Impression of a War

A Poetic Mediation of Colombia's Violent History

For more than 70 years, Colombia has been plagued with armed internal conflict. The ongoing struggle between various guerrilla factions, military and paramilitary forces, and drug traffickers has created a culture of violence and fear that has pervaded every aspect of daily life.

Filmmaker Camilo Restrepo, who, like many Colombians of his generation lived through some of the most dangerous years, confronts the violent history of his country through the marks and traces it has left --- newspaper images (the photos, but also the ink itself) dye-stained rivers that are the color of blood, graffiti on the streets, tattoos on the soldiers who fought in the war.

In this artful, poetic meditation, Restrepo unearths the signs, manipulations and portents that lay behind the violence, behind the images that chronicled it and came from it, and turns them into a form of resistance, a blurred and distorted path to peace.

Official Selection at the Locarno Film Festival.

"A multilayered essay on the ghosts of Colombian civil war." - Artforum