Como el cielo después de llover (2020) - full transcript
Ok, this is a sound of a plant that
falls asleep when a hand touches it.
It’s 5 o’ clock P.M. and there are some
crickets in the background.
And I’m recording with a 416.
Ready!
Action!
Stereo ambience at Espinoza Street,
there’s not much movement.
It’s 4 o’ clock in the afternoon and...
...there’s some music coming out
from a house.
- Hey...
Maybe we should
widen the shot a bit.
- Let me finish this ambience and
we'll see that later.
- Hello, good morning.
- Hi...
- What are you doing?
- We are making a movie.
- Only the two of you?
- Yes.
- You're foreigners, aren't you?
- Yes, I'm from Colombia.
- You know that to film the front
of a house you need a permit.
- Ok, we're recording sound anyway...
But we're just leaving.
- Allright...
Just 5 minutes more.
- Ambience at Corrientes Street,
next to the CCK...
...when Alem Avenue goes down.
There’s a lot of traffic and...
...some people pass by right
in front of the mic.
It's 7 o'clock in the afternoon.
My mother didn’t want
me to go to live so far away.
She used to tell me I could
also study cinema in Bogotá,
that it was nearer and
she could visit me more often.
But that was never an option for me.
Since I live in Buenos Aires,
it’s our habit to Skype every Sunday.
Last week, my father told me
he had set a date...
for the shooting of "The animal's wife".
And that now he did feel nervous.
The last time he made
a movie was in 2002,
a film about drug dealers.
I was 9 years old then,
and I got the idea of being an actress
stuck in my head.
So, my father thought I could
play the protagonist’s niece.
But after having a 35mm camera
so close to my face, I quitted.
My thing was to be on
the other side of the camera.
So, after studying cinema
in Buenos Aires,
I begun working as a sound mixer.
- But then, another option, Merce,
is that you come over for...
...fifteen days to the shooting,
to experience the filming.
- But that’s not living the film either.
- Ok, we have to think about it Mechis,
we still have time, right?
- No, I mean, I would do it.
Well, I wouldn’t mind but...
I mean... When are you going to
shoot another film?
- Another film?
- Yes. Never...
Well yes, always, but...
I don't know, when?
- God willing, right?
- God will want, but in many years,
you know?
- Well... you think about it
and we can talk later.
What time is it? Oh no,
it's 5 o'clock! I have to leave now!
From: Mercedes Gaviria
Date: April 5th, 2014. 11:46 a.m.
Subject: Personal assistant
To: Dad
I don't really understand
your proposition.
What do you mean by
personal assistant?
What would my role be
in the shooting?
Sometimes I get tired of all the
paraphernalia of the shootings.
That's why I want to make
my films with a small crew,
three or four people, maximum.
A director of photography that is
also the camera operator;
a sound mixer, a boom operator,
and me.
I'll do what I have to do in your film.
Love you,
Mechi.
- Voice mail system.
Your call will be charged from now on.
Leave a message after the tone,
at the end of your message,
press one for more options.
- Hi dad, I’ve called you
many times to tell you...
that I already bought
the ticket to Medellín.
I just arrived from working
on a film and...
I've been thinking about how incredible
it'll be to be there with you and...
to see you working with the actors.
I just finished reading the script
for the second time.
I think it's fascinating...
although a little bit exaggerated,
how do you imagine those
explicit rape scenes...?
- You have reached the maximun time
allowed for recording your message.
If you wish to continue, please
choose the option five from the menu.
My mother decided to leave intact
all the things in my room.
She clings to the idea that
I’ll go back to Medellín.
That is what I enjoy the most
every time I get home.
To find everything the same way...
and to stop there.
Dried up nail polish,
old-fashioned necklaces,
my ballet costume,
pictures of my parents at Cannes
Film Festival red carpet,
a poetry book by José
Manuel Arango,
a box with my father’s home
and family recordings.
- Now Mechis is recording.
Mechis is recording.
My childhood memories
surrendered to these recordings...
- You want to film?
As if everything had been reduced to
the past he decided to film.
But...
the girl is hurt, too!
- Show me how daddy writes.
How does he write?
It didn’t need to be an important
day for the family.
Not a birthday,
nor a first communion,
nor some uncle’s wedding,
nor the first day at nursery school.
It was any morning,
on any day of the week.
All the time.
- Naughty! Naughty!
I'll film you.
And I liked it.
- Yes...
On his free time at home,
he used to film.
Or to write.
Or to talk by phone
with his filmmaker friends...
in an euphoric, conspiratorial
tone of voice.
In a fight, I asked him why
he never worked,
and why my mother had to go
to the office every morning.
That day I saw his face transforming
for the first time.
- Come, come here!
Invite her, invite her over...
Invite her, come and fight here,
you're acting.
Action!
Come on, come here...
Beg her to come.
Come over here.
- Decide if you're going to act or not,
I'm not staying here all night!
- Don't stay! It's not my problem.
- Yes it is! It's because of you
we're not rolling.
- It's because ouf you we're not rolling.
- It's my problem.
- Come over here and talk to her, please.
Stop this shit, sister. Come on!
Stop it! This is our last chance
to do this, come on!
This is be very easy for you,
com'on sweetheart!
But no, God damn!
You think we all have...
Sister, seriously, I don't understand...
I don't understand you.
- Don't record this!
I don't want you to tape this!
- I don't understand you, are you
trying to make us look bad?
Me and everyone else here,
sweetheart please.
Look at all we've done together.
- I don't want people t
take advantage of me.
- You are obsessed with that,
that's not true.
Com'on, we are all here.
Oh, brother! I can't do this.
In 1995, my father was
making The rose seller.
A film about street children
trying to survive in Medellín.
It was an epic shooting
with non-actors...
that took more than five
months of night shifts.
That same year, my brother
Matías was born.
- Ready?
- Ready.
- Let's roll!
That's good! The sadness and all.
Action!
Sometimes the little girls came
to my house to rehearse.
- Cut! She didn't get frightened.
Let's do it again.
Let's do it again.
It was very confusing for me that
they called him “Dad Víctor”.
- You act so good when you hate me.
I think I felt jealous.
- And do you love mom?
And do you love the boobies?
- The what?!
- The what?
- Do you... love the boob?
And do you love your daddy?
You love everyone!
- The hippie ant doesn’t work anymore,
and as a backpacker around she goes.
With her long hair and pretty pendant,
chewing gum she goes to town.
- Mechis, sing to him.
- Hush-a-bye my baby,
go to sleep.
With my song i invite you to rest.
Sleep, sleep my baby...
- Watch the movie on the T.V.
A family... with a little boy...
Called Matías.
- That's funny.
The videos of my childhood
became a still memory...
of the family we used to be.
The images of a past we shared
and that would define our lives.
- Don't take my picture.
- Why?
- Because I don't like it.
- Why?
- Because I don't like it!
- And why don't you like it?
- No...
- What?
- I don't like it!
- Why?
- Because I don't!
- Does it make you angry?
- Mechis!
- What?
- Let me know when you're done.
- Sing!
- Merce!
- What?
- When my parents met, you didn't
like my father, did you?
- No, because... Oh, let me
tell you something.
I’m from another generation, right?
And Víctor, so delicate and all...
I thought Víctor was...
- ...gay.
- Really?
