The 35th edition of the Marseille International Film Festival took place with the world premieres of Andrés Jurado's Bienvenidos conquistadores del espacio interplanetario y sideral (Welcome Conquerors of Interplanetary and Sidereal Space) and Colombian director Camilo Restrepo's La Chambre d'ombres (The Room of Shadows). Paula Rodríguez Polanco's Malpaís (Bad Country) also won at the FIDLab.
The Marseille International Film Festival, FIDMarseille, was held from June 25 to 30. The event focuses on feature and short films, both fiction and documentary, and has become a benchmark for independent cinema and the discovery of new talent.
This year, the Compétition Premier Film section included the experimental documentary Bienvenidos conquistadores del espacio interplanetario y sideral, which had its world premiere at the festival. It is a co-production between Colombia and Portugal, directed and written by Andrés Jurado Uribe, who also worked on the editing with María Rojas. The film was produced by La Vulcanizadora and Kintop (Portugal).
In a Cold War setting, astronauts lost in the Darien are overwhelmed by their deepest fears when they encounter an indigenous man - did they expect to be beheaded or eaten by a savage cannibal? This production deconstructs film and propaganda archives of tropical survival training to challenge the colonial narrative embedded in the conquest of space. The technical team includes sound design by Andrés Silva, Andrés Jurado Uribe, and María Rojas, sound mixing by La Tina Studios, music by Jaqueline Nova, Ana María Romano G. and Boris Martins, and colorization by Gonçalo Ferreira, among others.
In the Compétition ciné + figura, La Chambre d'ombres (The Room of Shadows) (France), directed by Colombian filmmaker Camilo Restrepo, had its world premiere at the festival. Restrepo wrote and edited the film, while Arthur B. Gillette composed the music. Frédéric Dabo, Mathieu Farnarier, and Nikolas Javelle were responsible for the sound. The production was managed by Helen Olive and Martin Bertier of 5à7 Films, together with Carlos Muguiro of the Research Center and Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola.
"La Chambre d'ombres" is a unique project consisting of a publication and a film of the same name. It resulted from a seminar given by Camilo Restrepo to EQZE students during the 2019-2020 course. After the workshop, the filmmaker was invited by the center to create a work related to the focus of the seminar: to examine the context in which an image, representation, or worldview is created and its impact on reality," says Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola.
The 16th edition of FIDLab, a forum for film projects in the writing, development, or post-production stages, was held during the festival. Paula Rodríguez Polanco participated with her feature film Malpaís, which won the Kodak Silverway Paris Award at the end of the event. The story follows Rosario and her father, who leave the Pacific Ocean after discovering the body of a drowned fisherman and seek their fortune in a mining town dominated by a volcano. As Rosario tries to adapt to her new surroundings, the men in the volcano mysteriously disappear, drawn into the dark mine tunnels. The movie is produced by Mutokino (Colombia) and L'Heure d'été (France).
