Hostage in the Jungle

In autumn 2016, demonstrations sprang up all over Europe against the CETA free-trade agreement between the European Union and Canada. The reason? An obscure clause which allows multinationals to sue nation states if they feel their profits may be damaged by government decisions. An investigation into the hidden world of international arbitration.

What happened to painter Beatriz González, who made us laugh with the irony of her works, to get to the point of making a self-portrait that shows her crying naked? The path of the artist is intimately linked with the history of Colombia during the past fifty years.

It is with an old bus an about thirty snakes that Franz Florez struggles for the preservation of nature in Colombia, one of the most environmentally diverse country in the world. His snakes are his pass to enter the deep jungle, where guerrillas fight the regular army and where narco-traffickers meet coca growers. Facing the threat of the industrial exploitation of these preserved areas, he tries to gather support among the population, including the armed actors.

The film highlights legendary Colombian birdwatching guide Diego Calderon-Franco and National Geographic photographer/videographer Keith Ladzinski as they travel through Columbia, a nation that boasts one of the most diverse populations of birds in the world, to capture footage of rare and unique birds, some of which have never been filmed before.

A documentary on the massacre of Planas in the Colombian east plains in 1970. An Indigenous community formed a cooperative to defend their rights from settlers and colonists, but the government organized a military operation to protect the latter and foreign companies.

María is an Amorúa girl; an indigenous group that traveled the savannas of Orinoquía as nomads. She lives with her grandmother Matilde, her sister diana and her cousins in Puerto Carreño, in the Colombia-Venezuela border. The amorúa are considered wild and are not literate. Matilde wants her granddaughters to learn to write and read to live better in this town of "rational whites" as they call us. The director follows María's life for 8 years from her childhood to her adolescence and invites her to travel the places her grandma did as a nomad.

The full story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God.' The 1972 Munich Olympics were interrupted by Palestinian terrorists taking Israeli athletes hostage. Besides footage taken at the time, we see interviews with the surviving terrorist, Jamal Al Gashey, and various officials detailing exactly how the police, lacking an anti-terrorist squad and turning down help from the Israelis, botched the operation.

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.

Simon Reeve visits Colombia in the year of the pacification, at least on paper, between the government, 'aided' by right-wing death squads, and the Marxist FARC guerrilla, which was turning into an armed super-drug cartel and champion of ransom kidnappings. He speaks with people about the horror that hopefully nears its end and the prospects if both sides disarm.

Medellin. Tireless car traffic. In the margins of a society launched at top speed, some lurking engines shutdown to make a living; Jugglers at intersections, employees on breaks, whose precise and repetitive work mark the flow of time which is always repeated.

Once every decade in a small Colombian village, musicians engage in a fierce battle for the title of the Accordion King. Travel down to Colombia, and go behind the scenes of the Vallenato Kings Festival where, each April, the world's greatest accordionists assemble to perform, compete, and celebrate the squeezebox. Meet the players and hear their stories, including professors of the Turco Gil Academy, where over two thousand children dedicate themselves to their instrument, and Yeime, a young girl who overcame cultural stereotypes to become the first woman to win the competition in over forty years.