FDC feature film winner La sirga now shooting
Pantalla Colombia No.: 007agosto 16 - septiembre 15 / 2011
Beginning in August of this year, and during the better part of a month, shooting took place on La sirga, the directorial debut of Calis William Vega (El vuelco del cangrejo) in the area around La Cocha Lake in the Nariño province. The film was awarded a screenwriting grant from Colombias Film Development Fund (FDC) and is being co-produced by Colombian producers Contravía Films (Crab Trap) and Burning Blue (Diana Bustamante) and Mexicos Tiburón Filmes.
Beginning in August of this year, and during the better part of a month, shooting took place on La sirga, the directorial debut of Cali’s William Vega (El vuelco del cangrejo) in the area around La Cocha Lake in the Nariño province. The film was awarded a screenwriting grant from Colombia’s Film Development Fund (FDC) and is being co-produced by Colombian producers Contravía Films (Crab Trap) and Burning Blue (Diana Bustamante) and Mexico’s Tiburón Filmes.
In addition to the FDC grant, La sirga won Ibermedia development and co-production grants in 2009 and 2011, respectively. The project participated in the Cartagena Film Festival Co-production Encounters (2009), at the Valdivia International Film Festival’s Australab in (2009); at the Manheim Meetings (2009) during the Mannheim Film Festival; at the Guadalajara Film Festival (2010), and in the Toulouse Film Festival’s Films in Progress program (2010).
Director/Screenwriter William Vega was awarded an artist residency through the Carolina Foundation / Casa América (Spain) in 2009. He graduated in 2003 from the School of Journalism and Social Communications at the Universidad del Valle (Colombia) and specialized in screenwriting for film and television at the Arts and Entertainment School (TAI) in Madrid, Spain in 2008. His short films include Amnesia (2001), included in the official selection at the Havana Film Festival (2002); Sunrise (2003), awarded Best Fiction Film at Colombia’s Equinoxio Film Festival (2003), and Simiente (2011), a study done to prepare for La sirga, his directorial debut. Vega was also assistant director on Oscar Ruíz Navia’s El vuelco del cangrejo (2010), winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum in 2010.
The film’s crew includes producers Oscar Ruíz Navia (El vuelco del cangrejo) and Diana Bustamante (Los viajes del viento, La playa); co-producers Edgar San Juan, Issa Guerra, Sebastián Sánchez (Norteado, La Nana); director of photography and camerawoman Sofía Oggioni (El vuelco del cangrejo); art director Marcela Gómez Montoya (El vuelco del cangrejo, Migración); sound engineer César Salazar (Satanás, La virgen de los sicarios); production heads Paola Pérez (La Playa) and Gerylee Polanco (El vuelco del cangrejo); assistant director Santiago Lozano (El vuelco del cangrejo); costume designer Ana María Acosta (La sociedad del semáforo); editor Miguel Schverdfinger (La mujer sin cabeza); and sound designer Miguel Hernández (Lake Tahoe).
In La sirga, Alicia has lost everything. With nothing but the clothes on her back she flees the armed violence in the countryside after losing her loved ones. She makes her escape through the cold, misty high plains around the enormous La Cocha Lake high in the Colombian Andes and surrounded by fog searches for her Uncle Oscar, the only remaining member of her family and a solitary man missing for several years, whose last known address was La sirga, a dilapidated wooden hostel on the banks of the great lake. Alicia needs to rebuild her life and Oscar takes her in, offering to exchange room and board for work needed to rebuild La sirga. Just as Alicia and the hostel have both been restored, the armed conflict once again rears its ugly head. The return of Freddy, the son Oscar has spent years waiting for, and his inexplicable intentions bring what Alicia fears the most to La sirga. She’ll have to decide whether to stay or flee again the horrible violence.
