Best Colombian documentary movies

After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.

The incredible true story of four children, who survive a plane crash deep in the dangerous Colombian Amazon. They are lost and alone for 40 days while the military and indigenous guard race against time to find them.

Karol G pulls back the curtain on her rise to stardom while navigating a sold-out stadium tour, creating new music and releasing a new album.

From humble origins to soccer legend, this documentary captures the rise of Colombia’s René Higuita, from iconic career to personal controversies.

The 500-day manhunt for Colombia's Pablo Escobar is detailed through interviews and archival images in this crime documentary.

Two sets of identical twins switched at birth in Colombia explore their complex history and new identities in this captivating documentary.

A wonderful country full of amazing creatures in America called Colombia, seen as never before, accompanied by incredible shots, make it a must-see place for adventurers and wildlife lovers this natural paradise.

Colombian reggaeton singer J Balvin prepares for his 2019 homecoming concert amid intense political turmoil.

This documentary chronicles Diomedes Díaz's rise as one of Colombia's most iconic singers, and his downfall after being accused of killing a fan.

This documentary is a journey to the heart of the first inhabitants of what we now call Colombia, by the hand of a handful of Colombian scientists, who, with passion and tenacity, offer us the first clues to understand the Amazonian Prehistory. It is a journey to the beginnings of the most ambitious scientific adventure of recent years in the country, which will allow us to connect, as Colombians, with an Amazonian identity, denied, violated and unknown until now.

Tells the story of the famous Millonarios, one of the most awarded football teams in Colombia, which, as it was stated by the press, rivals and football leagues, between 1949 and 1953, it was the best team in the world. The documentary film, which some might say, one of the most important sports film pieces in Colombia, involves the stories of fans, members, ex-players, managers, chairmen and great journalists from the world of football, telling how this team revolutionized and changed the history of Colombian football forever.

After an extensive immersion work on abandoned childhood, Ciro Durán presents, from his point of view, the life of street children, who have broken all family ties and have regrouped to survive in the concrete jungle.

In the most remote areas of the Amazon rainforest, a writer and his anthropologist friend find communities that have resisted change for centuries.

Through the recovery and re-montage of various film fragments and the commentary of three filmmakers - Carlos Álvarez, Marta Rodríguez, and Carlos Sánchez - a historical and aesthetic journey is proposed through a foundational moment for filmmaking in Colombia (1965-1975), whose images constitute a revolution on the screen. This documentary journey tells how, at a time when the film industry was just being consolidated, a generation of young filmmakers brought about a moment of rupture, subverting official cinema by taking the media to experiment, denounce and narrate other realities in Colombia at the end of the 1960s.

Ciro Galindo was born on August 29th, 1952 in Colombia. Wherever he's gone, war has found him. After twenty years of friendship, I understood Ciro 's life sums up Colombia's history. As so many Colombians he is a survivor, who has run away from war for more than sixty years, and now dreams of living in peace. "Ciro and Me" is a journey to memory, seeking to give sorrow words; a journey, similar to that of Colombia in times of peace, in search to recover its dignity.

Morat, the band with the highest amount of tickets sold in LATAM and Spain in the past years offered an unforgettable concert on December 15th at Wizink Center in Madrid as a final clasp of its mythical "Balas Perdidas Tour". They went through the greatest hits that they have been harvesting year after year consolidating them as an icon on the Pop Scene.

The film is based on the material filmed by the director's grandfather in the terrible days of the outbreak of the Bogotazo (to understand us, and saving all distances, something like the Civil War for the Spanish), some images that by themselves justify the existence of the documentary, and that at some point they come to shudder. The horrible night ceased (title extracted from the Colombian national anthem) manages to catch the viewer with his warm portrait of the figure of the father and, above all, his remarkable ability to evoke a seemingly idyllic but that ends up revealing in his interior an uncontainable fury and destructive Frankly, we thought that this documentary essay would take some prize, and we are sure that it will be like this in the near future, because it has something, in its images and in the way of treating them, that remains in the memory.

They graduated from a boarding school in 1968. 50 years passed very quickly. Amelia and her classmates meet today at their old school to celebrate their past times at the boarding school, knowing that this may be the last time they see each other alive.