- But I don’t know why, maybe because
he is so sensitive. So...
- Oh, let me see...
- Answer it.
- Ok.
Oh, good.
Ok, darling, God bless you.
Thank you for everything,
everything, everything.
Bye.
Greetings from Marcela.
So, Víctor used to call...
And so, “Can I talk to Marcela, please?”.
Anyway, Víctor didn't like me either,
and rightly so...
because I already knew
what he was like, right?
Because I was told he was very...
- Very bohemian, lets say.
- Who told you that?
- Who knows? I don’t know.
He was very bohemian so I always...
And Marcela is silent as the grave!
She is a tomb!
Oh, Holy Mary... But you see
how well they lived,
with Marcela’s intelligence
and Víctor’s faculties.
But the worst thing was
when she told me...
Oh! Do you know how she told me?
How I learnt about the marriage?
- She called you and said "I got married".
- No!
- What did she say?
- Please Mercedes, you keep eating.
Look, Mercedes.
I was looking after Miguel that day,
in our house on Laureles Street.
And suddenly...
No, in the morning
I went out in the car...
to the bank, to get a loan
to change the car.
When I came back, Marcela was leaving.
I remember she was wearing
a blue jean skirt and a red sweater...
over a white shirt.
And I asked, "Darling, where are
you going? Do you need a ride?"
"No thank you, Mommy!
I'm going nearby".
So there I was with Miguel,
when Marcela arrived.
"Hi Marce, how did it go?"
"Good, Mommy".
"Mom... I got married".
Did you hear that?
"Mom, I got married".
"What?!"
So Víctor called right away,
from Bogotá!
Víctor got married and left to Bogotá!
Do you know where they
went after the church?
To Santa Elena, to have
a coffee across the street!
And Víctor left to Bogotá
and the girl stayed here!
After visiting my grandmother,
I thought about those images
that didn’t get recorded.
While my father was in his
frenzy to make films,
my mother dealt with her first
job as an anthropologist.
In those years, she got pregnant
with me,
and decided to write me a diary.
My father’s never-ending shootings
imposed as a habit.
and my mother wrote to me
as if I were her only confidant.
Her days were full of doubts,
but everyday work soothed her.
Babysitters,
new feeding dynamics,
milk,
pediatricians.
The kind of juggling women learn
on account of their children.
- Listen, let me tell you something.
People usually think...
Well, I'll give you an example,
to give you an idea of what is like
to make a film within that "mess"...
You can't go to a neighbourhood where
everyone's life is a complete mess,
where you don't know whether you are
in bed, sitting or sleeping,
you don't know if you're awake or asleep,
if it's day or night, morning or afternoon.
You don't know because poverty has
messed with your reason and fucked it up.
Your whole life is madness and anguish.
Remember that woman, with those kids...
You can't go there as a scientist,
you have to go there as a drunk.
To show them you are part
of the same inconsistency.
That same madness.
You can only go there drugged.
Why? To say "We cannot stand this"
- That's good.
- Hey, brother!
- Oh, brother...
- Was it you I saw the other day?
- What?
- Was it you? I tried to say hello!
- Hey! That's cool!
- How is it going, my brother?
- Well, still breathing.
One has to live, right?
- Another day goes by...
- That's good.
- One has to have breakfast,
lunch, dinner...
That's one human problem, the second
one is we fall in love.
- Thank you!
The script of the movie
my father is about to film...
is based on Margarita Gómez’s testimony.
She was kidnapped at the age of 18
by a neighbor known as “the Animal”.
When I met Margarita, she
described him in three words:
My husband was a drug addict,
a rapist,
a murderer.
- Margarita! Won't you come
to the shooting?
- What's that, girl?
- Aren't you coming to the shooting?
- What?
- For the shooting of the film!
- Up there? No.
- No?
- I'm not interested in any of that.
- Why?
- To cry and see the sadness? No.
- No... We are just playing!
- Playing?
- We're playing at making movies.
- Playing...
- You cannot fool around with that!
- Bye...
- Bye!
The Animal died many years ago,
but Margarita was still afraid.
As if the Animal’s strength could
resurrect in an actor.
- I forgot my inhaler.
- Where is it?
- In my bag.
I'll ask Diego... Diego!
Diego!
I'm so sorry, I left my inhaler.
- Where is it?
- In my bag.
- Here?
- Yes.
Natalia Polo, the actress who
plays the Animal’s wife,
is a nursing assistant.
She told me she’ll have to quit her job
to have more time for the film.
She never thought she’d get the part.
She told me she was very happy
and that she had read the script.
She feared the rape and
the beating scenes.
- Darling, really, you're so
absent minded...
She is tired, she says.
Dear God, Natalia...
Shame on you, being so thin and tired...
- Action!
- Look at this blanket.
It's a really stubborn stain,
could you get it out?
When I met Tito, I remembered
my father’s enthusiasm...
when he told me they had found
the actor for the Animal.
I asked him how he could be so sure.
He said he couldn’t explain...
but that there was something
in his eyes that terrified him.
Tito is a bus driver in Rionegro.
He told me he wouldn't read the script.
But he said he knows many men
like the Animal...
and that it’ll be easy to invoke them.
- The man is asking you how your day went,
there's complicity between you two,
you know everything about each other.
And she's listening to this humiliation.
It’s a scene of extreme humiliation.
So you’re going to tell him that
it was a “durito”.
What’s a “durito”?
Brother, that the girl was a virgin.
And you both have a good laugh about it.
A "durito", man.
- Right?
- Sure.
- Please, if you have nothing to do
with the shooting, step aside!
Over there, please!
People need to go through,
motorcycles go in and out, please.
Sir, please cooperate.
You, step over here.
- Please, cooperate.
- No one else!
- Ready?
- Ready!
- Silence everybody...
- Silence please, we're shooting!
- Silence please!
- Sound!
- Ready!
- Camera!
21-1, take 1!
- Action!
- All in position!
Whenever you are ready, sir!
- Ok.
- I'll move, I'll move
- Clear the shot!
- We're going to shoot now!
- Ok, let's do this!
When I see I’m not needed,
I hide to get some fresh air.
- Paula!
Paula...
Tell her to stare at the smoke...
When I go back, my father and
Ricardo Duque, the art director,
are looking for a large stone.
They want to make a
fiberglass copy of it...
and to use it as the set of
the prostitutes’ rape scene.
- If you saw a rock as cool as that...
Imagine the shade, and these dudes
smoking pot under the shade.
- I've never seen anything so pleasant.
- And there they can find out that I...
- Come here...
Take off your clothes...
Or I'll tear them off.
- Why do I have to take off my clothes?
I've never done that in front of a man.
- Fucker!
You think you are here
with a faggot?
You fucking bitch!
What is it?
Stay still, you bitch!
Come on...
- Tear off her shirt.
- Stay still, bitch!
Bitch...
- Ok, cut.
- Cut!
- Done...
- Ok!
- The other things are the shots
from the other side... right?
Guys, we are going to...
With a 28mm lens or what?
- 28mm? Wider, I think.
- 16mm?
So, he'll enter again, but let's
make him stand up more...
- 22-8...
- Ok.
- Ready?
- The shot starts with her like that.
- Sound?
- Rolling!
- Camera?
Every time Natalia has to cry,
my father takes her
away from the set...
and talk in a low voice.
