Profiles: Diana Bustamante | Proimágenes Colombia

Diana Bustamante’s career in the audiovisual industry has spanned years as a producer and advisor for feature films, shorts, documentaries, and commercials. She has also worked on cultural management and international cooperation projects. Since 2014, she has been the artistic director of the Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI), where she had also served as producer for two years. Under Bustamante’s leadership, FICCI has focused on rediscovering the importance of memory through Colombian, Ibero-American, and Latin American cinema. She has helped consolidate a sensitive, coherent festival where the spirit of independent cinema comes together with industry, academia, and a dedication to audience education.

Bustamante was born in Medellin, Colombia. She studied Chemical Engineering at the Medellin campus of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia for two years, but when she discovered that her true calling was film, she moved to Bogota to study film and television at the Bogota campus of the same university.
 
She began producing film projects in 2000, when she was still a student, beginning with her first 16mm short film, Uno de estos días (2000), directed by Jorge Forero, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Latinidade International Film Festival in Portugal (2001). She went on to produce the documentaries Al son del parque (2005) and In-seguridad (2005-2006) by Gustavo Fernández. She produced and directed the documentary essay Oposición-fusión (2006), selected for the International Documentary Screening in Colombia (2007), and was executive producer of the short Mimo (2006) by Giovanna Hernández, winner of an incentive award from the FDC.
 
In 2007, with Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, she founded the company Ciudad Lunar Producciones, which produced Ciro Guerra’s feature The Wind Journeys (2009), screened in “Un Certain Regard” at Cannes in 2009. The film won FDC incentive awards in the Script Development and Feature Film Production categories. In 2009, she produced Oscar Ruiz Navia’s Crab Trap, which premiered at the 2009 TIFF and won the Fripresci award at Berlinale in 2010.
 
In 2011, she founded Burning Blue, which premiered two films at Cannes in 2012: William Vega‘s The Towrope, screened in the Directors' Fortnight, and Juan Andrés Arango‘s La Playa D.C., screened in the Un Certain Regard Official Selection. In 2013, she came to Cannes for the fourth time, with Oscar Ruíz Navia’s short film Solecito, screened in the Directors' Fortnight. In 2015, one of her films was featured at Cannes for the sixth time. Land and Shade (2015), directed by Cesar Acevedo, won three awards in the Semaine de la Critique, as well as the highest accolade to date for Colombian cinema, the Caméra d'Or. She has also produced Oscar Ruíz Navia‘s Fungi (2014); Jorge Forero’s Violencia (2015); and Jaime Osorio Márquez’s Asilo and Un gran dragón.
 
She has co-produced the feature films Los mejores temas, by Nicolás Pereda, which premiered in 2012 in the Official Competition of the Locarno Film Festival; Climas, by Enrica Perez, which took part in Films in Progress at Toulouse in 2013; and Diego Lerman’s Refugiado, selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2014.
 
While producing her own films with her unique, independent style, Bustamante also designed and managed the Film Department at Caracol Televisión for four years (2008-2012), supporting more than 20 Colombian features from the financing to the promotion stages. She has also held positions in cultural management and international cooperation projects, including: producer of the International Festival of Electroacoustic Music (2001); Colón electrónico (2001-2003); music producer for the albums “En el sitio” (2002) and “Tiempo de coro” (2004); communications coordinator for “Vigias de Paz,” a project of the OAS and the Dutch international cooperation agency (2001-2005); general producer of the “Cultural and Artistic Component for Disarming Pereira”; and civic culture advisor to the City of Pereira in 2006.

Last updated: January 2016