Ver Cine Colombiano: Noticias | Proimágenes Colombia

Four Colombian co-productions participated in different categories in the 2024 Visions du Réel festival. The short film Tierra encima (Under Land) by Sebastián Duque, produced by Tatiana Andrea López, debuted in the International Medium Length & Short Film Competition. The film tells the story of Amantina and Clara, two older women from a remote Colombian village who have dedicated their lives to a single cause: hating each other. Maybe it's because of the wall they share, or because the priest plays favorites, or perhaps they're being manipulated by the healer? This is a dark neighborhood investigation involving trinkets, urban legends, stray cats, and witchcraft.

The Colombian-German short film About Happy Hippos and Sad Peacocks by Johannes Förster and Elkin Calderón Guevara falls into the same category. It tells the fascinating story of how peacocks, originally from India, found their way to an island in Berlin in the 19th century and how hippos ended up on a river bank in Colombia a century later. Their lives in these new environments seem content and free. Through vivid imagery, Elkin Calderón Guevara and Johannes Förster create a decolonial fable that portrays these animals as untamed symbols, witnesses to the whims of the powerful.

Premiering in the Burning Lights Competition was Carropasajero by Juan Pablo Polanco Carranza and Cesar Alejandro Jaimes. The film centers on an old pickup truck crossing the desert of La Guajira. Inside the car, passengers from different times and backgrounds share the journey's trance. Among them is the spirit of a Wayuu woman making her way across the desert to return to her homeland after becoming abandoned in a paramilitary massacre. Along the way, she encounters living and deceased relatives who embody the essence of their territory, giving tangible form to the intangible through gesture and speech. This production, supported by the Film Development Fund - FDC in the category of Feature Documentary, has been presented as a project in numerous platforms such as Doc Station Berlinale, FICCI Documentary Workshop, MAFIZ Málaga Festival (Sanfic Award and Dokleipzig Award), BAM Strengthening Route, Link FIDBA (Kabinett Award), Dokleipzig Markt, Santiagolab de Sanfic (NALIP diverse woman in media award), CPH: Forum by cphdox, and Immersive Tutorials at EICTV Cuba.

The Grand Angle section served as the backdrop for the world premiere of Los Calvos (The Baldies) by Marcos Simon Mossello and Elias Ezequiel Gismond. Together with some of their fellow residents of Tostado, an Argentinean town where most men seem to suffer from premature baldness, they delved into this "complex." The result is a lively tragicomedy infused with self-deprecation and sprinkled with bald spots and hair plugs.

At VdR-Pitching, the festival's international co-production and financing platform, which selects 15 projects with international potential that are ready to be pitched for production, The Shadow of Yolüja, directed by Hanz Rippe Gabriel and produced by Fernanda Pineda of Paramo Films, stood out. It received the Visions sud est award in this section. María José Alarcón Ardila's Lab Leaf Remnants also participated in the VdR Development Lab, a workshop for developing projects from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. This platform offers mentoring opportunities to directors and producers during the development phase to facilitate access to the international market.

Founded in 1969 in Nyon, Switzerland, Visions du Réel has carved out a niche as an international documentary film event. Since its inception, it has been dedicated to exploring new forms of cinematic expression and promoting the documentary as a medium for reflection and social change.