Colombian cities Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla, and Cartagena will be screening critically acclaimed national and international documentaries as part of the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival.
Between August 26 and September 21, the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival brings a selection of over 30 critically acclaimed national and international documentaries to Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla, and Cartagena.
In an effort to bring important documentaries to communities where access to cinema is minimal or non-existent, “Ambulante” offers these documentaries to the public completely free of charge in town squares, parks, and open-air theaters, to universities, commercial cinemas, cultural centers, according to the festival’s official website.
The festival’s program includes Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, documenting the judicial cases against the Russian feminist/anti-Putinist punk rock protest group Pussy Riot; Return to Home, following a Syrian youth as he stands up against his country’s regime; and Who is Dayani Cristal? wherein Gael Garcia Bernal searches for the identity of a dead man found on the US/Mexico border with a tattoo that simply read “Dayani Cristal.”
While this is the first time Ambulante has come to Colombia, the festival was founded nearly a decade ago in Mexico. In 2005, actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna (And Your Mother Too), and film producer Pablo Cruz (Sin Nombre), founded the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival in order to support and promote documentary film culture as a tool of cultural and social transformation.
Although Ambulante has already come and gone in Colombia’s capital, the festival will be travelling through Medellin, Baranquilla, and Cartagena over the next three weeks.