Proxima Competition to Close with Two Bold and Eruptive Essays

The final two films in the Proxima competition promise the most daring cinematic experience of this year’s selection. Each presents a distinctly personal perspective, combining delicate storytelling with predatory geopolitical reflection. Both will celebrate their world premieres at the Small Hall – Forensics at 3 p.m. and TrepaNation at 6 p.m.

Directed by Federico Atehortúa Arteaga, Forensics is a formally inventive and vibrant essay that examines efforts to resuscitate national identity in Colombia. The film revolves around 2016, when the Colombian government formed the Search Unit for Missing Persons, and interweaves three stories: the reconstructing of the life of a dead transgender woman through film; an intimate portrait of the filmmaker’s own family, who had to deal with the disappearance of his uncle; and the testimony of a forensic pathologist amidst the country’s ongoing conflict. Arteaga reflects on Colombia’s modern history, revealing it as, above all, a history of the missing. Measured yet consistently surprising, Forensics blends animation, cartography, archival footage, audio recordings and a range of other formats to further enhance the nation’s disjointed journey through the years of unresolved trauma.

TrepaNation is the work of visual artist and filmmaker Ammar al-Beik, who lived in a Syrian refugee camp on the outskirts of Berlin in 2014. Constant filming became a form of resistance – he filmed everything around him, weaving personal frustrations and thoughts into the fabric of the documentary. His defiance extends into every possible direction against the realities of life in exile, which lends the film its explosive energy. The film he spent around a decade editing is an associative, provocative political mosaic inspired by the work of Jean-Luc Godard, with whom al-Beik engages in a spirited and original dialogue. TrepaNation also draws on the methods of the cinema theorist Alexander Kluge, and reflects the director’s fascination with Diego Maradona. The result is a gripping, confrontational and thought-charged meditation not only on sociological contexts, but also on cinema itself, whose conventions the film persistently challenges.