'El Llano' is offered as a paradise; a delirious experience where nature discovers its enigmatic beauty in couplets. Here, music, landscape, riders and horses star in a vibrant and robust culture, brought to the world stage in the verses and voice of Orlando "El Cholo" Valderrama, but unknown in its greatness by the inhabitants of the city.

Laura lives with her parents in L’Alfàz del Pi, in Valencia. Three years ago, she started her transition. Laura now faces adolescence, and with it, a series of changes that will mean a new chapter for her and her family. Each decision they make could be definitive.

The life of Pedro Manrique Figueroa, a pioneer of collage in Colombia, is both incomplete and contradictory. Taking his life and work as a pretext, this mockumentary takes the viewer on a journey through history from the year 1934 up until 1981, when the artist mysteriously disappeared from view.

PATIENT is the word that defines us as we follow medical instructions or have to stay calm while we wait. In Colombia, a country where the harsh health system requires its users to face absurd bureaucratic obstacles to access its services, PATIENT is not only the one who has the disease, but also the one in the daily struggle ensuring that his or her loved one receives all necessary needs. Nubia is a PATIENT, a mother who, despite living with the anguish of possibly losing her daughter to an aggressive cancer, firmly gets to overcome the labyrinths established by the Health System processes upon which her daughter's life depends.

In August 1987, Héctor Abad Gómez was murdered on the streets of downtown Medellín during the darkest moments of the dirty war against the Colombian left. Why was he killed? Who could have had a vested interest in silencing a university professor, human rights activist and doctor who was a precursor of the concept of "public health" in Colombia?

The Colombian photographer Jesús Abad Colorado looks back into his photographic work portraying the Colombian armed conflict and visits territories affected by it, including San José de Apartadó, Ganada and Bojayá to show the photographs he took to those who appeared in them. He reflects on the horrors of war and the future of peace in Colombia.

On 6 March 1906, four men were executed for the attempted murder of Colombian president Rafael Reyes. The event was photographed, and the photos were later used for a fictionalised film on the failed coup. From then on, cinema in this South American country has been inextricably linked to its violent history. Moving images have been used for historiography, propaganda, disinformation and to instil unity in a nation that refuses to come together. Falsos positivos, murdered youths disguised as guerrillas by the army to simulate military success, are a common element.

Freely expressing his loves and hates, controversial Colombian and openly gay writer Fernando Vallejo (living in Mexico) breaks with an ingrained literary tradition: that of the omniscient writer who sees and knows everything. The film covers his literary output and his many interests: film, music, science, and politics. Made with the full support and participation of the author, it provides a portrait of one of the best Spanish-language writers.

On March 17, 2004, an explosive device was activated at the Piloto Public Library in Medellín, where much of the photographic archive of Colombian history is kept. A photograph is the only evidence of this barbarism.

Bajo Fuego depicts the unraveling of peace for a group of coca growing peasants in the southwest of Colombia. The film takes the perspective of the ‘cocaleros’ and over a period of 3 years shows how they survive in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. The government delays in fulfilling what it promised in the agreement, economic difficulties arise for families that substituted their coca trees, and the increasing presence of armed groups start to terrorise the region. The promised peace in Colombia turns out to be an illusion when the newly armed groups take control, assassinations occur, and the films’ main protagonists are being threatened with their lives and displaced. Even though peace was supposedly signed in Colombia, Bajo Fuego shows that for many in the southwest of Colombia the war continues.

In the final days leading up to the Colombian national soccer finals, Jorge, a young man from the northeastern Colombia, travels 1,000 miles across the country with his friends to see his native Bucaramanga’s soccer team. Proving their commitment as loyal fans, they travel by illegally hopping onto tractor trailers to attend the most important game of the season — one that promises the team a chance to return to Division A of the Colombian professional soccer league after eight years in Division B.

An unexpected love story between a trans former sex worker and a FARC rebel begins in a Colombian prison and leads to an alliance in solidarity between trans activists and FARC militants who have laid down their arms.

Recounting the absurd and paradoxical history of Colombia's thirty-year struggle with international drug trafficking, at once a farce and a tragedy, as seen through the eyes of the extravagant pet of the most powerful drug baron in history: a hippopotamus named Pablo.

A diary of trips and dreams, compiled with more than five thousand handmade illustrations.

