Presented by VTIFF
Host Sponsor: Main Street Landing
Directed by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra
Colombia | 2018 | Fiction | 125 mins | Cannes, TIFF, Sundance
Film Source: Passion Pictures
From the Oscar-nominated team of Embrace of the Serpent (shown at VTIFF in 2016) and described by critics as the Colombian “Godfather”, but a more apt description would be “Godmother”. Birds of Passage is a slow-burn, gripping crime saga of a multi-generational family whose involvement in the drug trade gradually erodes it traditions. We observe the origins of the Colombian drug trade, as seen through eyes of an indigenous Wayuu family that becomes involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to American youth in the 1970s.
“Its subject is the “Bonanza Marimbera,” the era when people in the Guajira region of northern Colombia – both Wayúu and others – became involved in drug smuggling, which in subsequent decades would be the source of much domestic trouble and international infamy for Colombia, and also, more lately, fodder for big-budget entertainments made mostly by non-Colombians. In interviews, Gallego and Guerra have rightly questioned the “exploitative” nature of shows like “Narcos” that offer glorifying portraits of mass murderers like Pablo Escobar.” ~ Roger Ebert
