Colombia

Lonesome, middle-aged virgin Antonio Farfán is picked on and ridiculed as a matter of course, whether by coworkers or his bullying mooch of a brother (who only calls when he needs money). An employee of a notary’s office, his status improves a bit when his new boss—and strangely affable doppelganger—takes an interest in him. But Farfán’s deep-seated shyness and insecurity are only partly assuaged. And when he joins a self-improvement group, he slowly confirms what the undulating lines of this sly, involving rotoscope story suggest: everything is in motion, and change is inevitable. The question becomes what use one makes of it.Read More »

The life of Pedro Manrique Figueroa, a pioneer of collage in Colombia, is like an adventure novel that is both incomplete and contradictory. Taking his life and work as a pretext, this mockumentary takes the viewer on a journey through history from the year 1934 up until 1981, when the artist mysteriously disappeared from view. Un tigre de papel is itself a collage, where art and politics rub shoulders, and where truth and lies are placed side by side.Read More »

Fourteen-year-old Maria spends her time in the extensive tropical garden of her family house. When she meets her brother and his friend Adrian on motorcycles during the New Year celebrations, she decides to flee with them to find paradise on earth together.Read More »

Quote:
Medellin, Colombia. Pinky is on the run after freeing himself from the grip of a religious sect. He finds a place to squat, but misled by his own faith, he questions everything. As he tries to put back together the pieces of his life, violent memories return to haunt him, and ask for revenge.

After several astonishing shorts, Camilo Restrepo’s feature debut confirms him as a visionary filmmaker. This nocturnal punk western is a hallucinatory descent into the catacombs of Colombia’s relationship with violence: Los Conductos doesn’t hide its anger, but rather turns it into visceral cinema.Read More »

Synopsis:
Adrián, a talented orchestra conductor, receives a video message from his beloved Belén, telling him with tears in her eyes that she is leaving him, and that she cannot carry on with him anymore. Shattered by the unexpected news of their irreversible break-up and puzzled by Belén’s inexplicable decision, Adrián gets help from the local police to solve this mysterious case of disappearance; however, as there is still no news of Belén, a new woman will appear in his life. In the end, with no progress at all in Belén’s baffling case, who would think to look beyond the facts, as truth often lies hidden in the most unusual of places?Read More »

Two men meet in downtown Bogotá; one is missing a leg, the other is a “silletero,” a man who carries people around for money. Each character bears the burden of a bitter past life.Read More »

Quote:
A wild short made as part of a filmmaking workshop that Raúl Ruiz ran in Bogotá in October 1993.Read More »

Synopsis:
A body is discovered impaled on a stake near a scenic lake near Bogota. A journalist tries to find what happened. With a friend, they set about to find the cause of the crime and uncover an intricate real estate fraud involving corrupt politicians, emerald hunters, nudists.Read More »

An audacious saga centred on the experience of the Wayúu indigenous people of north-eastern Colombia between the late 60s and early 80s, as the trade in marijuana takes hold of their culture. The film begins with Rapayet, a penniless Wayúu unusually well-connected to the outside world, wanting to marry the beautiful Zaida despite the opposition of her mother and tribal matriarch Úrsula. In order to deter Rapayet, Úrsula demands a huge dowry of livestock, which he is able to finance by entering the drug-trafficking business, at first tentatively. Before long, Rapayet and his family are enjoying unprecedented material wealth, but become inexorably caught up in a spiralling conflict that traditional rituals of mediation are unable to contain…Read More »