Barrio Triste
In an impoverished neighborhood of 1980s Medellín, a group of disaffected teens steals a TV reporter’s camera to document their lives. Piercing the derelict landscape’s oppressive atmosphere with disarming reflections on dreams and death, their understanding of reality and hope begins to erode as reports of mysterious lights falling from the sky coincide with temporal and spatial distortions.
The feature debut from Bad Bunny collaborator STILLZ and featuring the first original score by Arca, BARRIO TRISTE is a generational portrait of Colombia’s forgotten youth, both personal and specific in its perspective, yet unclassifiable in its formal audacity. Accentuated by Arca’s intense, shape-shifting sonic palette, STILLZ boldly navigates the liminal spaces between despair and transcendence in “one of the year’s great debuts” (The Film Stage).
Cast
- Juan Pablo Baena
- Samuel Velazquez
- Tomas Tinoco Higuita
- Bryan Erlin Garcia
- Samuel Andres Celis
- Brahian Acecedo
- Samuel Ruiz
- Estiven Salazar
- Jose Arley Marin Gonzalez
- "[A}n urban phantasmagoria out the lives of disaffected Colombian youths...examines adolescent ennui and the quotidian brutalities of poverty in the titular neighborhood through a neorealist yet also strangely extraterrestrial lens... [A] meandering meditation on the existential malaise of the economically dispossessed... BARRIO TRISTE acknowledges that even if beauty cannot grant real power to these dispossessed youths, it still offers a glimpse of the dignity and transcendence that their circumstances have denied them."
- "Exhilarating, tense, personal, and enigmatic, Barrio Triste is a compelling look at a lost generation in search of salvation, and among this year’s best first features."
- "Engrossing, weird and wildly original...."
- "[A] film that is at once self-consciously experimental and intensely, almost uncomfortably earnest. "
- "A nightmarish odyssey into the depths of poverty and despair from Colombian-American director and photographer Stillz. [T]he director’s commitment to a realistic aesthetic never falters."
- "[A] story that acts as an ode to the power of telling stories on your own terms...works best when reconsidered as an immersive artifact from the marginalized who are learning the grammar of self-expression. This is a film that understands that the truest picture of society comes from the eyes of those it neglects, courtesy of the outcasts who plunder airtime from the State itself."
- "[A] necessary viewing for those interested in that kind of Latin American cinema that takes on both a marginal theme and an experimental tone..."
- "[S]o self-assured in its motley attitudes that it can’t help but impress."
- "[T]errifying and magical—as if Spielberg channeled Gabriel García Márquez. Backed by an entrancing score composed by Arca, Barrio Triste is a marvelous case of purposeful style gladly overcoming the routine in these kinds of coming-of-age stories."
- "As much a grim fantasy as it is a crime drama, what unfolds makes things poetically surreal without sacrificing the gritty realism BARRIO TRISTE aspires to....[a] visual poem, capturing an impressionistic portrait of nihilistic street life."
- "The film is a demanding and unflinching work, offering no catharsis or easy resolution. Its power lies in this refusal, presenting a stark portrait of lives on the margin and finding a profound, disturbing humanity in the static."
- "[T]he film echoes the neorealism of Los Olvidados and the nonlinear editing of City of God. Overall, Barrio Triste is a profound inquiry into the meaning of life."
- "[T]he film transforms into something hypnotic and untraceable."
Gallery
Awards & Recognition
Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti)
New York Film Festival
Toronto Int'l. Film Festival
Best Film - Orizzonti
Venice Film Festival
Golden Alexander - Film Forward
Thessaloniki Film Festival
Best Soundtrack
Ghent Int'l. Film Festival
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