Colombia, Presente! III - A Night of Short Films

Colombia, Presente! III

Dualities, chaos and poetics

Cinemaattic invites you to explore, once again, one of Latin America's most prolific short film producers through a programme that embraces the nation's contradictions and poetics in tension through classical short films and new voices.

Divided into two sections, the first presents short films that immerse us in poetic, often isolated worlds where conflicts seem internal and the external appears absent. In contrast, the second explores dualities—shorts where two worlds coexist in constant tension, allowing us to observe both at once, reflecting the societal, environmental, and emotional conflicts that define Colombia’s urban and non-urban landscapes, including jungle and countryside, and its cinematography.

Through these films, we are invited to reflect on love, peace, and dialogue amidst chaos and perfection, and on the country’s struggle to balance its natural richness with external pressures of extraction and exploitation.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity and the other events of Colombia Presente! III in Glasgow.

Programme

84
Daniel Cortés
Colombia | 2020 | 13’

In 1984, Álvaro Ulcué Chocué, a Colombian Catholic priest and indigenous rights activist, was shot dead. The incident looms against the backdrop of a collage of two archive images from the same year. Documentary footage and fictional gangsters capture the state of a country dominated by drug cartels and social unrest.

Desasir
Daissy Pérez Ospina & Elizabeth Pérez Ospina
Colombia | 2022 | 7’

A woman sheds a fear symbolized by water that engulfs her; she flees through a dark corridor, passing through portals of light that guide and protect her path to freedom.

Searching for Clover (Buscando tréboles)
Víctor Gaviria
Colombia | 1980 | 10’

Moving and poetic images of the daily lives of blind children at a school in Medellín.

El Laberinto (The Labyrinth)
Laura Huertas Millán
France, Colombia | 2018 | 21’

A voyage into the labyrinthic memories of a Uitoto man, who worked for the drug lords in the Colombian Amazon back in the 80s. Following his path between the forest and the ruin of a Narco´s mansion imitating the Carrington mansion in the soap opera Dynasty, the film unfolds the hallucinatory account of a near-death experience.

The Trap (La Trampa)
Ferney Iyokina Gittoma
Colombia | 2024 | 13’

Many years ago, grandfather Noé built a fish trap. Hidden in the jungle, it is a lost legacy for the hunters of the Indigenous Okaina community. With the arrival of a mysterious jaguar, Noé’s ancestors take this signal and strive to rebuild what was lost.

Tarro Vacio
Vitilio Iyokina Gittoma
Colombia | 2024 | 22’

Tarro vacio follows the story of a young indigenous man who sees joining the military as an opportunity to improve his life and help his family. During medical examinations, a substance scientifically labeled as cocaine was detected in his system, which prevented him from enlisting. Vitilio Iyokina Gittoma’s short film exposes the gap between ancestral knowledge and the scientific world, revealing an institutionalism that ignores the spiritual importance of the practices surrounding the coca leaf.