Our Movie (Nuestra película), the powerful debut feature film by acclaimed producer Diana Bustamante (Memoria), will have its international premiere in the Kaleidoscope Competition at the 13th hybrid edition of DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, taking place November 9–27.
A thrilling examination of television news footage from Colombian archives, Our Movie provides a window into how a generation of Colombians experienced the mediatized violence that shook the country in the late eighties. The film takes the audience on a journey into how children experienced the images flashed again and again on 40-year old newsreels, as a country tried to make sense of the incomprehensible and normalized violence that marked generations.
Our Movie is a response to the violent history that imprinted itself on the director in her formative years in Colombia. An intervention in the deepest sense—the film reclaims the archival material to challenge and explain the apathy of a generation whose identity was shaped by passively witnessing such a violent reality. During this period the South American country was in a downward spiral of senseless violence, and its society subject to images of blood spatters, bullet holes, coffins, people marching, and the assassinations of popular political leaders.
Known for her work with directors including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Julio Hernández Cordón, Ciro Guerra, and Fernando Guzzoni, among many others, Bustamante has become one of Latin America’s leading figures in cinema in her role as producer and as the former director of the Cartagena Film Festival. In her debut feature film she creates a potent essay documentary equally valuable to a Colombian audience reconciling with collective trauma and as a window for a foreign audience to understand how that violence was experienced and profoundly impacted a generation of Colombians.
Watch the trailer for Our Movie (Nuestra película).