Discoveries from Colombia World Cinema

Darío (54) has been working for 30 years as a taxi driver in Bogotá. Day by day, he faces the dangers in the streets amidst funny stories he tells his passengers. The journey he most remembers happened on a cold morning in 1999 when a mysterious doctor asked him to take her to the San José hospital.

This experimental documentary explores the transience of humankind and the way that nature slowly but surely reclaims the sites of civilization in a constant cycle of growing and dying

When Julián's ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is discovered by his mother, she must decide on the right treatment for him, what she does not know is that her actions would unleash chaos in her son's mind.

Andrés has a common and meaningful problem: his right shoe has a huge hole and it seems his toe is about to escape through it. Normally, this wouldn't be such a deal, but the school year-end ball takes place in less than a day and Mariana, the girl he likes, wants to dance with him. Andres has just an afternoon to repair his shoe or find a new pair: if he wants to impress her, he must be dashing.

In the small bullring of an old farm from Andalusia, the owner family is celebrating a bullfighting fiesta; they are applauding the performance of "Paella" the picador, "Villancico" the banderillero and specially "Canijo" the bullfighter. "Baco" the bull, prone to the red wine will surprise everyone after he faces the deadly sword.

Zama and César are childhood friends. They spend their days skating and graffiting the streets of Bogotá, but one night César stabs a graffiti artist and as a consequence Zama starts rethinking his life.

“La Favorita“, a popular neighborhood in Bogotá, does not forget that in the big city of concrete, hunger and poverty exist. Because of that, volunteers meets every Thursday to share a cup of hot chocolate and bread with the kids, people with limited resources and street inhabitants.

Migue and Tito are looking for money, an ex-girlfriend and a lucky dog. They will need all the luck to escape the debt that they have.

Yilmar González is a young Afro-descendant, boxer and gardener from the Siloé cemetery, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Latin America, in Cali, Colombia. His life takes place in the midst of contrasts: on the one hand he trains to win the National Boxing Championship that represents his dreams and the hopes of a community that fights against violence and government abandonment; on the other, the cemetery and the neighborhood that represent the happiness of a life without luxuries and where we discover Yilmar’s environment: his alcoholic mother, his friends who live on the edge of crime and his girlfriend Eliana, who is also a boxer and the mother of his two children.

How can we visualize Body Ownership? We connected Body Ownership with an I-perspective, looking for images that uncover the multiplicity of the ‘I’ First person plural. Strapping two body cameras (GoPros) to our chests, we move in direct body contact. Our premise is that both I-perspectives of the cameras are at interplay with each other, showing that gaze is never produced by a singular entity. Instead, it is the result of bodies touching and reacting constantly to each other. The body cameras are joined by an external camera – a third-person perspective. While it may hold a position of power as the one who frames the image from the outside, it desires to dive into the collective I-perspective. BE-LONGING. At one point the gazes of the I-perspectives and the outside camera meet – they look at each other looking. Gazes conjoined with bodies. Body is spatiosocially bound, is situated.

The experimental animated film, El Canto de las Moscas, translates the desolation caused by the violence of the Colombian armed conflict through the poetic voice of Maria Mercedes Carranza (1945-2003) and the audiovisual dialogue between 9 Colombian women. In 24 places that are visited during the course of a day, a map of terror is drawn where massacres took place in Colombia in the 1990s. Archival images, the artists’ personal memories and the use of loops and analog materials bring to life the landscapes ravaged by violence and build a polyphony of memory and mourning, a universal song of pain.

Young Afro-descendant women from Cauca tell the story of their ancestors, where slave women played fundamental roles that endure today in the community. Crucial work in the face of the inclemency of violence, building a legacy of rebellion, resilience and fortitude.

In Putumayo, grandmother Herminia is guided by a sign from nature to pass on her knowledge to her granddaughter. Together they will embark on a journey to the heart of medicine, so that when Herminia returns to mother earth, it will be Zuleny who will guide the community as a spiritual authority.

Mauricio Lezama was murdered in May 2019 while casting in Arauca. In a country where a social leader is murdered every three days, his death unites the industry around a reflection on what filmmaking is, why make it and the difference between storytelling in the city and the periphery.

