and disappear. Despite the restrictions, several people decide to visit the place. Once there, they coexist and play without fear of the warnings. Little by little, reality begins to distort, blending with their memories, dreams, and fantasies.

The story follows the search for Kiki, a missing undercover agent who has uncovered a sinister truth about the now-abandoned school he once attended outside of Bogotá. When Kiki disappears, he leaves behind a letter for his former best friend, Paco. Driven by love, guilt, and shame, Paco enters the school's ruins, hoping to find him there. Inside, Paco descends into a twisted reality that reflects Kiki's emotional world, and the horrific past concealed in its corridors. Haunted by ghoulish children desperate to fit into a world, gay men trapped in cycles of self-hatred, otherworldly monsters - the school becomes a pulsing, living entity. Scan the pages with a free augmented reality app to see the story come to life with real scenes from the actual abandoned haunted school where the story takes place. Embedded in the comic are clues and puzzles to artifacts and treasures from Kiki's life.

After fleeing violence at age 15, Pacho spends four decades away from Anserma. Now a photograph sparks a desire to return, and on his journey home —imagined as an interstellar voyage— he searches for what he left behind. The lingering traces of death intertwine with a landscape of rural expressionism, memory, and history

Short film based on a fictional Christmas setting. It tells the story of four street children who are experiencing their own Christmas drama, which includes getting a doctor to treat one of their friends who is terminally ill in the shack that serves as their home. Among the adventures the street children go through to get the doctor to treat their friend is stealing his car and requesting his services in exchange for returning the vehicle. The doctor, obliged to comply with the request, goes to where the sick boy is, only to find that he has already died. The plot is full of tender, childlike scenes set in a real Christmas atmosphere.

A casting director reunites with a young non-professional actor with the mission of re-recording some dialogues to complete the post-production of a film. Surrounded by a forest, in the sway of flickering lights, fantasy, imagination, and play collide in an exercise of repetition and hypnosis, where ghosts wander, complicit in the fiction.

The lamentations of a missing person’s mother lead a murderer suffering from amnesia to question his actions. He travels to the spot in the jungle where he murdered and buried his most recent victim.

A woman recalls a special event from her childhood, when she sat at the dining room table in her home, enjoying a rather unusual and repetitive feast. It included the usual mashed potatoes, guava juice, and Dad's mysterious and intriguing cup of tea.

A story of reinvention, discipline, and faith. Tamara (Susy G) opens the door to her private and creative life: from prejudice to the stage, from adult content to music and performance, from doubt to certainty. Between studies, rehearsals, recordings, and travels, we see how a global artist is built from the ground up: strategy, team, setbacks, comeback... and a vision that doesn't compromise her dreams.

Months ago, an academic initiative was created in which the participants had to film a documentary. Juan decided to make it about himself, which led him to discover more about his place in art, and art's place in his life.

A Spanish woman living in Colombia’s coastal city of Santa Marta and a local woman. Two lonely women, their love for the same dog, and the impossibility of expressing pain and grief.

Working the land always involves a mutual nurturing interaction. The body that works meets the species of the land that intervenes. A cycle of care is installed. In Miel the production of shared knowledge bee-human-earth configures a scenario of activities that is amplified in a film that walks the frictions that coexist with this community of beekeepers in the Colombian Atlantic.

In the final stretch of his life, a Catalan construction worker becomes a youtuber and faces his greatest challenge to perpetuate, with his last breath, the constructive techniques of modernism.

Alex and Jonathan work in Alfonso's automotive shop. Encouraged by some information that Alex has obtained, the three decide to rob a gang of smugglers of which Víctor is a part. What Jonathan and Alfonso do not know is that Alex and Víctor are brothers and that their partner's motivation is not money but the desire to show himself as capable as the older brother and open the doors of an environment that has been forbidden to him by him.

A group of teenagers dig gold remains inside a newly abandoned mine.

Yeison, an introverted young man who loves heavy metal and zombie movies, is in love with Laura, his only friend, but does not know how to conquer her or how to face this new stage of his life called adulthood, in which he must assume responsibilities within a home with a sick grandmother and an unemployed father.

Flipping through an album of old family photographs, a mother reminds her daughter of the beautiful kites she made when she was little. Although the parents do not agree and argue in front of their children, the father makes a beautiful colorful kite while the mother prepares lunch. Everyone collaborates with the paste, the cutting of the paper and the framework of the skeleton. Rosita runs happily in the field and unrolls the kite that she herself saw being born step by step.

On four different floors of a commercial building, funny stories unfold that an elevator operator must connect to clear her confusion.

In the midst of the global environmental crisis, Jamie, a young Caribbean girl relocated to the city, must return to her native island, a world biosphere reserve, to take care of family property left behind by her father, including a mythical passageway said to connect the hill to the sea. Uprooted, Jamie intends to sell everything to pay for expensive medical treatment, however, her plans are postponed when her suitcase is temporarily misplaced with ownership documents. This incident buys her time to reconnect with the ways and customs of her people and eventually reconnects her with the sea, where swimming through plastic debris she is confronted with the dramatic global reality. Discovering her mythical maternal heritage, Jamie turns her actions into an example for the islanders' children and, rekindled by this small gesture of optimism, she finds the strength to challenge her fears, embrace her culture and fulfill her destiny.

Edy Martinez, the story of the evolution of Latin jazz and Salsa during the 50s in New York, seen through a Colombian musician, who today can walk among the crowds, whose don´t recognizing his immense legacy.

An humble bricklayer from Bogotá sees his persistence rewarded by winning the biggest prize in the lottery.

Benjamín Cuartas, accused of his wife's murder, is taken to prison and sentenced to death. Over time, Benjamín will manage to win the admiration of his other companions and thus carry out his last wish before dying.

Pantaleón, a country boy, is forced to go on a suicide mission where he has to shoot his own friends. Once at the front, he puts an end to the war.

To protect them from the evil eye, tradition says that newborns must be soaked and wrapped in a blanket from toe to neck for seven days. When her child is born, Hana decides to ignore what she believes to be an old superstition.

O Homem Universal is a documentary that claims the memory of Arnoldo Palacios (1924 – 2015), an important representative of Afro literature in Colombia. It narrates his journey lived in the midst of the extreme poverty of the Colombian Pacific; his high ideals of understanding human reality lead him to different scenarios in European literature.

Andres arrives at a forgotten town looking for his brother. A picture is the only clue of his whereabouts. He finds a place ruled by violence and silence. Indifference marks his route towards finding his brother.

The first Colombian film with synchronous optical sound.