- Set!
- Action!
Margarita’s suffering rekindles in
in any woman’s body.
Today is our sixth week of shooting...
and it hasn’t stop raining.
The only one who didn’t get sick
is my father.
He stands as an ox in spite of
the inclement weather.
Before we go to sleep,
we go through the camera angles
of the following day.
Scene 50. Dog's ranch. Night
THE ANIMAIL, PISSRAT, PAPUTAS,
THE COW, DONKY, and CHAMBON...
arrive to the ranch with two prostitutes.
Amparo closes the door with a board
to hide. She sees through a slit,
scandalized, how they chase the
prostitutes, strip them, rape them...
and go wild in an orgy over their bodies.
This scene makes me think about
off-screen possibilities.
In Victor’s films, fiction and
documentary converge all the time.
The girls that play the prostitutes
work as prostitutes at Berrío Park.
The Animal and his friends recall
witnessing similar scenes.
I feel uncomfortable with
the length of the takes.
I close my eyes.
But I keep listening.
- No!
- Cut!
I’m so tired I can’t sleep.
I ask my mother to stay with me.
and we sit and smoke in silence.
When I’m alone with her I feel
like asking her about her diary.
I want her to be my confidant now...
and to give me a word
that can take my fear away.
But she is quicker than I am.
She wants to know if the catering
is good.
I say it is, so that she won’t worry.
When she is about to leave,
I ask her if she wants to smoke
another cigarette.
I really like the smell of her
cheap cigarettes.
- What's wrong, honestly?
- Nothing. I was stung by a scorpion.
- You were stung by what?
And why are you so rude?
Merce...
- Tell me about the story we'll make.
Merce! You'll break it.
- Merce, what's this about the rain?
- Next time they give me homework,
I'm not bringing it here.
Because you make me do it.
No!
- Let's do the homework.
What are we going to draw?
With what story?
- Oh, no! No, no!
- Just invent a story.
- You write it.
- Sure, but let's invent the story first...
- No, no!
Daddy, I'm sleepy!
- Merce! Mechis!
Darling, look at the moon!
Look, how beautiful.
June 14th, 1992, Medellín.
Only twenty days left for your birth.
Your father is in Cali.
I've been thinking a lot
you're going to have
a very special dad.
Even though we have our problems,
as you'll soon find out,
I want you to know that
he is very sensitive,
he is always surrounded by
lots of people,
and that when he's not with us,
it's because other people
also need him.
I hope you are optimistic.
Maybe I was not.
You give me strength to
keep on fighting...
for our love, though it's been hard.
I've loved your father too much...
and I'm always afraid of losing him.
You can't live like this.
- Mechilunguis...
- Dad, stay there for one second!
And now look that way.
- We finally finished with that orgy...
It was so...
I knew it'd be easy, but we
were all so nervous.
- Yes.
- Right?
- Merce, we had to...
reach that tone of pain, moaning,
screaming, terror, of...
Of abuse, you know,
blatant abuse of women.
We had to get there.
And I think because these dudes
are so real... Right?
- Yeah.
- Even though everything was
made so quickly,
without much preparation, and...
sometimes with a messy
mise-en-scene.
But these dudes are so real...
And the girls, too.
- So nice. The truth is...
- They did a good job.
- Exposing their bodies, so pretty...
- You know, they asked me
for Clonazepam.
How do you get high with Clonazeman?
I don't get it, isn't it for sleeping?
- Well, people use it for...
- Like cocaine?
- Like the "roches".
- Really?
- Yes, yes.
- It's the same effect as the "roches"...
- But you have to mix it...
- With alcohol, yes.
- Ah, ok.
- And when you mix it with spirits,
it makes you...
It's like... erasing the cassette.
You know? Like an auto-pilot...
Like sleepwalking, you don't
remember anything the next day.
"Fuck! What did I do yesterday...?"
- Come on, Mechis...
Mechis!
- Daddy, who is Pérez the Mouse?
- A little mouse that gives presents
to children when their teeth fall.
- No, Daddy, that's not true.
- Who is Pérez the Mouse?
- Why?
- I want to know...
- Why?
- Tell me, is it mom and dad?
- Why do you think it's mom and dad?
- Oh Daddy, I grew a hair!
- Look at me.
- Who is it?
- Ask me again.
Hum?
- Who... is... Pérez the Mouse?!
Who?
- A little mouse that gives
presents to children.
- No...
- What?
- Tell me...
- Why?
- Because I want to know.
- What did you say?
- Because I want to know...
When I finished reading
the diary I realized...
that 30-year-old woman
didn’t exist anymore.
Time had changed her forever...
and her silence was definitive.
- Merce?
- Little hands, where are they?
Here they are!
They greet you, they greet you...
And so they leave, they leave.
I imagined what she could say to me:
That living with a man is not easy,
that after all life goes on,
by itself.
That the only important
things are the children,
good health,
and to be obsessed with plants.
But she didn’t say anything.
- Is this the house?
It's too small for the four of us.
It looks like a food truck.
- Well, it lacks a balcony and a roof
and other things...
- It'll all come later...
- I was just saying!
- You have to help Matías get out.
- Come on, Mati!
- No, but what about this door?
Close this door!
- Mechi, are you getting in?
- No.
- Merce, get in.
- No, just a moment.
- Ok.
- Help Mati, then.
- Not yet, Mati!
- I'll tell you when, Mati...
Now, Mati!
Go on.
Well done.
- Get in, quick!
- Matis, you can't be so... so grumpy.
- Mati, sweetheart!
- Mom didn't tell you,
they've offered us that house.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know? Did she tell you?
- Yes, Mati. You can't be so grumpy,
and especially with me.
- I'm serious, not with me!
- Yes, I can...
- No! You can't.
- Yes, I can.
- No, no.
- Yes.
- You can't be like that with me.
- Yes, I can.
- Can you?!
- Yes.
- But, why?
- Because I can.
- Did I park wrong over there?
- You were in the middle of the road.
- Yeah, but did anyone honk at us?
- No, but...
- Nobody honked at us, no one.
- They didn't, but so what?
- Take me to the airport,
I'm not riding along with Matías.
I'll take a taxi and leave.
Matías won't mess with me,
no fucking way.
- Víctor, please...
- Well I'm sorry, but this is so immature.
- Immature? What?
- Víctor, stop it...
- No, no. Matías has to respect me, darling.
- Come on...
- Matis, apologize.
- To whom?
- To me, for talking back.
- I can't say anything to you,
one stupid thing.
- So you're making all this fuss
for one stupid thing?
- Exactly, but...
- Mechi, stop recording, please!
- What?
- Stop recording!
- You drop me at the airport, please.
- Víctor! Wasn't there a
factory around here?
- Apologize to me!
- No, dad, I don't want to.
- Why not?
- Apologize to him!
- No, over that stupid thing?
- Apologize to me... what?
- Action!
- Cut!
- One moment please...
- I think we got it.
Let's do then...
- You stop seeing your friends
and you'll end up alone!
Alone, alone!
You'll be a lonely old man there.
- Mechi! Come, come over here.
Mechi! Mechi...
- Help me find a young one.
- Mechi! Come, Mechi!
Look, Mechi's gone crazy.
Mechi, come, come...
- What a good party, it was great.
- Ah, what happened?
