“Embrace of the Serpent” helmsman Ciro Guerra continues with the animal imagery and the ruminations on Colombian history with “Birds of Passage,” a rise-and-fall cartel drama set in the early days of the nation’s illegal drug trade. Though the esteemed director is now at feature film number four, this will be the first that sees him team up with a co-director – one Cristina Gallego, who worked as executive producer on ‘Embrace’ – and adapt a script that he himself didn’t write. And based on the response received by the picture when it opened Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, this filmmaker plays well with others.
The Playlist’s own Jessica Kiang wrote an especially enthused appraisal extolling the film as “wildly alive, yet it reminds us that no matter how modern we are, there are ancient songs our forebears knew whose melodies still rush in our blood.”
The review also draws comparisons to John Ford, Sergio Leone, Nicolas Roeg, and Zhang Yimou, and much like those four greats, Guerra knows how to shoot a landscape, especially when he’s working with “I Am Not a Witch” cinematographer David Gallego. This pairing helped ‘Embrace’ land an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, so it only figures that their next project was chosen as Colombia’s latest submission for the same honor. Here’s a synopsis for the film:
During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.
With a script was penned by Maria Camila Arias and ‘Embrace’ co-writer Jacques Toulemonde Vidal, the film stars Carmiña Martínez, José Acosta, and Natalia Reyes, the last whom also has a role lined up for the upcoming “Terminator” reboot.
READ MORE: 2019 Foreign Language Film Oscars Predictions
With The Orchard handling North American distribution, “Birds of Passage,” Colombian’s official Oscar® entry for Best Foreign Language Film, which also has a strong shot at winning, is set to hit cinemas on February 13, 2019.
