Ver Cine Colombiano: Noticias | Proimágenes Colombia

The Sitges Film Festival was born in 1968 under the name of Sitges International Week of Fantastic and Horror Films. It has been held continuously since, offering its thousands of visitors screenings, exhibitions, and conferences that have turned it into one of the most recognized festivals in Europe, hosting the annual awards of the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation. The event takes place in the coastal town of Sitges, forty kilometers south of Barcelona, Spain. It is governed by the Generalitat de Catalunya Foundation, together with other public and private institutions. Throughout its history, it has received renowned actors, directors, and producers, including Quentin Tarantino, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, and Viggo Mortensen.

This year, the Colombian feature film Luz has been and selected for the main section—where it will enjoy its European premiere—and it is in competition. It will be the third Colombian film that participates in the festival’s Fantastic Film Competition, after El Páramo and Siete cabezas both directed by Jaime Osorio Márquez. In addition, the Canadian distributor of genre films Raven Banner/Northern Banner, responsible for distributing Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent in Canada, has acquired the rights to distribute Luz in North America.

In Luz, an isolated mountain village led by a preacher known as The Lord receives an alleged new Messiah. With his arrival, evils begin to take place—and not only in the village, but also in the house of the preacher, where his three daughters, Laila, Uma, and Zion, will begin to question the true meaning of God, the Devil, as well as the true nature of love, pleasure, femininity, and freedom. God now lives there, but so does the Devil, and they must learn to get along with each other in those lands. Or are they really the same person?

"Luz is a nostalgic and intimate portrait of a landscape that addresses and deepens themes of faith, hope, chastity, purity, femininity, and the deep understanding that exists between man and nature. It is a lyrical and poetic work that makes it its task to question the viewer, guiding him or her through an emotional and visual tour de force, which can lead to questioning personal moralities and faiths. The film serves as an approach to mysticism: to rituals, to the spread of religions, to folk sects and to spirituality," says its director, the screenwriter and producer Juan Diego Escobar.

Escobar is a Colombian director and screenwriter with a particular focus on genre cinema. He holds a degree in audiovisual communication from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, where he graduated with honors after obtaining laurels for his thesis, an experimental short film titled Live life dearest, which was selected at various festivals. In 2015, Escobar moved to San Francisco, California, where he completed an MFA in film and television direction at the Academy of Arts University of San Francisco, thanks to the Proimágenes Colombia—Colfuturo agreement. There, he directed the fantasy and adventure short Los colores de la esperanza y el olvido, which was selected for the Guadalajara Film Festival short film marketplace, as well as other festivals such as Los Angeles Cinefest, Los Angeles Film Festival, SHORTS.TV (Latin America), NXTUP FEST in San Francisco, and Themodcon in London.
 
Escobar’s fellow producer on Luz was Andres Gómez. Yuri Vargas, Conrado Osorio, Andrea Esquivel, Sharon Guzmán, and Johan Camacho made up the cast. Luis Vanegas, Deo Gratias, Omar Parker, and Charlie Burt served as executive producers. Nicolas Caballero Arenas was director of photography, Hugo Blandón carried out production design and art direction, and Brian Heater provided music.
 
While the director was studying in San Francisco, he conducted a Indiegogo campaign to finance the feature film, which became the second most-successful crowdfunding campaign for a Colombian film after Bad Lucky Goat by Samir Oliveros. It took three years to secure all the additional funding to be able to shoot Luz independently. The film was recently part of the Screenings section of the Bogotá Audiovisual Market‑BAM.