William Vega

Sal is an odyssey whose hero has no home to return to. His is a search for transcendence in a landscape that pits him against a harsh, impervious human reality. Heraldo is a man with no identity who comes to the desert asking about his father. In this dystopian land, the last refuge of desperados who have no place in the world, he finds himself asking if maybe he is one of them when a strange couple, Don Salo and his wife, take him in.

Ricardo, Natalia's father, suffers from Parkinson's disease; in that condition he stopped producing Dopamine. Surviving a very strong family crisis, Natalia told them her sexual orientation. She does not understand why after being left-wing militants and fighting for equality and freedom, they could not accept her choice.

Belisario's wife is very sick, a healer comes to meet her and gives him the mission to climb the Andes mountains to bring back an object buried in the snow to try to save her.

In this poetic, richly allegorical debut by Colombian director William Vega, a teenage girl flees to a rundown inn after being driven from her home in the Andean highlands by civil war, as the violence engulfing the country creeps ever closer to her remote refuge. (TIFF)