VIOLENCIA

A man in chains in the jungle, a teenager willing to do anything to find a job and the head of a paramilitary group: Violencia paints a portrait of three Colombians seemingly chosen at random. Screened as part of the Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum section, the film presents the three narratives without imposing boundaries between them, as if the protagonists were travelling on a shared path whose outcome is both uncertain and disturbing. Women are largely absent from these stories, only appearing as mothers, girlfriends, sisters — reassuring but transient figures. An intense and unsettling trilogy, Violencia plunges the viewer into violence at its most mundane, the kind of violence many Colombians experience every day and which first-time director Jorge Forero chooses neither to explain nor excuse. With his mastery of visuals and long takes, he captures the violence that’s taken root in the lives of his countrymen, a violence without spectacle or fanfare, a pernicious violence that reaches the darkest depths of every human being, leaving the viewer stunned but hoping for a better world.