Chasseurs de crimes

In 2009, in a small theater in Geneva, Switzerland, the film directors Marcel Ophuls and Jean-Luc Godard met for an unusual, surprisngly intimate and sometimes contentious dialogue with each other in front of a live audience. Luckily for us, it was filmed.

Saturday, March 1st 2008. Commander Raul Reyes, number 2 of the FARC, died in the jungle under the ton of bombs dropped by the CIA and the Colombian army. Along with his corpse, the soldiers retrieved his computers: ten years of emails written by the man in charge of negotiating the release of a hundred of hostages (including Ingrid Betancourt), who also acted as the head of foreign affairs of the oldest communist guerrilla in the world. An amazing testimony where we meet politicians, journalists, arms dealers, diplomats, hitmen, his close relations and even his kids. “RED JUNGLE” delves into the mindset of this man who ruled the FARC with an iron fist, as the revolutionary utopia was slowly sinking into nightmare.

Paramilitary groups in Colombia have spread death and destruction for years. In 2005, a specially established Commission for Peace and Justice started gathering evidence about the horrific violence. During emotional hearings, their gruesome acts are exposed in detail. However, many of the leading figures get away unscathed.

This documentary offers a complex portrait of Hollman Morris, the Colombian war journalist whose multiple award-winning news show Contravía is one of the few local current-affairs programs that refuses to pander to President Alvaro Uribe's staunchly authoritative government. While most television viewers in Columbia opt for variety shows and soap operas, citizens in search of suppressed truths tune in to Contravía to hear the latest news about forced disappearances, secret mass graves, and various other atrocities taking place all across the countryside. But when you live and work in the country that Reporters Without Borders claims is one of the most dangerous places in Latin America for a journalist to work, denouncing human rights abuses can be a dangerous game. Yet despite the danger to both himself and his family, Morris remains convinced that the situation in Columbia will never been improved if outspoken media figures like himself simply disappear into exile.

This documentary is a journey to the heart of the first inhabitants of what we now call Colombia, by the hand of a handful of Colombian scientists, who, with passion and tenacity, offer us the first clues to understand the Amazonian Prehistory. It is a journey to the beginnings of the most ambitious scientific adventure of recent years in the country, which will allow us to connect, as Colombians, with an Amazonian identity, denied, violated and unknown until now.