What does he want, Merce?
Water?
Do you want some water, sweetie?
Why is he so...?
Did you get drunk last night, too?
Are you dehydrated like me?
The elaborated practical effects
of blood in this film...
take us a lot of time.
- Let's do the beginning,
But we make up for it
with the high speed...
in which Victor films
the violent scenes.
He seems to find it easier to
film bandits than to film Natalia.
- You fucking bitch!
Why didn't you say that to the Animal
when he was alive?!
You were shaking with fear!
But I'm still here, bitch!
Come down, motherfucker!
Come here, fucker!
- You come here!
- No! You come!
- I'll go down if you want!
- Come down here, crazy bitch!
- I may be crazy but not stupid!
- Cut, cut!
- The Animal has been killed!
- One more time.
- The Animal has been killed!
The last day of the shooting, my father
came to me and told me he was afraid.
He thought he had made a film that
was fascinated by the villain,
the myth,
the easiest,
the most dangerous.
- Oh, no! I don't know
how to comb my hair!
- Like this, Daddy?
- You look very preety.
- Let me look at you.
- Like this?
- Yes.
- The two of us will be on camera here.
- This is "preety" for you?
- We're finished! We did it!
- Bravo! Bravo!
Bravo!
- Thank you, thank you...
- Congratulations...
- It was hard for everyone!
- Marce!
- What?
- Should I clean the whole thing
or can I leave some rocks?
- You should clean the whole thing.
I'll help you.
No, the ones you took out...
- Put it in the right position.
- Yes...
- Ready?
- Yes...
Done. This is better.
- This is better.
- The whole bag, honey?
- Yes, all of it.
Give it to me.
- There we go. New life, new life.
- Just one second!
- No, Merce.
- Mati!
- No!
No.
- Oh no, Mechi...
Mechi...
What are you doing?
- What is that?
- Nothing.
- Then why are you recording?
- To save it, as a memory.
- No, Mechis. We've never
seen anything you recorded.
I've never seen anything
of what you film.
- What?
- Anything of what you two film.
- No?
- Never...
Matias believed our images
were useless.
That they ended up in nothing.
He blamed us for the violence
of filming the “other”.
He said life had to be lived...
before being filmed.
My dad wasn’t worried about this…
because he knew his films were
set outside his own home.
For him, family videos were just
a way of saving memories.
And at first,
I believed that too.
But in the images of those
children growing up...
and in the diary of that
melancholic woman,
I was finding out another
way of making films.
- You see, that's useless for a child,
a kid needs to have the
idea of a father...
that helps him,
you know?
A father with power, that gives
his son some strenght,
some sense to live.
Not necessarily money, but...
a word, you know? A sense of
direction, an advice.
So that's why I had to...
I couldn't let Matías...
I wanted him to know that
his father was there...
and that he had to respect him.
Obviously I didn't handle it well,
but the idea was that he
knew his father was there.
I fought with my dad once...
And he was so weak that I
thought he wasn’t going to react.
I thought I had more power than him.
But he got mad as hell!
Really mad!
That he almost...
I got really scared!
He almost hit me!
- What did you fight about?
- Because I wouldn't do what
he wanted me to,
and so I did just what Matías did
yesterday, I talked back.
I didn't accept his authority.
I talked back, as if saying "so what?"
I was fourteen or fifteen years old then.
And my dad got so, so mad...
- What did he say?
- That I realized I did have a dad.
- And that he was a very strong dad.
- Come here, Mati!
It's good! Get in the pool!
- Only when the rain stops, Dad.
- Mati!
Mati!
- What?!
Can you help me move that plant?
- Which one?
- That one next to the pool!
- Oh no... What for?
- On the top?
- Yes.
- That's not...
- Oh, it is!
- Down there.
- Should I touch it?
- Yes.
- It's nice.
- Yes.
- I always remember these
sleepy plants.
- "Sleepy plants", right?
- Sleepy plants.
- Let's go, honey.
- "He went through December
far from the shop windows,
far from the noise.
Focused on himself like in any
other month of the year,
July or September,
under the breeze's fingers, that
knows no beginnings or endings.
Until on the night of the 31st,
under the old and starry
hat of the sky,
he recieved the golden gift
of an idea...
he'd been fruitlessly looking for
in the past.
It was as sudden as a blink,
as when eyes open and close before
the blast of gunpowder that says:
Make the most of it,
change your life.
Upon crossing the year’s frontier,
the idea became precious,
as a secret.
As a distant light that projects
shadows of the things we don't see."
- That's so pretty.
- Yes, honey. And I have another
one about Christmas, too...
I always write about Christmas,
always.
- And what did you write this year?
- I have one, but I haven't
written it down yet.
- What is it about?
- About... the Old Year Doll.
- The Old Year.
- Something as if...
the Old Year Doll were the last...
The year's tunnel, you know?
The year's tunnel has an ending,
and at the end there is
the Old Year Doll.
- It's good there.
- Yes.
- Come, we'll throw him...
- Let's throw him a...
- It's almost midnight!
Oh, no. We have fifteen
minutes left.
- We have to move him.
- But I’ve been your true love...
- Eat the sandwiches in Cali.
- You couldn't deny it...
even if you stripped out your heart.
- Is it a picture, Merce?
- What are you singing?
- A cover version of...
a traditional song from
Antioquia, by Jeronimo.
- Really?
- How does it go, Marce?
- I can't remember...
- The fact that you’re leaving...
- The fact that you’re leaving...
- proud of your treason...
- proud of your treason...
- is only a proof...
- is only a proof...
- of your great love.
- of your great love.
Not long ago, a friend recommended...
“Lost Children Archive” by
Valeria Luiselli to me.
He knows I’ll empathize with
characters obsessed with...
recording every sound around them,
I highlighted a paragraph in green,
and now, in my bed,
I try to remember it.
Family conversations set up
the world we share...
and give our future meaning.
Perhaps, when we look among
this private archive...
and listen to our family conversations
one more time,
we may put together a story.
Or else, we’ll find just noise.
I hear music in the distance.
Someone seems to be crying.
I remember the crying in
the fiction.
A woman’s crying.
Fear.
An outraged body...
as if it were a doll.
The feminine.
To have a brother.
Medellín.
Youthfulness.
To leave hours of the past as
an inheritance to your children.
To smoke some weed on a large stone.
The images in the diary.
Poetry.
Colombian cinema.
To confuse sensitivity with being gay.
Desire.
To be a prostitute.
Men and women’s unequal
times when rising a child.
A little girl’s ideals.
Buenos Aires.
To record everything
on a camera.
To choose the right distance.
To embrace the unspoken.
The other.
To think about the victim’s
point of view.
Hit men.
The contradiction of filming a rape
scene being the privileged gender.
A set full of men.
To take years to make a film.
To be a sound mixer.
Plants that fall asleep
when you touch them.
Cocaine.
Evil’s presence.
To write to your daughter
before she is born.
Uprooting.
Testimony.
Non-actors.
To choose silence.
The beauty of ambiguity.
Humaneness.
The inevitable.
To talk about gender violence in
a country that is suffering war.
A first-time mother.
Future "yes".
A family portrait.
A stoical woman.
To be and not being at the same time.
Uncertainty.
Conviction.
To love contradiction.
To wish to go back.
To choose the South.
To feel determined air.
