Discoveries from Colombia World Cinema

A social experiment, based on the concept of 'equal opportunity', tests the dignity of people from different social classes. Who will win?

Neneco and Anwar are two teenagers living in the town of Bahía Cupica, Chocó. Due to the illness of Neneco’s sister, he’s put in charge of washing all of her clothes but the encounter with two women in the nearby brook forces them to take a detour to the outskirts of the town, before sunset, to unveil the past of Cupica.

During a cathartic writing exercise, an evocation of childhood and adolescence arises in relation to the mother figure. Thus, a rhythmic text is born that is recited, recorded and made available for listening. An audiovisual reflection in which the filmmaker observes her mother being a mother but also being a daughter.

On the edge of the eastern mountain ranges of Colombia, where the relief and the plain meet. A group of young people spend their days contemplating the organic existence of the planet. Meanwhile, a man flees, his humanity fading. The fluidity of the water gathers their bodies and passes through them.

Gloria is tired. Absorbed in thought, she slowly moves between the mirror, the sink and the bathroom light. Between pain and pleasure, what she carries inside is growing and cannot contain itself anymore.

Isabel Goncourt, 38, faces an identity crisis. Her fragmented memory recalls episodes that connect her to a strange double life, leading her to recreate the exact point of her encounter with desire.

A delightful animated adventure. After a turbulent crew sings obscene songs, a ship's captain entertains them with a story of loss, discovery, and true love.

Harassment, kidnapping, isolation, submission, hunger, humiliation, infidelity, psychological manipulation and incest are some of the themes that are the focus of this documentary based on true stories and the work of natural actors who suffered abuse and are marked by abandonment. Made during the filming of "La mujer del animal" by Victor Gaviria.

Elena finds a wounded paramilitary soldier and decides to help him. While recuperating at her house, he confesses that his unit recently killed her son. Despite the shock, she still helps him to escape before the guerrillas find him.

Aura is a teenager in love with a charming young man but her family wants to dispose her to an older rich man.

The stories told in this documentary span the twenty-five years of existence of the now-defunct La Gorgona prison, located on the island of the same name. Thus, confinement, violence, and isolation gave rise to many escape attempts, but few were successful. Through interviews with individuals who experienced these events firsthand, the use of animated reenactments, and the emphasis on the power of nature, this work visually reproduces journalist Silvia Luz Gutiérrez's investigation into the mysteries surrounding various characters and their different fates.

The origins and current state of Porro, a type of music from Colombia

A turtle lives peacefully at the bottom of the sea, until an apparatus accident forces him to fight to survive and undergo the physical and environmental changes that human unconsciousness has produced.

When the rainy season begins Helena's baby shall be born. Her mother and brother prepare for the coming weeks of rain and maternity. Men and women fish and harvest in deep solitude; while nature becomes the prison for all of them. The promise of a new life would have to change things.

Antonio and Antonia, two former lovers, reunite in a cafe to confront the ruins of their relationship. Through flashbacks and present moments, they relive their love story-marked by wounds, secrets, and a longing for reconciliation.

Rodrigo Quintero is a businessman from the city of Pereira, Colombia; who in the year 1989, due to certain past mistakes, ends up fleeing his country, being imprisoned in the National Prison of Panama; a country governed at that time by the dictatorship of General Manuel Antonio Noriega. Sergeant Lino, director of the prison, protected by the corrupt military government, begins to extort him with the threat of being extradited to the United States of America; in the end Rodrigo is pushed to his physical and rational limits in the midst of his eagerness to escape and find his freedom.

Due to a great coincidence of fate, I, a child then, did not go to a meeting with War. Other women did complete that meeting and joined the guerrilla. After many years this story comes back to me and, inevitably, I decided to go after it. How is it to be a guerrilla woman and lay down the weapons after the Peace Treaty?

Two young people from the wealthy class who meet and complement their lives by filling the holes that they themselves had created within themselves. A film that mixes innocence, surrealism, comedy, drama and psychosis.

A documentary about Medellín's historic and continued connection to tango and its most iconic figure.

Gael faces Bogotá's overwhelming nature after eviction. Seeking stability as an immigrant, they repeatedly flee. They find refuge in Aimar, but fear of losing the one who made them feel at home, until the fear comes true.

Fantasy and reality are mixed in the monologue of a proud and sexist male convict.

Miguel is a young man celebrating his 22nd birthday. He celebrates it at home with those closest to him, who have always judged him for his passion for dancing. When blowing out the candles on the cake, Miguel will wish for absolute solitude, the disappearance of each and every one of his relatives, in order to seek his happiness by doing what he is truly passionate about. Incredibly, his wish will come true and he will be able to get rid of that mask that he has been wearing for so long. Being thus alone, isolated and lonely. A loneliness accompanied by music and tears, this time, caused by happiness.

A political documentary that critically examines Colombian democracy, the 1970 elections, and the role of domestic and foreign elites in shaping the balance of power, questioning the extent to which the political system truly represents the will of the people.

An ethnographic documentary directed by Brian Moser focusing on the Cuiva, a small group of nomadic hunters and gatherers in southeastern Colombia. Filmed in 1971, the film contrasts two Cuiva groups—one maintaining a traditional nomadic lifestyle, the other drawn into the Colombian economy—illustrating cultural and economic change brought about through contact with settlers and the pressures this contact places on their way of life. (Note: Produced as an episode of the Disappearing World television series, the film is structured as a self-contained ethnographic documentary with its own title, subject focus, and production context, supporting its treatment as a distinct film.)

I seek out and speak with the dead. I write to a woman no longer here: Soraya Cataño, murdered in Medellín in 1991. Thirty years later, I find her in an image. Her voice rises as a parade climbs the hillside. The archive reveals her laughter, her gesture, and I choose to call her forth.I too was raised in this valley. I too believed. I believe. This film is not about death. It is a dialogue between the one who narrates and the one who resists through absence. It is a fire that does not fade.

