Ver Cine Colombiano: Noticias | Proimágenes Colombia

Since she was shocked by a strong “bang” at dawn, Jessica (Tilda Swinton) can't sleep. While in Bogota, while visiting her sister, she befriends Agnes (Jeanne Balibar), an archaeologist who studies human remains discovered inside a tunnel under construction. Jessica travels to meet Agnes at the excavation site. In a small village nearby, she meets a fisherman named Hernán (Elkin Díaz) and they share memories by the river. When the day comes to an end, Jessica wakes up with a sense of clarity.
 
This is the story of Memoria, a co-production between Colombia, Thailand, Mexico, France, Germany, and Qatar, which becomes the first film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes outside his country. It was shot entirely in Colombia, between Bogota and Pijao, with nearby locations such as the La Linea Tunnel, among others.
 
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a filmmaker and visual artist, winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, for his film Uncle Boonme who can Recall his Past Lives, among many other awards. He is one of the most influential directors in contemporary cinematography; he articulates a personal narrative in his work that seems to take place through different states of consciousness.
 
In the words of Swinton, who met Weerasethakul at Cannes, in 2004, when the jury she was part of awarded him for Tropical Malady: “We fell in love with this country and its resonances and immediately created a family with the extraordinary Colombian filmmaking community.  Together with Apichatpong we had been planning this film for years and we were looking for it a home: a strange process, looking for the landscape and energy of a country that could have the atmosphere of a film that was already conceived. We knew very quickly that Colombia was that place.” 
 
The contact between Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Diana Bustamante began in 2015, when she was the artistic director of the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival —FICCI-, and via email invited the director to participate in the festival. The Thai director traveled around Colombia for three months, in which he screened his films and collected images and ideas about memory, armed conflict, and pain, and although Memoria does not focus on armed conflict, it appears subtly. “It’s not a film about big events, nor about antagonists and protagonists.  His films are never about that, although it always has a metaphysical dimension. It's not a film about the conflict in Colombia, but that is there. The characters are in this country, and this country has that memory, which manifests itself in a very subtle way throughout the film,” the producer Diana Bustamante declared to Semana Magazine .
 
The film is a production of Kick the Machine Films and Burning Production, in partnership with Illuminations Films (Past Lives), co-produced with Anna Sanders Films, Match Factory Productions, Piano with Xstream Pictures and iQIYI Pictures, Titan Creative Entertainment and Rediance, ZDF/Arte, Louverture Films, Doha Film Institute, Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, Bord Cadre Films, Sovereign Films, Field of Vision and 185 Films.
 
The artistic team also included Mexican Daniel Giménez Cacho, Agnes Brekke, Jerónimo Barón and Constanza Gutierrez. Its production included an outstanding team of Colombian talent led, among others, by Paola Pérez Nieto (online producer), Angélica Perea (production design), Lulu Salgado (set decorator), Catherine Rodríguez (costume design), as well as Santiago Porras and Mateo Suárez (direction assistance). The visual effects design was made in Colombia with Juan Manuel Betancourt and Juan Díaz, and César López produce the music. Accompanied by an international crew featuring fellow Thai Sayombhu Mukdeeprom in charge of the director of photography, Lee Chatametikool montage, Adam Zoller Duplan make-up, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr and Richard Hocks in sound design, Javier Umpiérrez in sound supervision, Raúl Locatelli (Mexico) and Camilo Martínez (Colombia) in live sound and Sompot Chidgasornpongse as assistant director and script supervisor, to name a few.
 
Memoria was a beneficiary of the Colombia Film Fund (FFC), an incentive of the National Government, administered by Proimágenes Colombia, which consists of the cash return of resources equivalent to 40% of production expenses in audiovisual services and 20% of production expenses in audiovisual logistics services.