Crab Trap

Colour, 35 mm
Colombia, France, 2009, 96 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Trying to escape from his past, Daniel heads for the village of La Barra on the Pacific coast. He sets about looking around for a motor boat to help him leave Colombia forever. He only intended on staying in the village for a couple of days, but La Barra has been recently hit by a mysterious lack of fish. The fishermen have had to sail farther out to sea and no boat is available. But there are more complications to Daniel’s situation. The villagers never bothered to verify the ownership of the land on which they have lived their whole lives. And so a foreigner named El Paisa begins to intrude as a landowner who wants to build a beach resort. The village protests but even local leader Cerebro is trying to introduce innovations and adapt to the arrival of modern times. This is the story of "a man who discovers a place surrounded by the jungle and the sea and where life progresses at a [...] pace dictated by the laws of Nature.... I tried to express this clash between two visions, the ancestral versus the foreign, and the lack of understanding of those of us who live in the cities when we see ourselves as above those remaining on the periphery,” says the debuting director.

About the director

Oscar Ruíz Navia (b. 1982, Cali, Colombia), after studying at the National Film and Television School of Columbia, graduated in social communication from Valley University. He started out as assistant director and assistant cameraman. In 2006 he found Contravía Films, an independent production company which oversaw his feature debut Crab Trap, presented at the Locarno IFF. Filmography: the documentary Three Pounds: Music for the Sick (Tres Libras: Música para enfermos, 2002), the short feature Sunrise (2003), the documentary The Children of the Beast (Los Hijos de la Bestia, 2005), the experimental short Vacuum Package 1, 2, 3 (Al vacío 1, 2, 3, 2006), the documentary There Is a Brain in La Barra (En la Barra hay un Cerebro, 2006), and the experimental movie Liquefaction (Licuefacción, 2007).