Don Ca
Patricia Ayala Ruiz
Colombia | 2013 | 90 min
World premiere
Language : Spanish
Subtitles : English, French
A man, heir to a great family, has decided to seek freedom and happiness in a village on Colombia’s Pacific coast, far from the culture of greed and consumerism. Here he becomes Don Ca, the wise man loved and respected by all. Yet his paradise is infiltrated, little by little, by the opposing forces of the civil war... A portrait of a Conradian hero.
A man, heir to a great Colombian family, has decided to break free from all social conventions and seek liberty in a village on the Pacific coast, far from the culture of greed and consumerism. Here he becomes Don Ca, the wise man loved and respected by all. Yet his paradise is infiltrated, little by little, by the opposing forces of the civil war, making people slaves to fear... “In Colombia, much is said about human rights, violence, poverty, victims and marginalisation. But freedom, the word and the concept, is often absent from our political and cultural discourses” (PA). From its first sequence, the film plunges the audience into a real world that references the imagination. There is an awareness of the present time, the imbalance of the modern world. And yet, we dream. The man on the screen, paddling a canoe along the river with a monkey on his shoulder, comes straight out of early 20th century literature. Like a hero in the writings of Joseph Conrad or Jack London, he comes towards us with all that humanity could have been. Before the darkness surfaces again.
Luciano Barisone
