Ver Cine Colombiano: Noticias | Proimágenes Colombia

The Toulouse Latin American Film Festival (formerly Rencontres Cinémas d’Amérique Latine de Toulouse) is dedicated to Latin American cinema and held annually in Toulouse (France) since 1989. The event seeks to establish links between Latin American creators, the public, professionals, and the media. Its 34th edition featured guests such as Colombians Joan Gómez Endara, Germán Arango, Iván Guarnizo, Gisela Restrepo Triviño, Ángela Matiz, María Matiz, Juan José Lozano and Inti Jimena Zamora Martínez, who presented their films in different sections of the event. 

Joan Gómez’s debut feature film, El árbol rojo (The red tree), had its French premiere at this event and was in the Fiction Feature Competition. Produced by Big-Sur Películas, in co-production with Viso Producciones (Colombia), RTVC Play (Colombia), and Mass Media Communications (Panama), the film tells the story of Eliécer, who, after the death of his father, finds himself in charge of Esperanza, his unknown half-sister. His mission is to take Esperanza to the capital city to find her mother, who abandoned her as a baby. The film received the CCAS Fiction Prize awarded by the Electricity and Gas Workers; and the Rail d’Oc Prize awarded by the Toulouse Railwaymen’s Film Union, known as the Critics’ Prize in the Festival.

Iván Guarnizo’s Del otro lado (From the other side), produced by Gusano Films and Salon Indien Films, was in the Documentary Feature Competition. After the peace accords, the war between the FARC and the Colombian Government seemed to be over, but the situation was far from stable. Iván Guarnizo and his brother begin to investigate their mother’s kidnapping. At the event, the film received the La Dépêche Du Midi Documentary Audience Award and the Signis Documentary Award.
In the same section was Germán Arango's Cantos que inundan el río (Singings flooding the river). The film portrays Oneida, who as a child, learned the Afro-Colombian tradition of singing to the dead to accompany them on their journey to purgatory. The war led her to become a composer, taking up the melodies of funeral songs to narrate what her people were suffering. This documentary film received the Rencontres de Toulouse sous the L’égide of the Médiathèques de la Région Documentary Prize, an award born of the attention paid by the Bibliothèque de Toulouse et Occitanie livre et lecture to Latin American documentary production in recent years.
 
In the Short Film Competition, Los enemigos (The enemies) by Ana Katalina Carmona was presented. In the film, Yomaidy lives in a village in the Colombian jungle and spends her days between school, the river, and the house. But she has the silent certainty that she does not belong there. If everything is hostile to her in this cage of trees, on what horizon can she fix her eyes? The short film received the Révélation Award for Best Fiction Short Film.
Along with the latter, Aurora y la casa de las luces (Aurora and the house of lights), by María and Ángela Matiz, which portrays Aurora, a young girl who plays frantically at slot machines and ends up winning a teddy bear.

In Documentary Discoveries was Los gatos (The cats) by Andrés Wiesner. The Reprises section presented Memoria (Memory), by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and El olvido que seremos (Forgotten we’ll be), by Fernando Trueba. In Panorama des associations were Bajo el silencio y la tierra (Under silence and earth) by Gisela Restrepo, Cali: todos gritan (Cali: everyone shouts) by 04 Productora, an independent project made during the social uprising that shook Colombia from April to July 2021, and Memorias guerrilleras (Guerrilla memories) by the audiovisual collective David Marín, in which 50 guerrillas acted and directed the film of their own stories, their life as fighters and the difficulties of moving on to a life without weapons.

Lea salvaje (Wild Lea) by María Teresa Salcedo and Dulce (Sweet) by Guille Isa and Angello Faccini were part of the Programme Petites Histoires D’amérique Latine - Vol 4. And in Cinélatino en région, Juan José Lozano presented his film La jungla roja (The red jungle).

Finally, in Cine Construcción 41, the initiative to accompany Latin American films in post-production, the following films received an award: Special Jury Mention to Leonardo Barbuy La Torre’s co-production Diógenes (Colombia, France, Peru); the Mactari Special Prize of the sound mixing auditorium to La jauría(The pack, Colombia/France) by Andrés Ramírez Pulido; and the Le-loKal development prize to Querido trópico (Colombia, Panama) by Ana Endara.