THE CALM AFTER THE STORM
falls asleep when a hand touches it.
It’s 5 o’ clock P.M. and there are some
crickets in the background.
And I’m recording with a 416.
Ready!
Action!
Stereo ambience at Espinoza Street,
there’s not much movement.
It’s 4 o’ clock in the afternoon and...
...there’s some music coming out
from a house.
- Hey...
Maybe we should
widen the shot a bit.
- Let me finish this ambience and
we'll see that later.
- Hello, good morning.
- Hi...
- What are you doing?
- We are making a movie.
- Only the two of you?
- Yes.
- You're foreigners, aren't you?
- Yes, I'm from Colombia.
- You know that to film the front
of a house you need a permit.
- Ok, we're recording sound anyway...
But we're just leaving.
- Allright...
Just 5 minutes more.
- Ambience at Corrientes Street,
next to the CCK...
...when Alem Avenue goes down.
There’s a lot of traffic and...
...some people pass by right
in front of the mic.
It's 7 o'clock in the afternoon.
My mother didn’t want
me to go to live so far away.
She used to tell me I could
also study cinema in Bogotá,
that it was nearer and
she could visit me more often.
But that was never an option for me.
Since I live in Buenos Aires,
it’s our habit to Skype every Sunday.
Last week, my father told me
he had set a date...
for the shooting of "The animal's wife".
And that now he did feel nervous.
The last time he made
a movie was in 2002,
a film about drug dealers.
I was 9 years old then,
and I got the idea of being an actress
stuck in my head.
So, my father thought I could
play the protagonist’s niece.
But after having a 35mm camera
so close to my face, I quitted.
My thing was to be on
the other side of the camera.
So, after studying cinema
in Buenos Aires,
I begun working as a sound mixer.
- But then, another option, Merce,
is that you come over for...
...fifteen days to the shooting,
to experience the filming.
- But that’s not living the film either.
- Ok, we have to think about it Mechis,
we still have time, right?
- No, I mean, I would do it.
Well, I wouldn’t mind but...
I mean... When are you going to
shoot another film?
- Another film?
- Yes. Never...
Well yes, always, but...
I don't know, when?
- God willing, right?
- God will want, but in many years,
you know?
- Well... you think about it
and we can talk later.
What time is it? Oh no,
it's 5 o'clock! I have to leave now!
From: Mercedes Gaviria
Date: April 5th, 2014. 11:46 a.m.
Subject: Personal assistant
To: Dad
I don't really understand
your proposition.
What do you mean by
personal assistant?
What would my role be
in the shooting?
Sometimes I get tired of all the
paraphernalia of the shootings.
That's why I want to make
my films with a small crew,
three or four people, maximum.
A director of photography that is
also the camera operator;
a sound mixer, a boom operator,
and me.
I'll do what I have to do in your film.
Love you,
Mechi.
- Voice mail system.
Your call will be charged from now on.
Leave a message after the tone,
at the end of your message,
press one for more options.
- Hi dad, I’ve called you
many times to tell you...
that I already bought
the ticket to Medellín.
I just arrived from working
on a film and...
I've been thinking about how incredible
it'll be to be there with you and...
to see you working with the actors.
I just finished reading the script
for the second time.
I think it's fascinating...
although a little bit exaggerated,
how do you imagine those
explicit rape scenes...?
- You have reached the maximun time
allowed for recording your message.
If you wish to continue, please
choose the option five from the menu.
My mother decided to leave intact
all the things in my room.
She clings to the idea that
I’ll go back to Medellín.
That is what I enjoy the most
every time I get home.
To find everything the same way...
and to stop there.
Dried up nail polish,
old-fashioned necklaces,
my ballet costume,
pictures of my parents at Cannes
Film Festival red carpet,
a poetry book by José
Manuel Arango,
a box with my father’s home
and family recordings.
- Now Mechis is recording.
Mechis is recording.
My childhood memories
surrendered to these recordings...
- You want to film?
As if everything had been reduced to
the past he decided to film.
But...
the girl is hurt, too!
- Show me how daddy writes.
How does he write?
It didn’t need to be an important
day for the family.
Not a birthday,
nor a first communion,
nor some uncle’s wedding,
nor the first day at nursery school.
It was any morning,
on any day of the week.
All the time.
- Naughty! Naughty!
I'll film you.
And I liked it.
- Yes...
On his free time at home,
he used to film.
Or to write.
Or to talk by phone
with his filmmaker friends...
in an euphoric, conspiratorial
tone of voice.
In a fight, I asked him why
he never worked,
and why my mother had to go
to the office every morning.
That day I saw his face transforming
for the first time.
- Come, come here!
Invite her, invite her over...
Invite her, come and fight here,
you're acting.
Action!
Come on, come here...
Beg her to come.
Come over here.
- Decide if you're going to act or not,
I'm not staying here all night!
- Don't stay! It's not my problem.
- Yes it is! It's because of you
we're not rolling.
- It's because ouf you we're not rolling.
- It's my problem.
- Come over here and talk to her, please.
Stop this shit, sister. Come on!
Stop it! This is our last chance
to do this, come on!
This is be very easy for you,
com'on sweetheart!
But no, God damn!
You think we all have...
Sister, seriously, I don't understand...
I don't understand you.
- Don't record this!
I don't want you to tape this!
- I don't understand you, are you
trying to make us look bad?
Me and everyone else here,
sweetheart please.
Look at all we've done together.
- I don't want people t
take advantage of me.
- You are obsessed with that,
that's not true.
Com'on, we are all here.
Oh, brother! I can't do this.
In 1995, my father was
making The rose seller.
A film about street children
trying to survive in Medellín.
It was an epic shooting
with non-actors...
that took more than five
months of night shifts.
That same year, my brother
Matías was born.
- Ready?
- Ready.
- Let's roll!
That's good! The sadness and all.
Action!
Sometimes the little girls came
to my house to rehearse.
- Cut! She didn't get frightened.
Let's do it again.
Let's do it again.
It was very confusing for me that
they called him “Dad Víctor”.
- You act so good when you hate me.
I think I felt jealous.
- And do you love mom?
And do you love the boobies?
- The what?!
- The what?
- Do you... love the boob?
And do you love your daddy?
You love everyone!
- The hippie ant doesn’t work anymore,
and as a backpacker around she goes.
With her long hair and pretty pendant,
chewing gum she goes to town.
- Mechis, sing to him.
- Hush-a-bye my baby,
go to sleep.
With my song i invite you to rest.
Sleep, sleep my baby...
- Watch the movie on the T.V.
A family... with a little boy...
Called Matías.
- That's funny.
The videos of my childhood
became a still memory...
of the family we used to be.
The images of a past we shared
and that would define our lives.
- Don't take my picture.
- Why?
- Because I don't like it.
- Why?
- Because I don't like it!
- And why don't you like it?
- No...
- What?
- I don't like it!
- Why?
- Because I don't!
- Does it make you angry?
- Mechis!
- What?
- Let me know when you're done.
- Sing!
- Merce!
- What?
- When my parents met, you didn't
like my father, did you?
- No, because... Oh, let me
tell you something.
I’m from another generation, right?
And Víctor, so delicate and all...
I thought Víctor was...
- ...gay.
- Really?
- But I don’t know why, maybe because
he is so sensitive. So...
