Five documentaries that will represent Colombian cinema at the HotDocs Festival in Canada

Colombian cinema is once again present in the world, this time, from the most important documentary festival in North America: HotDocs; there, four national exhibitions will be screened with the premise of expanding the seventh art made by national characters and filmmakers to most of the planet.

The Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival of Canada is one of the most traditional in that country and, in that order of ideas, the one with the greatest relevance to the documentary genre in this region. Since 1993, this festival has become one of great importance for critics and film directors not only from the United States and Canada.

In addition, the organization of this meeting is responsible for managing various production funds and carrying out production programs throughout a year, including Doc Soup and Hot Docs Showcase. Now, for this year there will be four Colombian documentaries to be screened as part of this festival.

This year, the 29th edition of the festival will be held from 28 April to 8 May; there, audiovisual formats whose main elements are migration, nature and the environment will be exhibited, those that will be seen by fans, film buffs and critics of this film format.

The first to be presented will be 'Alis', a film directed by Nicolás van Hemelryck and Clare Weiskopf, who first ask several young women to close their eyes so that they can imagine the story of a new classmate, who is fictional and of the same name as the film. This is how the story that focuses on the gloomy streets of Bogotá begins.

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As the story unfolds, the directors show that what started as fiction ends up at the level of reality, making the protagonists see, through Alis and a different perspective, their own realities. It also becomes an exercise in projecting experiences focused on the past of those involved in the footage.

'Alis' arrives at the Canadian Film Festival after receiving the Crystal Bear and the Teddy Award for Best Film at the 72nd edition of the Berlin Film Festival. In addition, it will be part of the 'Made in Chile' section, since the minority co-production was from that country.

'My Two Voices' had a triumphant entry into the film industry when it was world-premiered at the Berlinale Forum. Now, it comes to HotDocs in the Canadian Spectrum category. This film by Colombian Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodríguez tells the story of Marinela, a woman who was born in the North American country but was returned to Colombia at the age of four. Now, being an adult woman, she returns to the place where she was born in the midst of various sensations.

Along with her, two other Latina immigrants share their experiences of what has been the diaspora of which they have been victims. Memory, language and traditions confront them with each other in this story that keeps their identities hidden.

'No Affair', by Guillermo Moncayo, will debut in the 'Shorts' section. It is, basically, one film embedded in another: it combines the fiction recreated by a zookeeper who struggles to improve coexistence with his daughter, as well as the director's real correspondence with his brother after a deafening silence and the iconography shown in an alligator suffering from depression. Also, 'When the Shot', a co-production made by Colombia and the Netherlands, will be world-premiered.

It is a first-person narrative that puts the viewer in the shoes of the filmmaker who suffers an attack, feeling the anxiety generated by violence. A fusion of blood with expectation and familiar landscapes, albeit dysfunctional.

Finally, the Hot Docs Forum (which talks about project funding) will be shown 'Milisuthando', by the writer Milisuthando Bongela and which meant a collaboration between Colombia, the United States and South Africa. It represents the figure of love in a racial context.

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