The Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival (Ficci), the oldest in Latin America, opened its 62nd edition this Wednesday with the screening of a film that recalled the harshest years of terror with which paramilitaries hit Colombia.
“Memento Mori”, the debut feature of Colombian filmmaker Fernando López, led those attending the Adolfo Mejía Theater in Cartagena to relive that pain and the resilience with which the inhabitants of many towns endured this violence.
The film portrays the years of the paramilitary massacres that caused the forced displacement of thousands of people throughout the country.
The film, which, although it is a fiction made up of many elements that occurred in reality and that were repeated in the different regions devastated by paramilitary violence, tells the story of a town that collected corpses that floated down from the Magdalena River and they adopted to give them a decent burial.
The animero of the town, who was a person who claimed to accompany the souls that remained in a kind of limbo on earth and did not transcend to their final resting place, chose some of the dead and helped them in that transit.
The film transported those attending the opening of this film festival to those territories where its inhabitants still carry the pain of violence today.
A FICCI WITH THE SCENT OF A WOMAN
Women are gaining more and more spaces in this meeting and proof of this is that the sample with which Spain participates in this 2023 is loaded with films that talk about women and are made by them.
On this occasion, the Spanish Embassy in Colombia, the Spanish Cooperation Training Center and the Program for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE) brought to Cartagena de Indias films such as “Cinco Little Wolves”, from the Goya winner to best new director Alauda Ruiz De Azúa.
There will also be a screening of “My friend’s friend”, by the director Zaida Carmona; “Ramona”, the first film by filmmaker Andrea Bagney or “Cerdita”, by Carlota Pereda.
During these six days of cinema and stars, the Ficci will present a selection of 148 films in its official sections, will pay tribute to the Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, will honor the Colombian actresses Juana Acosta and Alejandra Borrero and will have as guests the American film director Tim Miller and artist Lido Pimienta.