'A Ballad for dead children' is a tribute to Andrés Caicedo and Cali and it's group, as the seed of a cinematographic phenomenon, but it goes one step further. Testimonies and fragment readings compose, together with a very powerful archive material, the story of a story that has a deep sense and cinematographic interest: the story of Andrés and his eternal fascination with horror literature and cinema b, the of the boy who was born to write, that of the young man who decided to mock death by planning his own ending. A film that tries to maintain the difficult balance on the fine line that separates and unites the two: man and work, work and man, in an eternal and indissoluble way.

María Luisa is a transgender woman living in a staunchly catholic town. The horrors of rural life in Colombia with all its morality have done nothing but increase the power of this solitary soul. Shunned from birth, from the womb, she has found in the secrets she holds, in her love of animals, in the labyrinth of her faith, a way of dealing with a world that has done nothing but despite her for reasons beyond her control, reasons that have victimized her from the start. But our Miss is as mighty as a stalk of wheat, impervious even to earthquakes, and although she has known much sorrow, there is none powerful enough to exhaust her tears or wipe away her smile.

Set in past, present, and future South Africa — an invitation into a poetic, memory-driven exploration of love, intimacy, race, and belonging by the filmmaker, who grew up during apartheid but didn't know it was happening until it was over.

In the depths of the Colombian jungle, the skeleton of an immense abandoned cement bridge is tucked away. It has turned into a delusional tourist attraction.

A complete journalistic document that brings never before seen shocking images and testimonials from people who show how the barbaric acts of Pablo Escobar managed to subdue a nation, and how his legacy continues to affect the world today.

Shot between 1962 and 1963, this film takes place in a cyclical time during which a day of the urban daily life of Bogotá and its inhabitants is presented in the early 60s of the last century, from one dawn to another dawn, amalgamating the images with the musicalization of Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris by George Gershwin.

The sound of metal creaking as if something is about to break. An old pickup truck adapted to carry passengers crosses the La Guajira desert in Colombia. With the wind come voices that merge among the passengers who travel there. A Wayuu woman returns to her territory, accompanied by her family, after years of exile due to a paramilitary massacre. A cyclical journey where the time layers of the territory touch and the border between the living and the dead is diluted.

Two enemies long at war with one another decide to sit down and talk. They have rejected and been mutually ignorant of one another for over five decades, meaning that the first thing they must find within themselves are the arguments, language and gestures needed to shift from violence to political negotiation. For four years journalist and filmmaker Natalia Orozco followed men and women on the path to becoming aware of the decisive role they were either forced to play or chose willingly... SYNOPSIS FICCI 57

Just before falling asleep, Mariana has a particular impulse: she will change the names of everything in the world. As if in a trance, the woman gives precise instructions to reinvent words and the order of things. Peaches will be called brushes; death will now be a mask.

A musical journey hand in hand with some of the great composers of the vallenato region. What is Vallenato? Where was it born? What is the vallenato triphony? What were the so-called juglares? What is the role of women in vallenato? Is it true that "Cien años de soledad" is a vallenato? What is the future of vallenato?

Rooted in wetlands, páramos and centennial forests at the verge of disappearing, memories and a speculated future collide. 500 years of exploitation, exile and resilience are nourished by a collective pain and a desire to crack through it all.

Documentary about the search for Lauri, an Estonian drug addict who left for Colombia

This animated documentary about the vision of the Colombia war by displaced children using their original drawings and their testimonies.

Oneida was still a child when she learned the Afro-Colombian tradition of singing "alabados" to accompany the dead on their journey to purgatory. Today, Oneida's compositions unite millions through the reconciliation process of one of history's longest wars.

An extraordinary and necessary essay film constructed entirely out of a vast archive of news footage from the ‘80s and ‘90s, OUR MOVIE (NUESTRA PELICULA) is a response to the violent history that imprinted itself on the director in her formative years in Colombia. Images of blood spatters, bullet holes, coffins, and Colombians marching in the streets become an abstract net of quotidian sorrow.

On 19 July 1929, in a village in Colombia, a group of shoemakers fought to improve living and working conditions in the country. They called themselves "The Bolsheviks of Líbano, Tolima". Their revolution lasted only one day and there was an attempt to erase their trail. The women of this village meet Aura, an anarchist grandmother, with the feeling that their rebellion is still going on.

