Four Colombian co-productions were featured in the programming of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
International Film Festival Rotterdam offers a selection of independent, innovative, and experimental films from the world over, along with visual arts films and live performances. Over the twelve days of the festival, hundreds of filmmakers and other artists present their work to more than 3000 representatives of the press and global film industry.
This year, the Bright Future section dedicated to emerging talents featured the world premiere of Colombian-Dutch co-production Kiss the sky – Eye trick the I by Donna Verheijden.
Kiss the sky – Eye trick the I by Donna Verheijden is an attractive essay about trompe-l'œil, deceit, privilege, temptation, and apparent liberties. Beyond the façade of public life lie the private life of the individual and hidden agendas. We develop new capacities to push our luck within a constant stream of images and information. What are the means of living in a post-privacy era?
The Colombian-French short film El laberinto by Laura Huertas Millán (which took the Best Director nod in Locarno and Best Script in at the Bogotá Short Film Festival—BOGOSHORTS) and Pirotécnia by Federico Artehortúa Arteaga (also having its world premiere at Rotterdam) participated in the section Deep Focus, which explores the world of cinema through complications, retrospectives, and deep-delving programming.
El laberinto is a journey into the labyrinthine memories of a Uitoto man that worked for the eighties drug lords in the Colombian Amazon. Following him along the path from the forest to the ruins of a narco palace built in imitation of Carrington’s mansion in Dynasty, the film portrays an astonishing near-death experience.
Pirotécnia began as an investigation into Colombian visual history, but took a turn the moment that Federico’s mother stopped speaking. Turning his attention to his own past, he mines television footage of the civil war and home movies in which as a boy he plays guerrilla fighter. The film is regarded a powerful medium for shaping memories.
Finally, the Voices section driven by powerful films with grand themes showed Birds of Passage by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra.
