Colombia Presente! - Short Films

CinemaAttic returns to the CCA with Colombia Presente! 2025, this edition explores transatlantic ties seen from both sides of the ocean, revealing how these views clash, connect, and blur.

Highlights include one of this year’s most celebrated shorts, Akababuru: Expression of Astonishment (Irati Dojura Landa Yagarí, 2025), a luminous tale of an Embera girl who must learn to laugh again, awarded a Special Mention in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus section. We also screen About Happy Hippos and Sad Peacocks (Johannes Förster & Elkin Calderón Guevara, 2024), a “contemporary fable” tracing the improbable journeys of peacocks to nineteenth-century Berlin and hippopotamuses to Colombia’s Magdalena River, entangling colonial spectacle with the afterlives of the drug trade. From Colombia’s banana-growing north comes Acuatenientes (Andrés Gil Lozano, 2022), a fierce documentary following community leaders who confront agribusiness elites to reclaim their stolen water. Rounding out the programme is See it, Say it, Draw it (José Luis Cote, 2025), a rare experimental/essay work that invites viewers to re-imagine museum artefacts through collective drawing, challenging the colonial logics of display and the ownership of cultural memory. Together these shorts open a dialogue on how histories and ecologies travel across oceans, and how art can redraw our comprehension of symbols and power.

Short Film Programme:

See it, Say it, Draw it (Verlo, decirlo, dibujarlo)
José Luis Cote / 13’ / United Kingdom/ 2025

About Happy Hippos and Sad Peacocks
Johannes Förster & Elkin Calderón Guevara / 28’ / Colombia, Germany / 2024

Acuatenientes
Andrés Gil Lozano & Michel Ávila/ 16’ / Colombia / 2022

Akababuru: Expression of Astonishment
Irati Dojura Landa Yagarí / 13’ / Colombia / 2025