Mariana

Chris Gude returns to Colombia – specifically La Guajira, a peninsula on the frontier with Venezuela – following the footsteps of a sailor and smuggler who travelled through isolated ports and deserted lands, at the edges of the rules of State and capital. With a patient pulse and an immersive narration, the film opens the path between desolate landscapes as well as the one between these two men in their survival, between the characters and the histories that cross their paths, the stillness of these places through which they travel, and their loyalty to a land without frontiers or defined identities. Beyond the illegal nature of their commercial activities, these men and the people around them inhabit and move through spaces in which the subsequent economic practices and tendencies of each nation have not yet been fully implemented, as if they found themselves a number of steps behind the history of their countries, or perhaps as if they were not even there. At least that is what Hugo Chavez reflects on the radio in a scene that recalls Simon Bolivar’s final proclamation as our main characters once again head down the trail. (Mar del Plata International Film Festival)