BIRDS OF PASSAGE

“Birds of Passage” (Colombia, 2018) by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra is set in the semi-desert of La Guajira in northern Colombia in 1968. Zaida, daughter of a respected Wayuu family, comes of marriageable age after her initiation ritual. Rapayet, a young man of low standing, wants to marry her – but he cannot raise the dowry her mother Úrsula demands: goats, cattle and necklaces. Then American Peace Corps volunteers turn up looking for marijuana. Rapayet becomes a middleman, the business grows, and with the new wealth come weapons and the breakdown of the rules that had held the community together for generations.

Gallego and Guerra tell the family’s rise and fall across the 1970s in five chants, half ethnographic chronicle, half gangster epic, shot on 35mm in Wayuu territory. The film opened the 50th Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes in 2018. It was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2018.

Shown at the 2018 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2018 · Film Archive