Profiles: Manuel Ruiz Montealegre | Proimágenes Colombia

A film producer and director born in Bogota in 1975, Manuel Ruiz Montealegre studied History at Colombia’s National University (where he is currently an associate professor at the School of Film and Television) and also completed a master’s degree in Anthropology and Ethnography at EHESS in Paris. In 2006, in conjunction with Hector Ulloque he founded the production house Medio de Contención Producciones, where he has worked as a feature film director and producer for projects including Wounded Night (2015) y Valley of Souls (2019). He also created the digital platform Cinescuela, which develops educational content and builds connections between cinematographic language and new technologies. 
 
His master’s thesis was an ethnographic study into trade union organizing in the tropical city of Cochabamba and the coca growers’ movement in Bolivia. This lead him to travel to the country, where he would later work with Ulloque to film the 2006 documentary Hartos Evos aquí hay: Los cocaleros del Chapare (‘There are so many Evos around here: The coca-growers of Chapare), which won the category of Best Documentary at the 2006 Biarritz Festival. The documentary was the reason they both decided to form Medio de Contención Producciones, a company that has produced films by independent creators with a strong subjective, cinematographic and political identity that have been featured in the official selections at numerous national and international festivals, production gatherings and markets.
 
His productions include Meandros (2010), a title co-directed by Héctor Ulloque that was a winner of FDC 2008 and had its world premiere at IDFA 2010; the documentaries Reflejos de un Desencuentro (2014) by Gabriela Díaz Montealegre (a winner of the FDC 2011 call); Wounded Night (2015) by Nicolás Rincón Gille (winner of best film in the Official Colombian Film category at the Cartagena International Film Festival and a Special Jury Mention at the 2015 Cinéma du Réel in France); En el Taller by Ana Salas (2015), for which Ruiz Montealegre acted as executive producer; Valley of Souls (2016), and Cold Kisses (2016).
 
In 2016, he started work on the development of Valley of Souls by Nicolás Rincón Gille, a co-production with Brazil (Ancine), France (CNC) and Belgium that received an FDC grant in 2016. Valley of Souls had its international premiere in Busan (2019) and subsequently went on to tour renowned festival such as Rome (2019), Nantes (2019), Rotterdam (2020) and Helsinki (2020). The film was awarded the Etoile d´Or award for the best film at the Marrakech Festival. 
 
Ruiz Montealegre is also the executive director for Simón Mesa Soto’s film Amparo, a co-production by Medio de Contención Producciones that premiered during Critics’ Week at Cannes 2021, where it claimed the award for Best Actress. Amparo has been part of the selections at Karlovy Vary (2021), Lima (2021), Jerusalem (2021) and San Sebastián (2021). 
 
He is currently working on the production of the debut feature by Fabián Hernández, A Male, a film that obtained an FDC grant in the production category in 2018, was selected for the Cinefondation l´Átelier at Cannes 2020, and was awarded production funds by the Torino Film Lab TFL (Italy, 2019), the World Cinema Fund (Germany, 2020) and Nouvelle Aquitaine (France, 2020). The film is a co-production with France, Holland and Germany, and forms part of the WIP Latam section of San Sebastián 2021. Ruiz Montealegre is also involved in the development of Iluminada, the second fiction film by Nicolás Rincón Gille that is being supported by the FDC.