A young transgender man born into an environment of violence, drugs and crime returns to the neighborhood after serving a seven-year sentence for complicity in homicide. Before being able to regain his freedom, his sister, mother and grandmother are murdered.

This is a shocking documentary where the audience will meet Jhon Jairo Velazquez Vasquez known as Popeye or Alias JJ, Pablo Escobar’s right-hand man until he decided to surrender to justice to save his life. After serving a twenty-three year prison sentence he became the only survivor from the Medellin Cartel. Velazquez has called the public opinion attention because of his controversial statements before the justice and the media, involving Escobar with high government members, the police, and criminal organizations worldwide. Through interviews with witnesses, victims of the Medellin Cartel and different public opinion figures, this documentary intends to contrast those stories that have made Alias JJ famous.

Wilson left his parents' home in Medellin on his way to Bogotá but never reached his destination. 30 years later and after the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC, Wilson tries to return from his exile in London to find his family who believes him dead. The trajectory of the plane draws a parable, but "Parable of the Return" is also a poem by Porphyrio Barba Jacob, who once recited his brother by heart.

In the middle of the Colombian coffee region, Aribada, the resurrected monster, meets Las Traviesas, a group of indigenous transwomen from the Emberá tribes. The magical, the dreamlike and the performative coexist in their unique world - an aesthetic and spiritual universe in which documentary and fiction merge into a transcultural narrative. Enchanted by the beauty and power of their jais (spirits), Aribada decides to join Las Traviesas in creating their own trans*futurist community.

Paramilitary groups in Colombia have spread death and destruction for years. In 2005, a specially established Commission for Peace and Justice started gathering evidence about the horrific violence. During emotional hearings, their gruesome acts are exposed in detail. However, many of the leading figures get away unscathed.

A 13 minute glimpse of the Feria de Cali celebrated between Christmas and New Year… A carnival of commodity fetishism, red devils and white indians that will be recognizable to anyone who has encountered the surrealist ethnographies of Michael Taussig.

A site of activism and bloodshed, Building 303 was an icon of Bogotà. Now demolished, the university—and its political graffiti—haunts this spectral short, intruding on a portrait of a recovering addict. Laura Huertas Millán’s film is one of ruin and survival, inspired by its “living works of art.”

Produced out of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, Laura Huertas Millán's quietly masterful La Libertad follows a group of matriarchal weavers in Mexico, formally mimicking the examination of an object through subtle shifts in scale and space.

In December 2011, a security guard was killed by a pack of stray dogs prowling in a poor neighbourhood on the Bogota suburbs.

The ghost of a photo-journalist killed during the December 1989 US invasion of Panama returns exactly 10 years later to resolve his family’s conflicts. Inspired by the story of his own family, in his feature-length debut, Enrique Costas Ríos poetically blends together archival footage and fictional scenes that recreate events from the invasion while tracing links to the true-life story of Spanish journalist Juantxu Rodriguez who was killed during the invasion.

La Salsa Vive is a vibrant cinematic exploration of Afro-Cuban music's history, tracing its roots from New York's lively streets to Cali, Colombia, now the global salsa capital.

The director’s grandmother’s hometown had a lighthouse between the mountains, a forest filled with creatures and an echo that sounded every night like the warm wind. That is where the birds went to die. The Night of Minotaur is a fantastic tale that relies on archive footage to build the story of Luz Emilia García, the precursor of porn cinema in Colombia.

A love story that begins when its lead characters, Antonio and Felisa, have been together for over 60 years and their delicate health means they can no longer care for one another. The prospect of having to move into a home for the elderly looms menacingly on the horizon. Felisa, 82, wanders the cold, empty spaces of the hospital to which her 84 year old husband Antonio was admitted days ago. Felisa is worried, because she knows her husband has asked for a place in a home and she's afraid her life will change.

97 houses, 18 families. The lives of this people who live at a caribbean island isolated from the rest of the world.

My grandfather was killed at the beginning of the war in Colombia, after that fact several men in the family have chosen weapons. Like my cousin´s son that was injured in combat by the paramilitary, whom was recruted with only 15 years of age. My father managed to build a different life for himself. That is the hope that I wish illuminates my son Matías and all of us, the sons and daughters of war.

The struggles of the community of the Coconuco indigenous reservation in Cauca, which by the eighteenth-century royal card is entitled to 10,000 hectares, and in 1971 it barely has 1,500.