- Oh, let me see...
- Answer it.
- Ok.
Oh, good.
Ok, darling, God bless you.
Thank you for everything,
everything, everything.
Bye.
Greetings from Marcela.
So, Víctor used to call...
And so, “Can I talk to Marcela, please?”.
Anyway, Víctor didn't like me either,
and rightly so...
because I already knew
what he was like, right?
Because I was told he was very...
- Very bohemian, lets say.
- Who told you that?
- Who knows? I don’t know.
He was very bohemian so I always...
And Marcela is silent as the grave!
She is a tomb!
Oh, Holy Mary... But you see
how well they lived,
with Marcela’s intelligence
and Víctor’s faculties.
But the worst thing was
when she told me...
Oh! Do you know how she told me?
How I learnt about the marriage?
- She called you and said "I got married".
- No!
- What did she say?
- Please Mercedes, you keep eating.
Look, Mercedes.
I was looking after Miguel that day,
in our house on Laureles Street.
And suddenly...
No, in the morning
I went out in the car...
to the bank, to get a loan
to change the car.
When I came back, Marcela was leaving.
I remember she was wearing
a blue jean skirt and a red sweater...
over a white shirt.
And I asked, "Darling, where are
you going? Do you need a ride?"
"No thank you, Mommy!
I'm going nearby".
So there I was with Miguel,
when Marcela arrived.
"Hi Marce, how did it go?"
"Good, Mommy".
"Mom... I got married".
Did you hear that?
"Mom, I got married".
"What?!"
So Víctor called right away,
from Bogotá!
Víctor got married and left to Bogotá!
Do you know where they
went after the church?
To Santa Elena, to have
a coffee across the street!
And Víctor left to Bogotá
and the girl stayed here!
After visiting my grandmother,
I thought about those images
that didn’t get recorded.
While my father was in his
frenzy to make films,
my mother dealt with her first
job as an anthropologist.
In those years, she got pregnant
with me,
and decided to write me a diary.
My father’s never-ending shootings
imposed as a habit.
and my mother wrote to me
as if I were her only confidant.
Her days were full of doubts,
but everyday work soothed her.
Babysitters,
new feeding dynamics,
milk,
pediatricians.
The kind of juggling women learn
on account of their children.
- Listen, let me tell you something.
People usually think...
Well, I'll give you an example,
to give you an idea of what is like
to make a film within that "mess"...
You can't go to a neighbourhood where
everyone's life is a complete mess,
where you don't know whether you are
in bed, sitting or sleeping,
you don't know if you're awake or asleep,
if it's day or night, morning or afternoon.
You don't know because poverty has
messed with your reason and fucked it up.
Your whole life is madness and anguish.
Remember that woman, with those kids...
You can't go there as a scientist,
you have to go there as a drunk.
To show them you are part
of the same inconsistency.
That same madness.
You can only go there drugged.
Why? To say "We cannot stand this"
- That's good.
- Hey, brother!
- Oh, brother...
- Was it you I saw the other day?
- What?
- Was it you? I tried to say hello!
- Hey! That's cool!
- How is it going, my brother?
- Well, still breathing.
One has to live, right?
- Another day goes by...
- That's good.
- One has to have breakfast,
lunch, dinner...
That's one human problem, the second
one is we fall in love.
- Thank you!
The script of the movie
my father is about to film...
is based on Margarita Gómez’s testimony.
She was kidnapped at the age of 18
by a neighbor known as “the Animal”.
When I met Margarita, she
described him in three words:
My husband was a drug addict,
a rapist,
a murderer.
- Margarita! Won't you come
to the shooting?
- What's that, girl?
- Aren't you coming to the shooting?
- What?
- For the shooting of the film!
- Up there? No.
- No?
- I'm not interested in any of that.
- Why?
- To cry and see the sadness? No.
- No... We are just playing!
- Playing?
- We're playing at making movies.
- Playing...
- You cannot fool around with that!
- Bye...
- Bye!
The Animal died many years ago,
but Margarita was still afraid.
As if the Animal’s strength could
resurrect in an actor.
- I forgot my inhaler.
- Where is it?
- In my bag.
I'll ask Diego... Diego!
Diego!
I'm so sorry, I left my inhaler.
- Where is it?
- In my bag.
- Here?
- Yes.
Natalia Polo, the actress who
plays the Animal’s wife,
is a nursing assistant.
She told me she’ll have to quit her job
to have more time for the film.
She never thought she’d get the part.
She told me she was very happy
and that she had read the script.
She feared the rape and
the beating scenes.
- Darling, really, you're so
absent minded...
She is tired, she says.
Dear God, Natalia...
Shame on you, being so thin and tired...
- Action!
- Look at this blanket.
It's a really stubborn stain,
could you get it out?
When I met Tito, I remembered
my father’s enthusiasm...
when he told me they had found
the actor for the Animal.
I asked him how he could be so sure.
He said he couldn’t explain...
but that there was something
in his eyes that terrified him.
Tito is a bus driver in Rionegro.
He told me he wouldn't read the script.
But he said he knows many men
like the Animal...
and that it’ll be easy to invoke them.
- The man is asking you how your day went,
there's complicity between you two,
you know everything about each other.
And she's listening to this humiliation.
It’s a scene of extreme humiliation.
So you’re going to tell him that
it was a “durito”.
What’s a “durito”?
Brother, that the girl was a virgin.
And you both have a good laugh about it.
A "durito", man.
- Right?
- Sure.
- Please, if you have nothing to do
with the shooting, step aside!
Over there, please!
People need to go through,
motorcycles go in and out, please.
Sir, please cooperate.
You, step over here.
- Please, cooperate.
- No one else!
- Ready?
- Ready!
- Silence everybody...
- Silence please, we're shooting!
- Silence please!
- Sound!
- Ready!
- Camera!
21-1, take 1!
- Action!
- All in position!
Whenever you are ready, sir!
- Ok.
- I'll move, I'll move
- Clear the shot!
- We're going to shoot now!
- Ok, let's do this!
When I see I’m not needed,
I hide to get some fresh air.
- Paula!
Paula...
Tell her to stare at the smoke...
When I go back, my father and
Ricardo Duque, the art director,
are looking for a large stone.
They want to make a
fiberglass copy of it...
and to use it as the set of
the prostitutes’ rape scene.
- If you saw a rock as cool as that...
Imagine the shade, and these dudes
smoking pot under the shade.
- I've never seen anything so pleasant.
- And there they can find out that I...
- Come here...
Take off your clothes...
Or I'll tear them off.
- Why do I have to take off my clothes?
I've never done that in front of a man.
- Fucker!
You think you are here
with a faggot?
You fucking bitch!
What is it?
Stay still, you bitch!
Come on...
- Tear off her shirt.
- Stay still, bitch!
Bitch...
- Ok, cut.
- Cut!
- Done...
- Ok!
- The other things are the shots
from the other side... right?
Guys, we are going to...
With a 28mm lens or what?
- 28mm? Wider, I think.
- 16mm?
So, he'll enter again, but let's
make him stand up more...
- 22-8...
- Ok.
- Ready?
- The shot starts with her like that.
- Sound?
- Rolling!
- Camera?
Every time Natalia has to cry,
my father takes her
away from the set...
and talk in a low voice.
- Set!
- Action!
