'Objetos Rebeldes' and 'Río Sucio', Colombian Costa Rican co-productions that premiere at the Bogotá Cinematheque

The Bogotá Cinematheque premieres today, April 5, two Costa Rican Colombo co-productions that will be screened until April 17. Rebel Objects, a documentary about the mysterious stone spheres, and Río Sucio, the second film by Costa Rican filmmaker Gustavo Falla.

Directed by Carolina Arias Ortiz, this documentary talks about one of Costa Rica's most famous cultural mysteries, enigmatic stone spheres that, in the film, become a metaphor for the relationship with death and the eternal, thus allowing us to face absence through objects.

The documentary was born when the director and screenwriter returned to her country attracted to her childhood home, after a decade of living outside its borders, and eager to connect with her father after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Simultaneously, while facing the news of her father's illness, she meets Ifigenia Quintanilla, an archaeologist who is an expert in stone spheres who has been responsible for investigating the great archaeological enigma of the nation.

“In this film “the memory of objects is longer than human memory that is limited by mortality”. However, it is the gaze that challenges, that brings the object back to life. It is the gaze - and not the object - that visits the past and updates it. Our stories meet. Perhaps at some point our parents, the one from Carolina, the one from Iphigenia, mine, walked on the same street of San José and looked sideways at the spherical stone that adorns some government building. A rock that arrived before them and endures after their departure as a silenced testimony of some common origin yet to be invented,” says anthropologist Quintanilla and filmmaker Arias Ortiz.

Starting today, April 5, at the Bogotá Cinematheque you will be able to see the new film by Costa Rican Gustavo Fallas, Río Sucio, which according to its synopsis is, “a peculiar story that portrays the life of an old hermit named Victor, who desperately seeks a cow that has disappeared from his small ranch. The passing of their days is tormented by them and with the paranoia that their only neighbor wants to harm them and steal their land. His life takes a 180º turn after the arrival of his 12-year-old grandson Ricardo, who definitely resurrects ghosts from his childhood, mistaken for fears of his today. This is how his obsession with Lautaro, his indigenous neighbor, becomes a threat to him and his grandson, eventually causing Victor to face the dreaded ghost of his childhood.”

The film seeks to bring the viewer closer to the reality of many elderly people who live in rural areas, far from their families and who, due to various circumstances, end up completely isolated.

According to its director, Gustavo Fallas, the feature film reflects that difficulty in recognizing the other, putting ourselves in their shoes and understanding that in the end we are all equal, “the confrontations that occur in our world over the idea of the other enemy are evident. Our society is settled by the concept of ourselves and others, whether by religion, nationality or race, among other reasons. In the story of Río Sucio, that Other, the neighbor, is absent, is invisible, but his presence is overwhelming in the protagonist's paranoia”.

'Río Sucio' stars Costa Ricans Elias Jimenez experienced theater actor playing Victor, Fabricio Martí as Ricardo, Edgar Maroto, an indigenous from the Boruca reserve, one of the two indigenous territories of this ethnic group in Costa Rica as Lautaro and the Colombian Gladis Álzate as Heidi.

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