La Sirga

The camera sweeps the reeds, following a lonely young figure as she trudges through the swamp. Suddenly she collapses. A young man paddling a boat ferries her to a rickety wooden inn, which a painted shingle identifies as LA SIRGA. We're on a spirit lake in the sparsely populated highlands of the Andes, a damp outpost whose inhabitants never take off their rain boots. The girl's name is Alicia; her parents have been murdered by unknown perpetrators, her village burned to the ground. The boatman has brought her to her uncle Don Oscar, who operates the inn. LA SIRGA, like Colombia itself, is in an advanced state of disrepair. The roof leaks; the floorboards are rotten; the wind flaps the corrugated iron. Alicia and a housekeeper try to fix it with rudimentary tools, getting ready for the tourists who are bound to come sometime. But violence is engulfing even the remotest parts of Colombia. Those distant rumblings might not be thunder after all. (In Spanish with subtitles) – B.B.