Profiles: Ciro Guerra | Proimágenes Colombia

Ciro Guerra was born in Rio de Oro, Cesar province, on February 6, 1981. He is one the country’s most successful film directors, with three feature films that have taken part in major international festivals. When the nominees for the 2016 Academy Awards were announced on January 14, 2016, his third feature, Embrace of the Serpent, marked a major milestone for Colombian cinema with its nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
 
Guerra studied Film and Television at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Together with other film professionals, mostly from the Universidad Nacional, and with producer Cristina Gallego, he founded Ciudad Lunar Producciones in 1998. With this company, he produced his first short film, Silencio (1998), which took part in the Official Selection at Expo Hannover in Germany (1998), was screened in the Official Selection at “Sin Formato” in Colombia (1999), and won a Mention of Honor in the fiction category at the Equinoxio Festival (1998), organized by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

In 1999, he directed the documentary Documental siniestro: Jairo Pinilla, cineasta colombiano (1999). He then made Alma (2000), which won the Best Youth Video Award for best fiction short film and for best cinematography in Barranquilla; shared an award at the Second Young Filmmakers Video Screening at the Cartagena Film Festival; and received the Award for Best Noir Short Film at the National University Video Festival. For his short animated film Intento (2001), he won the Award in the Animation Category at the Fourth “Sin Formato” event in Bogota; the CINECUN Award for best animation (Bogota); and an Honorable Mention in the animation category at the Equinoxio Festival. Intento was also included in the Ministry of Culture’s List of Children's Movies. At around the same time, he was director of photography for the award-winning short film Terminal, which won him numerous awards, including the VIART prize in Caracas, Venezuela; the Youth Video Award in Barranquilla; and the Cesar Award in Manizales.
 
At age 21, he wrote The Wandering Shadows, his feature debut, which brought him 15 awards and special mentions at festivals in San Sebastian, Toulouse, Trieste, Mar del Plata, Austin, Quito, Santiago, Warsaw and Havana. The film competed in the Official Selection at more than 80 festivals, including Tribeca, Locarno, Cairo, Pesaro, Hamburg, Kolkata, Seoul, Rio de Janeiro, and Guadalajara. The British magazine Total Film included it in its selection of the best films of the decade.

Guerra’s second feature, The Wind Journeys, won a series of awards and grants: the first Latino Screenwriters Lab at the Los Angeles Latino Film Festival; development support from the Hubert Bals Fund, part of the Rotterdam Film Festival (Holland); the Ibermedia Program’s Project Development award; and incentive awards for script development, production, and post-production from the Colombian Film Development Fund. It was a semifinalist at the Sundance NHK Filmmakers Award and was in the Official Selection at Cannes in 2009. It was released in theaters in 17 countries and was selected at over 90 festivals, including Toronto, Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, and London; the film won awards at Cannes, Santa Barbara, Malaga, Santiago, Ljubljana, Bogota, and Cartagena. In 2014, Arcadia magazine chose The Wind Journeys as one of the most important Colombian works of the past 100 years.
 
Guerra’s third feature, Embrace of the Serpent (2015), won the Art Cinema Award for Best Film at the 2015 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. It was acquired for release in 28 countries and was part of the official selection at more than 100 festivals around the globe, including Toronto, San Sebastian, London, Busan, Karlovy Vary, and Sarajevo. It was also chosen as Best Film at the 19th Lima Film Festival in Peru; the 30th Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina, where it won the Golden Astor; the Yerevan Film Festival in Armenia, where it received a Golden Apricot; the International Film Festival of India, where it took home the Golden Peacock; and the Costa Rica International Film Festival.
 
At the Odessa Film Festival in Ukraine, it earned a Special Mention in the International Competition; at the Hamptons International Film Festival, in the United States, it was nominated for Best Picture and won an Honorable Mention; at the Pacific Meridian International Film Festival of Asian Pacific Countries, it received the Special Jury Prize; and at the Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, Cuba, it won awards for Best Editing and Best Original Score. It won four awards at the second edition of the Fénix Prizes for Ibero-American Film; it was the big winner at the 2015 Macondo Awards for the best of Colombian cinema, where it picked up eight awards; and it was voted the Best Colombian Feature Film by the directors and producers participating in the 13th Bogota Short Film Festival (BOGOSHORTS).
 
All three of Ciro Guerra’s feature films have been selected by the Colombian Academy of Film Arts and Sciences to represent Colombia in the competition for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. On January 14, when the nominees for the 2016 Oscars were announced, Embrace of the Serpent marked a major milestone in Colombian cinema with its nomination in this category. In an interview with the newspaper El Espectador, the director commented on the nomination: "The most significant thing is that this is a film spoken in indigenous languages, languages that are also foreign languages for Colombians [...] I hope this provides an opportunity for our society to begin to value and appreciate the ancient knowledge of our Amazonian peoples, who are the real heroes of this story.”
 
To honor his accomplishments, the 25th edition of the festival Film Fra Sor (Films from the South), held every year in Oslo, Norway, presented a retrospective of Ciro Guerra’s work. The director attended the Festival as a guest of honor in the Director's Special Portrait section, which he shared with Oscar-nominated Chilean director Pablo Larraín, winner of a Silver Bear, and Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, nominated for a Palme d’Or.