Samuel Moreno Alvarez

Two close friends and fellow filmmakers maintain an intimate, transoceanic filmic correspondence between Galicia and Colombia over the course of three years. In these filmed letters both authors are open and familiar, meditative and confessional, making us participants in a sincere friendship.

“Cut!”… and yet the camera keeps rolling. Filming is an immersive experience in the Colombian coffee fields, in which Robert Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer reveal themselves as in a palimpsest. The director of The Sheriff (VdR 2019) presents a strikingly beautiful medium-length film, a consideration on the act of filming itself.

Fernando is Kamëntsa, indigenous and autochthonous to the Sibundoy Valley, in the south of Colombia. He is over 40, but still lives in his grandmother’s house and often parties. He is popular and earns a living as a broadcaster on the local radio. His family does not approve of his behaviour since he does not seek to change his lifestyle, in which he finds pleasure. Fernando was recently elected Sheriff.

This film portrays the childhood of Pukem Swa (10), whose name means winter sun. He is a mysterious boy who lives on a remote mountain in the Colombian Andes, where he learns an extinct indigenous language that no one else speaks. As we walk with him through the mountains, we encounter the Chibcha language, which begins to come alive: revealing the sounds hidden within the stones painted by his ancestors.