No Los Dejaron Volver (en)

No Los Dejaron Volver

Selection: 

Director: 

Ángela Carabalí

Country: 

  • Colombia

Format: 

Moyen-métrage

Type: 

Documentary

Script writer(s): 

Ángela Carabalí – Juliana Carabalí

Synopsis: 

1992. In Caloto, Cauca, my father, the farmer Esaú Carabalí Brand, was vanished. His whereabouts remain a mystery kept by sugarcane crops and paddies, fertile ground for the culture of nourishments and horrors. But life keeps going, and we had to keep going without him. 25 years later, a dream awakes the urge to unearth the story and to explore absence as concept and reality within our immediate surroundings. This film written by two sisters, focuses on creating correlations and contrasts between dream and reality, rather than focusing on perpetrators and victims, revealing the significant aftermath of absence on the relatives of those who have been vanished. Will they ever come back? is a story that pursues experimental fields. Epiphanies, revelations and dreams serve as vehicles to journey through an alien land that knows no satisfaction when it comes to devouring people.

Visual concept: 

It is a documentary with experimental components, mostly graphic and acoustic metaphors, and by some interventions performed on the selected archives (animated segments on specific moments). The structure has been divided into four main subject groups: homecoming, search, absence-expectation, and mourning. First-person voice-over account, and a group character consisting of several victims relatives. The landscape (river, soil, crops) is another character, and oneirism, magic and religion are aesthetically and thematically relevant.