A politician receives the summons by the judge in a corruption case. A mysterious card about a depraved law firm run by Nicole Dickman fell off the envelope. He goes to her office to get her services; she agrees to defend him as his lawyer but in exchange she doesn't take his dirty money. She wants his soul.

This is the story of a boy who transforms a simple toilet paper carton into a chamber of dreams.

In this short documentary we will call “spaces of memory” the places where collective memory is a key element to form the cultural identity of the territories and the people who inhabit them.

After leaving school, two children embark on an adventure by taking a dip in an unusual pool, this refreshing swim will unleash a horrible consequence that they will have to face.

“Aquel cuatro de noviembre” tells the story of the communities of El Espinal and Caracolí in La Guajira, who were displaced after the discovery of a vast coal reserve.

Dedicated to the people of Mompos.

Yan searches for the best ballet shoes in the world because she believes they are the key to success as a dancer. When she fails to find them, she goes with Lu to visit her grandparents Adolfo and Rodolfo, who reenact an iconic scene from the movie Singin' in the Rain, and together they learn that the most important thing is to dance with your heart.

Amalia is Carmelo's sister, but she doesn't know it until her father's death. She believes that she travels to Medellín to claim her inheritance, but she travels to face what she has fled her whole life: her father, family, origins, a land that she doesn't like but she carries in the inside. Amalia's father is just the sender of a letter. Carmelo's father is his life itself. This is the story of the meeting of two brothers and the memory of a house.

Luis, a graduate in Spanish languages, was born in Boyacá into a low-income peasant family. Diagnosed with congenital bilateral amaurosis, he learned to adapt to the countryside through synesthesia, sharpening his other senses to hear colors and notice the taste of certain words.

Among the living and the dead, there is a shared memory

Tarro vacío follows the story of a young indigenous man who sees joining the military as an opportunity to improve his life and help his family. During medical examinations, a substance scientifically labeled as cocaine was detected in his system, which prevented him from enlisting. Vitilio Iyokina Gittoma’s short film exposes the gap between ancestral knowledge and the scientific world, revealing an institutionalism that ignores the spiritual importance of the practices surrounding the coca leaf.

Film of a folk festival in Colombia, featuring indigenous music, dance, crafts, and other cultural activities.

Dora has two daughters; she has taken the decision to end her 27-year-old marriage because she no longer feels loved. Just when she has gathered the strength to return to her place of origin with the hope of finding love again, her husband Meinardo suffers a workplace accident and loses his leg.

In the dense Colombian jungle, eras jump, genders blur and fluids flow freely. The rubber trees, tapped for their viscous sap, take on another connotation of kink while a 15th century European Missionary tries to tame what is inherently savage. In the thicket of trees, all things are wild, animalistic and queer.

When a young couple from Barranquilla wants to get married, even with the opposition of their respective parents, problems arise on both sides with numerous setbacks that postpone such a happy event.

A young man makes empty promises in an empty room. His only companion: a lamp.

Iván along with his father suffer intense pain for the death of his mother and wife, only the two of them know that she was murdered by paramilitaries for being a social leader

The digital format breaks when trying to replicate neural activity. Rapid eye movements occur in one of the stages of sleep where the body is paralyzed while consciousness is obliged to exist between two dimensions, it is on this frontier that transient images appear leaving an immaterial trace.

A new landscape emerges where the so-called perpetual snows disappear. The construction of the first artificial “super-paramo”, a high mountain tropical ecosystem, becomes a portal to that ancient time of ice. Different audiovisual materials are brought together to build a heterogeneous idea about the thaw and possible origin of the paramo ecosystem.

Andrew is a disabled veteran who lives outside of New Jersey. Some time ago, he began having virtual conversations with Alejandra, a Colombian single mother who works in a webcam studio in Medellin.

In search of adventure and fleeing from himself, Álvaro (70) arrived in the United States from Colombia 45 years ago. Instead of escaping his demons, however, New York provided ways to bring him face to face with them, dragging him into a life of raw extremes and uncertainties. Recently separated from Doris, his only true love, Álvaro finds himself alone in his small Harlem apartment and decides to return to Colombia to try to reunite with his estranged family. 'Álvaro' is an intimate portrait that exposes the unhealed wounds of loneliness and uprooting, but also the strength of a man who refused to give up.

An approach to the most intimate side of the talented Colombian cellist Santiago Cañón Valencia, who with his young age has traveled the world performing in the most important stages of classical music. His artistic journey, his beginnings and his impressive present.

Carmen Balcells was the woman who changed power relations in literature. Behind the scenes she invented the so-called "Latin American Boom" and from her literary agency in Barcelona, she welcomed authors as no one had ever done before.

Brotherhood is the story of Syed and Ali, two Australian brothers of Middle Eastern background. Syed, passionate about music and street poetry, finds himself forced to take on the pain of those around him – his mum's suffering, his community's problems and Ali's heroin addiction.

Ana, Claudia, and Marinela, three Latin American women share their intimate experiences of immigrating to Canada while reflecting on themes of violence, belonging, motherhood, and reconciliation.

Dora, the daughter of the owner of the hacienda El Trapiche. Destined to marry the heir of another nearby farm, she asks to travel to the United States. There she meets her fellow countryman Leonardo, with whom she has a torrid affair. When they return to Colombia all kinds of situations will happen to them.

In a world saturated with media information, EL escapes into a fantastic space thanks to his ability to draw. Among the cracks in the city, a plant emerges from his drawings but the social order eliminates it, motivating him to become EL INTRONAUTA, the inner space navigator.

In a near future, people cannot have feelings without the help of illegal pills, except for one girl.