Barrio Triste

A mysterious light appears over the city. Visitors from the skies, perhaps? a TV reporter wonders before a gang of youths snatches the camera and cuts the broadcast short. But the recording keeps rolling. It captures everything: the kids raiding a jewelry store, the chase tearing through the favelas of Medellín.

The feature debut of Stillz — a veteran music video director who has made videos for Bad Bunny, among others — is a distorted love letter to the filmmaker's own childhood and adolescence in 1980s Colombia. Rough-edged found footage merges with South American magical realism. A film that begins as a straightforward docudrama transforms almost imperceptibly into a dreamlike, psychophysical horror film, accompanied by the haunting and melancholic music of Venezuelan artist Arca, which calls to mind Mica Levi's compositions for Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin. The film was produced by Harmony Korine, and echoes of both Trash Humpers and Baby Invasion can be felt throughout.