New York, .- The seventh edition of the Colombian Film Festival opened today in New York, with the screening of the movie “We are hot”, by Jorge Navas, and the presence of actors, directors and producers of that country.
“It’s like being in a family,” said director Rafael Martinez, who presents his first feature film “The Stone” about a boxer who, he said upon his arrival at the movies in the Manhattan district, “gets paid more for losing than for win”.
Among the group that said present to celebrate the start of the festival was the director Ciro Guerra, whose film the “Abrazo de la serpiente” was nominated in 2016 for the Oscar to the best non-English speaking film, and who on this occasion presents his new work “Pájaros de verano” (2018).
“The festival has helped to open a door, a market, more and more Colombian films are being seen in the US in festivals and cinemas, and that is gradually generating a movement in industry and cinematography and a discovery of what we have to tell, “Guerra told Efe.
The filmmaker said that after the peace process in his country, the film has been nourished, since they have been able to access places where they could not before to film films.
He also noted that many people who could not tell their stories, “who was silenced, crushed by the conflict,” are “telling their stories,” “beginning to have visibility.”
“We are listening to the voice of the victims,” ​​Guerra said. “We are realizing that Colombia is a much more diverse, rich, complex, and contradictory country than the image we had and that many had.” The country is rediscovering and beginning. to share that “and the cinema to be nourished, he added.
Guerra arrived accompanied by the protagonist of her new film, Natalia Reyes, who was pleased to return to New York, where she lived, and to share with her countrymen.
Reyes told Efe that working on this movie, about the lucrative business of selling marijuana in the 1970s, was “a great challenge” because he does not speak the language of the indigenous Wayúu people, and had to live four months in the Colombian Guajira.
“I have a huge fondness for this movie, for me it is a source of great pride to be working with Guerra,” said Reyes, who also acts in the new “Terminator” saga, which will hit US theaters. next November 1st.
“I’m very proud to be a part of that production, a giant monster, a lot of learning,” he said.
The protagonist of “Somos calentura”, the dancer Duván Arizala, said that after this first experience he is learning acting, since he wants to continue that career.
Arizala, who showed her talent with the urban music dance in the film, considered “something too big” to come to her neighborhood and have the boys tell her to teach them to dance.
The protagonists of the film are professional dancers from the Colombian Pacific coast and they were shown acting on the fly while filming, Navas told Efe.
The festival presents 12 productions, four of them documentaries, and 15 short films (EFEUSA)
