A Colombian filmmaker’s debut feature film will grace screens at the Cannes International Film Festival next month.
Juan Andres Arango’s “The Beach D.C.” (La Playa D.C.) tracks the journey of a young man, Tomas, who flees war on the Pacific Coast and heads for Bogota, newspaper El Tiempo reports.
Tomas’s African descent and his search for his brother drive the story’s tension.
The film blends depictions of the harshness of the road and the congested metropolis of Colombia’s capital city with images of the coast and memories of the sea.
Arango’s film draws on the troubled history of displacement in Colombia, which according to the last United Nations study had 3.67M internally displaced people, the highest number in the world. The Beach D.C. looks at the change that is forcing upon Bogota.
“Between 1991 and 2006, about 300,000 Colombian displaced by violence from the Pacific and Atlantic regions came to Bogota,” Arango told the paper. “This mass migration is radically transforming the identity of the city, fragmenting the secrecy that for centuries separated black culture from its shores.”
The film will screen alongside international films as part of the Un Certain Regard category.
It’s not the only Colombian film traveling to France this year.
The festival’s short film selections include director Jonathan Ceballos’ 2008 “The Children of the Cloud” (Los Ahijiados de las Nubes), about a sponsorship program that changed the lives of children in a rural Colombian town.
The 65th Cannes International Film Festival runs May 16-27 in Cannes, France.