Yineth, a girl born in a forgotten area of Colombia. Her only option was war. A life marked by violence, sexual abuse and armed conflict. An exemplary woman who had to reinvent herself 7 times to survive the harshness of war.

A huge photographic archive of nearly 100 years of family history motivates the director of the documentary to do a series of memory exercises.

An overprotective exorcist tries to free a betrayed woman from the devil. A gay occultist proposes marriage to his jealous boyfriend. These two opposing couples are seeking mystical ecstasy through antiquated love rituals. They possess and release their bodies in the name of the Devil and God.

After the death of his partner, Jaime discovers that his Polaroids can transport him to special moments with her.

Six-part film showing the development of the city of Pereira based on a love story, which was only a pretext to show the origin, advancement and progress of the city of Pereira. Of this production there are testimonies of its realization and exhibition, however only one photograph is preserved.

Stories that materialize in large blocks of concrete throughout the length, breadth and depth of the national territory.

From the memory, two women reconstruct their transformation in lesbian sexuality. From objectification to the freedom to love other women's bodies.

"The plot of the film, although it has no local color, as it would have been to our liking, is something very human that happens quite frequently in this century full of vanities, of a life of useless sacrifices to appear to have a wealth that one is far from possessing". (Diario del Comercio. August 25, 1926).

Jairo, a 50-year-old gay man, a sex worker in a Colombian club, cannot conceive of another life outside that he knows, an underworld of illegality, marginality and lust. That day, Helda, his patron, warns him that his time in that world has ended.

Stop motion short film

The memories of childhood come back to me, the love and care of my grandfather oppose the pale face and abandoned body that I see today. Our idyllic relationship has become a dark and distressing bond, his long illness and addiction to morphine have transformed him into an absent being; we are two distant people, almost unknown. Through this essay I explore my memories to understand what unites us and what separates us, an attempt to go through recent pain and reconcile with the figure of my grandfather. A search for a body that fades into childhood memories.

From my experience as a body in transit, I have inevitably walked towards the abandonment of the species. Because experiments with gender identity and anatomical sex dislocate recognizable with an identifiable genre. The places of production of the human have been framed from border with the animal, legitimizing innumerable exclusions, but on the other hand detonating the possibilities of invention and reconfiguration of the borders in relation to other life forms. Thus, I believe that today alliances are urgent between different militancy so that other winds blow in the world. “Nosotr_s Seremos”, speculate the embryonic state of a new species, where its desire for the dilute of the borders between identity, gender and animality; It springs in the middle of a original broth.

Manuel is trying to convince his brother Raul that the anunnaki, an ancient extraterrestrial species, has offered him a space on their spaceship in order to escape earth from the impending apocalypse. Raul opposes, thinking that Manuel is only grieving the recent death of their mother.

Juan Pablo was born without the ability to see. With great enthusiasm and an adventurous spirit he travels from Sao Paulo (Brazil) to the Colombian Amazon to encounter the unknown and unusual; without fear of anything he faces great challenges.

We wanted to establish a dialogue with the queer experience that would not be limited to our lesbian existence, but would be linked to the rest of the intimate relationships we establish with the environment, the extended family and, and, mainly, with the queer art of failure.

A movie about the period know in Colombia as "La Violencia", invoking the divine "You shall not kill".

Sexual identity exiled Geraldine years ago from her community. She is a trans Êberâ Chamí woman. Today, determined and empowered, Geraldine wants to end this Sexile and return to her community being who she really is.

Narrated by Nevado del Ruiz himself, this documentary explores the life of one of the most important mountains in Colombia.

Taking them down different paths and away from the place where they once dreamed they would be as women, as mothers or as professionals, a group of friends reunite a decade after graduating to learn how reality has fallen on each of them.

Don Julio has Parkinson's disease and can't clip his own nails. His daughter, Luisa, usually does it, but it comes the day when she is worried about something else and can't help her father. Don Julio, desperately, goes on a journey through his industrial complex, looking for a generous soul who can clip his nails.

Manuel decides it´s time to find his half-brother; someone he once heard about as a child but who, like his late father´s memory, was buried and faded away. But finding him will only be an excuse to achieve his true purpose: to understand his impossibility to openly and truthfully talk about fatherhood: the one he didn't have as a child, that was taken up by a lonely mother, self assumed by him, and reshaped by his siblings while growing up. The Living and the Dead is a film about love, honesty and forgiveness in a family where the living ones will have to resort to the dead to find the answers about who they really are.

