The foggy páramo biome of the Andean mountains is where Pablo Alvarez-Mesa’s La Laguna del Soldado (The Soldier's Lagoon) takes place – this is Alvarez-Mesa’s second film in a trilogy that traces Simón Bolívar’s passage during the Liberation Campaign of Colombia in 1819. Referred to as “the land of the mist” by Spanish Conquistadors, the extreme temperatures and high altitude of páramo make it a harsh and treacherous environment for humans. Alvarez-Mesa combines jaw-dropping 16mm imagery with testimonies from a polyphony of voices including botanists, craftspeople, and historians to excavate centuries of buried trauma and violence from this region’s lands and histories.

(Pablo Alvarez-Mesa, 75 min, 2024)

Spanish spoken, English subtitles