SHORT FILMS

2024 Program

PURGATORY

Beatríz (Gloria Gómez) receives an unexpected letter from “Search for the Truth”, a commission in charge of finding the truth in the country’s armed conflict and providing reparations to the victims of the paramilitary attack that left her husband and son missing. Now Beatriz, after repressing this terrible event, must travel back to Campoalegre, Huila, unaware that she will have to come face to face with one of her perpetrators to find out what really happened to her family and to clarify the events that changed the course of her life.

RESOLUTION

Haunted by the videos from his deceased daughter’s camcorder, and after receiving a box containing information about the person responsible for her death, a man is resolved to take revenge.

UNLESS WE DANCE

Bonays, an Afro dance teacher, undertakes an initiative to rescue young people from the crime that stalks Quibdó, a city with the highest homicide rates in Colombia. This is how Black Boys Chocó emerged, a dance company where hundreds of young people face brutal destinies through a passion. UNLESS WE DANCE portrays union and dance as the greatest expression of shielding the Afro people, it is a tribute to their act of resilience and to all the lives that have been lost along the way.

THE PRESENCE

Argemiro is a 50-year-old single man whose loneliness is disturbed by a strange presence in his apartment. To pass the time at midnight, he enjoys going down to the building’s lobby to tell frightening stories to Marly, a fearful warden with whom he built a friendship during the pandemic lockdown.

 

PABLITO

ablito is a young man who works as a gravedigger. He buries the bodies left by the Colombian armed conflict. He wants to invite Maria, his only distraction from his gruesome job, to the village fair. Soon, the conflict that sweeps the region will make Pablito face his own understanding of the world around him.

JUNIOR TU PAPÁ

In this ode to fútbol and Colombia’s Caribbean region, Daniel—a Colombian-British filmmaker—recalls his first memory of the sport he loves: the 1993 championship final between Junior de Barranquilla and América de Cali that he watched on a VHS tape with his father in London.Through conversations between Daniel, his father and two uncles, JUNIOR TU PAPÁ pieces together fragments of waning memory to collectively remember a time in Colombian history when fútbol was a national obsession. A distraction from the relentless violence the country faced while Colombia’s national team was considered one of the best teams in the world.

YOLANDA GOES ALONE

Yolanda travels from her small town to the largest city in the country. She goes alone and light, the only thing that accompanies her is a wooden box which she had made to store the newly found remains of her daughter who was murdered and disappeared.

REWRITTEN

Santiago is a struggling screenwriter who finds his muse, a woman he names “Raquel,” in the building across the street. His inspiration is pushed to the limit when he must choose between writing about Raquel or saving her from dying.

FRAMED IN TIME

While completing his retirement speech, a disgruntled Army Colonel and his wife must confront her recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis and memories of past betrayals, reopening old wounds in order to heal them.

WE ARE ALMOST THERE

In 1931, Charlie, an African-American young man, his younger sister, and his girlfriend, embark on a journey to Atlantic City. A routine traffic stop by a police Officer escalates into a tense situation, forcing Charlie to choose between non-violence to protect his sister or confronting injustice, risking his own life to defend his girlfriend.

LA PERRA

Carla Melo Gampert (1993, Bogotá) is a visual artist who graduated from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá and from the Film program at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires. Her graduate thesis, the animated short film POR AHORA UN CUENTO, had its international premiere at the Annecy Festival before travelling to Dok Leipzig, FicValdivia, Curta Kinoforum and São Paulo, among others. In addition to her work as a director, she curates audiovisual exhibitions such as Animación Porosa (Cinemateca de Bogotá, 2022). In LA PERRA, her first professional animated short, she continues her exploration about body and femininity.

BOGOTÁ STORY

Pilar, a young mother in Bogotá, receives an internship opportunity in the States but her husband, Alejandro, is not willing to leave the country. Set in 1992, as Colombia faces an era of drug violence, car bombs, and daily power outages, Pilar and Alejandro must contend with their opposing desires and the danger and darkness around them. 

DYSPHONIAS

After a premonition of an unusual bird, a father loses his voice. His daughter undertakes a search to rediscover him, through an intimate narrative that explores the past, the new facets and the silences of a man who is no longer the same.

ESMERALDA

When a young woman, Esmeralda, returns to her native land to confront her mother about a traumatic childhood memory, the two women forge a newfound bond through a shared experience.

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CONTACT INFORMATION

+1 (347) 617-2821

info@colfilmny.com

DIRECTOR

Juan Carvajal

PRODUCER

Ivonne Torres