Grasshopper Film will release Los Conductos, the “oracular and kaleidoscopic” debut feature film from Colombian visual artist and director Camilo Restrepo. Winner of the Best First Feature Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, the Best Latin American Film Award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival, and an official selection at numerous film festivals including New Directors/New Films, San Sebastian, Viennale, Jeonju, CPH:DOX, IndieLisboa, FICUNAM, and more, Los Conductos opens on Friday, April 29 at Film at Lincoln Center in New York City, before continuing on to other North American cities.
A fever-dream of hallucinatory textures and sounds, Restrepo’s scintillating first feature—set in Medellín, Colombia and freely inspired by a true story—draws on the director’s extensive background in the visual arts and his previous short-film successes to to tell the story of Pinky (newcomer Luis Felipe Lozano in a haunting performance), an ex cult member who is on the run. Having just freed himself from the grip of a religious sect by assassinating its leader, Pinky finds a place to squat and a job in a counterfeit t-shirt factory. Misled by his own faith, he begins to question everything. But as he tries to put the pieces of his broken life back together, violent memories return to haunt him, and they demand revenge.
A cryptic portrait of a man attempting to make sense of his own past, Los Conductos offers a challenging but politically astute interrogation of violence and mysticism in Latin America that reflects similarly psychedelic quests taken on by Latin American filmmakers through the 1970s, but with bold and novel innovations to the form.
Closing with a poem by the Colombian modernist Gonzalo Arango, the film is equally a parable as a heady attempt to make sense of the complexities inherent to Colombia’s troubled national history. Beautifully rendered in kaleidoscopic chiaroscuros and completely shot on 16mm film, Los Conductos confirms Restrepo as an intuitive and visionary talent on the international stage.
Watch a trailer for Los Conductos
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