los conductos (w&d camilo restrepo)

Another low budget movie, shot on 16mm, a Colombian film made with the support of the French group, L’Abominable. This tells in a roundabout fashion the story of a hitman, who wants to discard his gun and escape a life of violence. The story is presented in images, grainy, arresting. The choice of location becomes in itself key in a film that clearly has little budget for art design. An illegal factory, making rip-off Adidas and Kappa sportswear. A disused warehouse. A forest with a view over the city of Medellin. The city hovers at the edge of the film, seen in occasional glimpses, an escalator, a person on the phone in the background. Perhaps as a result of its shorter span, the images feel as though they have a greater economy. The film concludes with a poem and there is indeed something poetic about the recurring use of imagery, the handle of a gun, the mesmeric claustrophobia of an underpass, the ball of copper that is stolen from the city’s wiring. Los Conductos maintains its pace and intrigue to its somewhat stagey end. There’s a real sense of the underbelly of a Latin American city in its portrayal of Medellin, a place where survival can be found in the most remote, dirtiest corners of the city and in its search for this representation, the film transcends its limited budget.