Dark Beast

A dramatized account of Colombia's 1985 Palace of Justice siege combines fictional elements with historical footage, exploring themes of belief, turmoil, and lasting national trauma.

To escape the crisis in Venezuela, and his alcoholism, Roque retreats into the Amazon jungle to renovate a cabin he built during happier times. He struggles with feverish visions caused by alcohol abstinence, and his desire for redemption becomes distorted when he joins old friends to work in an illegal gold mine controlled by Colombian guerrillas. The violence required to work in the mine plunges Roque into a cycle of self-destruction that devours his interior. He will need the fortitude to get out and start anew.

LEI and WONG clandestinely arrive to Ecuador, on their way to the port city of Guayaquil. From here LEI plans to continue her journey to New York, but CHANG, a bipolar mobster will decide her fate. WONG unwillingly gets entangled in the web of corruption that operates the encroachment of Chinese immigrants. His only objective is to bring his twelve-year-old son from China.

X Quinientos tells the story of Alex, David and Aurora, three people who live in opposite ends of the American continent, but who are connected due to their incapacity to accept mourning and to their need of changing in order to move on with their lives.

After a devastating earthquake, Nga, an old elephant and probably the last of its species, and Sanra, his mahout, are about to embark on a journey to find the mythical elephant’s graveyard. The group of poachers following them will die one after the other under mysterious circumstances and spells.

Pinky is on the run. At night the empty streets smell of the apocalypse and the city seems to be on fire. Narcotics swirl through the veins and the air. Having freed himself from the clutches of a sect led by a certain “padre” and determined to take his fate into his own hands, he is now holed up in an illegal T-shirt factory, surrounded by paints, slogans and heat presses. Pinky is looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, but ghosts are breathing down his neck. He is running for his life, and Colombia is on fire. But Colombia is alive.

A special commando unit made up of 9 soldiers is sent to a military base in a moorland region after contact was lost and it was believed to have been the target of an attack. Upon arrival, they find a single mysterious survivor: a woman in chains.

A drama set in the black communities of Colombia's Pacific coast, where a man looking to flee the country by boat encounters a local fisherman.

In Venezuelan Guayana, large gold reserves lie beneath “moriche” palms, attracting multitudes of miners to the territory. A fictional explorer narrates a journey from far-flung mines in the jungle to the banks of the Orinoco River, trying to understand the uncertain fortune of humanity immersed in the anxious quest for treasure. His reflections combine illustrations and photochemical paintings to draw a map of the extraction and commercialization of gold, object and symbol through which he questions where value resides.

Jose lives with his family in La Soledad, a dilapidated villa located in what used to be one of Caracas' most affluent neighborhoods. After learning that the owners are planning to sell the property, Jose seeks any solution that might keep his young daughter from growing up in the city's crime-sodden slums.

Based on the remains of never-completed Argentine features from the archives of the film museum in Buenos Aires. The film is, as it were, a parallel film history: an essay like a cinematographic Frankenstein, that blows new life into images that once seemed unsuccessful and pointless.

Ras is a graffiti artist from the city of Cali who works in construction, he works during the day and paints walls at night. One day he is caught stealing cans of paint from the construction site where he works, for which he is fired. With no money, he will look for Calvin, another popular urban artist. Both will circulate through the streets without a fixed destination, spreading their art to every corner.

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.

Rocío returns to her village to meet her mother Alba, whom she thought was dead. This story between mother and daughter unfolds amid a spectral town that lives in an atmosphere of tension in the face of a war that threatens to return and separate them again.

Manuk, a five-year-old child, tells the story of the Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra, a company of musicians, dancers, actors and circus artists coming from different places around the world. They created the “Makondo”, a show they present around Colombia in places where armed conflict has opened wounds.

Alicia en el país tells the real story that took place in 2004, of a thirteen year old Bolivian girl who undertook a singular journey: to walk to the town of San Pedro de Atacama, in the Chilean altiplano, to look for work. It was 180 kilometers between desert, snow and salt flats, with the purpose of helping her family and responding to an ancient Quechua tradition, where the entrance to adulthood implies making a long journey.