Margarita’s suffering rekindles in
in any woman’s body.
Today is our sixth week of shooting...
and it hasn’t stop raining.
The only one who didn’t get sick
is my father.
He stands as an ox in spite of
the inclement weather.
Before we go to sleep,
we go through the camera angles
of the following day.
Scene 50. Dog's ranch. Night
THE ANIMAIL, PISSRAT, PAPUTAS,
THE COW, DONKY, and CHAMBON...
arrive to the ranch with two prostitutes.
Amparo closes the door with a board
to hide. She sees through a slit,
scandalized, how they chase the
prostitutes, strip them, rape them...
and go wild in an orgy over their bodies.
This scene makes me think about
off-screen possibilities.
In Victor’s films, fiction and
documentary converge all the time.
The girls that play the prostitutes
work as prostitutes at Berrío Park.
The Animal and his friends recall
witnessing similar scenes.
I feel uncomfortable with
the length of the takes.
I close my eyes.
But I keep listening.
- No!
- Cut!
I’m so tired I can’t sleep.
I ask my mother to stay with me.
and we sit and smoke in silence.
When I’m alone with her I feel
like asking her about her diary.
I want her to be my confidant now...
and to give me a word
that can take my fear away.
But she is quicker than I am.
She wants to know if the catering
is good.
I say it is, so that she won’t worry.
When she is about to leave,
I ask her if she wants to smoke
another cigarette.
I really like the smell of her
cheap cigarettes.
- What's wrong, honestly?
- Nothing. I was stung by a scorpion.
- You were stung by what?
And why are you so rude?
Merce...
- Tell me about the story we'll make.
Merce! You'll break it.
- Merce, what's this about the rain?
- Next time they give me homework,
I'm not bringing it here.
Because you make me do it.
No!
- Let's do the homework.
What are we going to draw?
With what story?
- Oh, no! No, no!
- Just invent a story.
- You write it.
- Sure, but let's invent the story first...
- No, no!
Daddy, I'm sleepy!
- Merce! Mechis!
Darling, look at the moon!
Look, how beautiful.
June 14th, 1992, Medellín.
Only twenty days left for your birth.
Your father is in Cali.
I've been thinking a lot
you're going to have
a very special dad.
Even though we have our problems,
as you'll soon find out,
I want you to know that
he is very sensitive,
he is always surrounded by
lots of people,
and that when he's not with us,
it's because other people
also need him.
I hope you are optimistic.
Maybe I was not.
You give me strength to
keep on fighting...
for our love, though it's been hard.
I've loved your father too much...
and I'm always afraid of losing him.
You can't live like this.
- Mechilunguis...
- Dad, stay there for one second!
And now look that way.
- We finally finished with that orgy...
It was so...
I knew it'd be easy, but we
were all so nervous.
- Yes.
- Right?
- Merce, we had to...
reach that tone of pain, moaning,
screaming, terror, of...
Of abuse, you know,
blatant abuse of women.
We had to get there.
And I think because these dudes
are so real... Right?
- Yeah.
- Even though everything was
made so quickly,
without much preparation, and...
sometimes with a messy
mise-en-scene.
But these dudes are so real...
And the girls, too.
- So nice. The truth is...
- They did a good job.
- Exposing their bodies, so pretty...
- You know, they asked me
for Clonazepam.
How do you get high with Clonazeman?
I don't get it, isn't it for sleeping?
- Well, people use it for...
- Like cocaine?
- Like the "roches".
- Really?
- Yes, yes.
- It's the same effect as the "roches"...
- But you have to mix it...
- With alcohol, yes.
- Ah, ok.
- And when you mix it with spirits,
it makes you...
It's like... erasing the cassette.
You know? Like an auto-pilot...
Like sleepwalking, you don't
remember anything the next day.
"Fuck! What did I do yesterday...?"
- Come on, Mechis...
Mechis!
- Daddy, who is Pérez the Mouse?
- A little mouse that gives presents
to children when their teeth fall.
- No, Daddy, that's not true.
- Who is Pérez the Mouse?
- Why?
- I want to know...
- Why?
- Tell me, is it mom and dad?
- Why do you think it's mom and dad?
- Oh Daddy, I grew a hair!
- Look at me.
- Who is it?
- Ask me again.
Hum?
- Who... is... Pérez the Mouse?!
Who?
- A little mouse that gives
presents to children.
- No...
- What?
- Tell me...
- Why?
- Because I want to know.
- What did you say?
- Because I want to know...
When I finished reading
the diary I realized...
that 30-year-old woman
didn’t exist anymore.
Time had changed her forever...
and her silence was definitive.
- Merce?
- Little hands, where are they?
Here they are!
They greet you, they greet you...
And so they leave, they leave.
I imagined what she could say to me:
That living with a man is not easy,
that after all life goes on,
by itself.
That the only important
things are the children,
good health,
and to be obsessed with plants.
But she didn’t say anything.
- Is this the house?
It's too small for the four of us.
It looks like a food truck.
- Well, it lacks a balcony and a roof
and other things...
- It'll all come later...
- I was just saying!
- You have to help Matías get out.
- Come on, Mati!
- No, but what about this door?
Close this door!
- Mechi, are you getting in?
- No.
- Merce, get in.
- No, just a moment.
- Ok.
- Help Mati, then.
- Not yet, Mati!
- I'll tell you when, Mati...
Now, Mati!
Go on.
Well done.
- Get in, quick!
- Matis, you can't be so... so grumpy.
- Mati, sweetheart!
- Mom didn't tell you,
they've offered us that house.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know? Did she tell you?
- Yes, Mati. You can't be so grumpy,
and especially with me.
- I'm serious, not with me!
- Yes, I can...
- No! You can't.
- Yes, I can.
- No, no.
- Yes.
- You can't be like that with me.
- Yes, I can.
- Can you?!
- Yes.
- But, why?
- Because I can.
- Did I park wrong over there?
- You were in the middle of the road.
- Yeah, but did anyone honk at us?
- No, but...
- Nobody honked at us, no one.
- They didn't, but so what?
- Take me to the airport,
I'm not riding along with Matías.
I'll take a taxi and leave.
Matías won't mess with me,
no fucking way.
- Víctor, please...
- Well I'm sorry, but this is so immature.
- Immature? What?
- Víctor, stop it...
- No, no. Matías has to respect me, darling.
- Come on...
- Matis, apologize.
- To whom?
- To me, for talking back.
- I can't say anything to you,
one stupid thing.
- So you're making all this fuss
for one stupid thing?
- Exactly, but...
- Mechi, stop recording, please!
- What?
- Stop recording!
- You drop me at the airport, please.
- Víctor! Wasn't there a
factory around here?
- Apologize to me!
- No, dad, I don't want to.
- Why not?
- Apologize to him!
- No, over that stupid thing?
- Apologize to me... what?
- Action!
- Cut!
- One moment please...
- I think we got it.
Let's do then...
- You stop seeing your friends
and you'll end up alone!
Alone, alone!
You'll be a lonely old man there.
- Mechi! Come, come over here.
Mechi! Mechi...
- Help me find a young one.
- Mechi! Come, Mechi!
Look, Mechi's gone crazy.
Mechi, come, come...
- What a good party, it was great.
- Ah, what happened?
What does he want, Merce?
Water?
