"Wandering Shadows" by Ciro Guerra (2004)

Colombian Filmmaker Ciro Guerra is currently recognized for his film "The Embrace of the Serpent" , which was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award in 2016. The themes of healing and conflict between cultures that are brought to the fore in this film are part of Guerra's development of his cinematic voice. His first feature film, "La sombra del caminante" [Wandering Shadows] focuses on Mañé and Mansalva, two men who struggle to be productive in society and survive, but whose past involvement in the country's armed conflict has left them vulnerable.

In an interview for Indiewire in 2016, Guerra defined his filmmaking process by the desire to reconnect cinema with real stories. He expressed that in his opinion cinema might currently be deriving too much from itself, from its own stories, and that he wants reality to be the main driver of his creative process. The word cloud below shows the words that were most used by the filmmaker in his interview. Click on it to be redirected to the Indiewire Interview.

"Wandering Shadows" reconstructs around Mañé, Mansalva, and the landlord the traumatic aftermath of countryside violence in Colombia being displaced and carried over to the capital, Bogotá. Some of the most salient elements of conflict and post-conflict addressed in the film have to do with memory, trauma, and the tensions between different forms of justice (retributive or restaurative) in the interactions between victims and perpetrators. Navigate the image below to explore these themes.

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