An immersive first-person narrative that places the viewer inside the filmmaker's experience of a violent attack, When the Shot focuses on the feelings and sensations that fear elicits and how life flashing in front of your eyes might actually appear: a fusion of blood and water, body and memory, jagged edges and abstractions of familiar yet indistinct landscapes.

In the Serranía de la Macarena, in the north of the Colombian Amazon, lies “Río Rojo”, a mythical river that runs through the middle of the forest, also called “the river of the seven colors”. Young Oscar, grandmother Doña María and the Indian Sabino live peacefully in the region, in communion with nature. But this area, once preserved by the conflict with FARC, is now victim of its beauty and threatened by the arrival of new visitors…

A young Venezuelan immigrant comes to Colombia to sing on public transport in order to help his mother who is still in Venezuela, with whom he maintains a purely telephone relationship. He lives with Gustavo, a Bogotano musician, who helps him achieve this goal by giving him lodging in his home, between them a sentimental relationship is forged that is abruptly interrupted due to the fact that his mother becomes seriously ill, for which they are forced to separate in the hope of meeting again.

Linda, Rey's wife, sets in motion the macabre plan to get rid of him. Rey returns home furious and Elias, Linda's lover is full of reasons not to be discouraged. Linda will make the last attempt without knowing that Rey has discovered something.

Negra, a young afro-descendant girl, arrives at her house near the sea with news that could change her life and Vieja's one, her adoptive mother.

Ines takes driving lessons with an instructor that rapidly loses his patience and underestimate her abilities. Nevertheless, as they learn more about each other’s life, an unexpected friendship will begin.

Amidst fireflies and mangroves, the musician Papámarimba narrates the legend of El Libertario. A story about a ghost ship, a slave rebellion and the eternal struggle for freedom. But his son Canchimalo no longer believes in these stories. He thinks they are just superstitions, keeping his people in backwardness. A challenge that will bring him face to face with the spirits of his ancestors.

A robot skilled in all the techniques and use of machinery for war, is disoriented when he realizes that the war is over and he cannot find a place to train. Nowhere to go, he wanders aimlessly until he finally comes across a town and the hope of a new beginning. After multiple failures to find a new purpose, the robot decides to disarm and surrender to those affected by the war. Thus found a way to be useful in this new world.

The Bizzanellis are an eccentric family living in a strange narrow room. They are preparing to present their show, which is nothing more than the very drama of their daily lives as artists.

Mónica returns to her village crawling back to Luisa, the love of her live whom she betrayed. many years ago. During a night they confront their past until Luisa agrees to deal Mónica’s return with the new village bosses. However, none of them knows the high cost they must pay in order to have a new life together.

Luciano tries to evade the weariness sensation in his life through music and sex in a city that deprives him from pleasure and submit him under the imminent siege of things.

Tomás, lives in Potosí, a popular neighborhood of Bogotá in Colombia and Nayem, a Saharaui kid from the refugee camps of occidental Sáhara in Argelia, become friends through their dreams

Collecting spellings, poems, questions and songs this animated poem portraits rejection, rupture, reflection and love.

An Indigenous woman leaves her Emberá Chamí community for Bogotá as she grapples with her experience of female genital mutilation.

Using the language of cinema verite, Heaven or Hell follows ten years of Jose's life from Colombia, Venezuela and Spain, beginning as a homeless addict, capturing his hopes for the future.

A Drug gang in Colombia have planted Marijuana in a remote part of the countryside unaware of the curse that has been placed on the land. A snake attracted by the sweet smell of burning ganja attacks all who partake.

Laura, 12 years old, tells how she heard about her father's imprisonment in Medellin, Colombia. She receives a letter where he explains the reason for his absence, in a story starring bunnies. The story leads the girl to visit him in prison and discover a truth that has been hidden from her family for years.

Eva and Candela meet two years after their relationship ends because Eva needs something from Candela.

Four young children enter an abandoned house. They will soon realize that they are not alone. This short film is one of the five winning short films which were made for “My Annabelle Creation" competition as a promotion for the film Annabelle: Creation.