Do you want some water, sweetie?
Why is he so...?
Did you get drunk last night, too?
Are you dehydrated like me?
The elaborated practical effects
of blood in this film...
take us a lot of time.
- Let's do the beginning,
But we make up for it
with the high speed...
in which Victor films
the violent scenes.
He seems to find it easier to
film bandits than to film Natalia.
- You fucking bitch!
Why didn't you say that to the Animal
when he was alive?!
You were shaking with fear!
But I'm still here, bitch!
Come down, motherfucker!
Come here, fucker!
- You come here!
- No! You come!
- I'll go down if you want!
- Come down here, crazy bitch!
- I may be crazy but not stupid!
- Cut, cut!
- The Animal has been killed!
- One more time.
- The Animal has been killed!
The last day of the shooting, my father
came to me and told me he was afraid.
He thought he had made a film that
was fascinated by the villain,
the myth,
the easiest,
the most dangerous.
- Oh, no! I don't know
how to comb my hair!
- Like this, Daddy?
- You look very preety.
- Let me look at you.
- Like this?
- Yes.
- The two of us will be on camera here.
- This is "preety" for you?
- We're finished! We did it!
- Bravo! Bravo!
Bravo!
- Thank you, thank you...
- Congratulations...
- It was hard for everyone!
- Marce!
- What?
- Should I clean the whole thing
or can I leave some rocks?
- You should clean the whole thing.
I'll help you.
No, the ones you took out...
- Put it in the right position.
- Yes...
- Ready?
- Yes...
Done. This is better.
- This is better.
- The whole bag, honey?
- Yes, all of it.
Give it to me.
- There we go. New life, new life.
- Just one second!
- No, Merce.
- Mati!
- No!
No.
- Oh no, Mechi...
Mechi...
What are you doing?
- What is that?
- Nothing.
- Then why are you recording?
- To save it, as a memory.
- No, Mechis. We've never
seen anything you recorded.
I've never seen anything
of what you film.
- What?
- Anything of what you two film.
- No?
- Never...
Matias believed our images
were useless.
That they ended up in nothing.
He blamed us for the violence
of filming the “other”.
He said life had to be lived...
before being filmed.
My dad wasn’t worried about this…
because he knew his films were
set outside his own home.
For him, family videos were just
a way of saving memories.
And at first,
I believed that too.
But in the images of those
children growing up...
and in the diary of that
melancholic woman,
I was finding out another
way of making films.
- You see, that's useless for a child,
a kid needs to have the
idea of a father...
that helps him,
you know?
A father with power, that gives
his son some strenght,
some sense to live.
Not necessarily money, but...
a word, you know? A sense of
direction, an advice.
So that's why I had to...
I couldn't let Matías...
I wanted him to know that
his father was there...
and that he had to respect him.
Obviously I didn't handle it well,
but the idea was that he
knew his father was there.
I fought with my dad once...
And he was so weak that I
thought he wasn’t going to react.
I thought I had more power than him.
But he got mad as hell!
Really mad!
That he almost...
I got really scared!
He almost hit me!
- What did you fight about?
- Because I wouldn't do what
he wanted me to,
and so I did just what Matías did
yesterday, I talked back.
I didn't accept his authority.
I talked back, as if saying "so what?"
I was fourteen or fifteen years old then.
And my dad got so, so mad...
- What did he say?
- That I realized I did have a dad.
- And that he was a very strong dad.
- Come here, Mati!
It's good! Get in the pool!
- Only when the rain stops, Dad.
- Mati!
Mati!
- What?!
Can you help me move that plant?
- Which one?
- That one next to the pool!
- Oh no... What for?
- On the top?
- Yes.
- That's not...
- Oh, it is!
- Down there.
- Should I touch it?
- Yes.
- It's nice.
- Yes.
- I always remember these
sleepy plants.
- "Sleepy plants", right?
- Sleepy plants.
- Let's go, honey.
- "He went through December
far from the shop windows,
far from the noise.
Focused on himself like in any
other month of the year,
July or September,
under the breeze's fingers, that
knows no beginnings or endings.
Until on the night of the 31st,
under the old and starry
hat of the sky,
he recieved the golden gift
of an idea...
he'd been fruitlessly looking for
in the past.
It was as sudden as a blink,
as when eyes open and close before
the blast of gunpowder that says:
Make the most of it,
change your life.
Upon crossing the year’s frontier,
the idea became precious,
as a secret.
As a distant light that projects
shadows of the things we don't see."
- That's so pretty.
- Yes, honey. And I have another
one about Christmas, too...
I always write about Christmas,
always.
- And what did you write this year?
- I have one, but I haven't
written it down yet.
- What is it about?
- About... the Old Year Doll.
- The Old Year.
- Something as if...
the Old Year Doll were the last...
The year's tunnel, you know?
The year's tunnel has an ending,
and at the end there is
the Old Year Doll.
- It's good there.
- Yes.
- Come, we'll throw him...
- Let's throw him a...
- It's almost midnight!
Oh, no. We have fifteen
minutes left.
- We have to move him.
- But I’ve been your true love...
- Eat the sandwiches in Cali.
- You couldn't deny it...
even if you stripped out your heart.
- Is it a picture, Merce?
- What are you singing?
- A cover version of...
a traditional song from
Antioquia, by Jeronimo.
- Really?
- How does it go, Marce?
- I can't remember...
- The fact that you’re leaving...
- The fact that you’re leaving...
- proud of your treason...
- proud of your treason...
- is only a proof...
- is only a proof...
- of your great love.
- of your great love.
Not long ago, a friend recommended...
“Lost Children Archive” by
Valeria Luiselli to me.
He knows I’ll empathize with
characters obsessed with...
recording every sound around them,
I highlighted a paragraph in green,
and now, in my bed,
I try to remember it.
Family conversations set up
the world we share...
and give our future meaning.
Perhaps, when we look among
this private archive...
and listen to our family conversations
one more time,
we may put together a story.
Or else, we’ll find just noise.
I hear music in the distance.
Someone seems to be crying.
I remember the crying in
the fiction.
A woman’s crying.
Fear.
An outraged body...
as if it were a doll.
The feminine.
To have a brother.
Medellín.
Youthfulness.
To leave hours of the past as
an inheritance to your children.
To smoke some weed on a large stone.
The images in the diary.
Poetry.
Colombian cinema.
To confuse sensitivity with being gay.
Desire.
To be a prostitute.
Men and women’s unequal
times when rising a child.
A little girl’s ideals.
Buenos Aires.
To record everything
on a camera.
To choose the right distance.
To embrace the unspoken.
The other.
To think about the victim’s
point of view.
Hit men.
The contradiction of filming a rape
scene being the privileged gender.
A set full of men.
To take years to make a film.
To be a sound mixer.
Plants that fall asleep
when you touch them.
Cocaine.
Evil’s presence.
To write to your daughter
before she is born.
Uprooting.
Testimony.
Non-actors.
To choose silence.
The beauty of ambiguity.
Humaneness.
The inevitable.
To talk about gender violence in
a country that is suffering war.
A first-time mother.
Future "yes".
A family portrait.
A stoical woman.
To be and not being at the same time.
Uncertainty.
Conviction.
To love contradiction.
To wish to go back.
To choose the South.
To feel determined air.
THE CALM AFTER THE STORM