In the Distance
Sophomore director Cesar Acevedo finds the universal in Colombia’s decades old conflict.
César Augusto Acevedo
In Colombian director César Augusto Acevedo’s Horizon (Horizonte), a woman, Inés, and her son Basilio reunite as ghosts of Colombia’s long, brutal civil war. His father, her husband, is missing so they decide to find him. As they travel past demolished towns and villages they see the legacy of Basilio’s work first hand; he was recruited to be a perpetrator of many of the crimes of the last half century. Focused as it is on the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict – a clusterfuck that started in 1964 and involves Colombia’s state forces, crime syndicates, paramilitary groups and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, Acevedo’s second film is as shockingly timely as it is alarmingly universal. In the film’s production notes Acevedo states, “All wars and conflicts have their particularities. What interested me … was to see how [war] destroys people physically, morally, and spiritually.” If that doesn’t apply to Gaza or Ukraine or Yemen or Myanmar or a billion other places we are all misunderstanding the concept of war.
On this day Acevedo is looking relaxed, breezing into the Mira hotel suite with a little cloth bag – he may have been playing tourist between HKIFF screenings, who can blame him – with a disposition that can only be called upbeat. That may seem odd considering Horizon’s source material, but Acevedo nonetheless hopes for the best.
“The film came from despair for a country where violence has become so common,” he begins with an assist from a translator. “In 2016 there were elections that asked if the people wanted peace with FARC. It was yes or no, and after 50 years of war they voted no to peace. I couldn’t understand it. Fifty year and millions of victims. How have we lost such faith in ourselves?” He’s understandably low-key flustered, perhaps a little enraged, but he’s also a realist with a touch of optimism. Acevedo admits that yes, we’re living in a moment where all seems lost and the world as it stand isn’t worth fighting for – a sentiment he suggests is more dangerous than guns. “When you get used to [violence and war] and you become ironic about it, we start losing ourselves and our connection with others and our humanity. But our biggest tragedy is our biggest strength; it’s our understanding of that. We have a choice. We have to trust we can create hope, and make out of this world what we have in our hearts.” Assuming the heart isn’t black as coal.
Horizon begins with former soldier Basilio (Claudio Cataño) wandering from graveyard to field to town looking for his mother Inés (Paulina García), eventually locating her in an isolated rambling ranch. Initially she doesn’t recognise her son; they lost touch years before and wound up on opposite sides of the conflict. The divided family is a frequent metaphor in war films, and Basilio and Inés’s journey towards reckoning and redemption is the entry point for Acevedo’s spiritual examination of our collective desensitisation to violence, loss of empathy and willingness to perpetuate of warfare.
Acevedo, a native of Cali now living in Bogotá where he also works as a professor of filmmaking, admits getting Horizon made was a bit of a chore. He scoffs when asked about production challenges before rambling off a list of so-called issues he faced. Despite funding and support from Ciné-Sud and In Vivo Films in France, Tarantula (Luxembourg), Quijote Films in Chile, and Unafilm (Germany), in a post-COVID world two hours was too much to ask of exhibitors, and above all Colombians didn’t want to listen to stories about the war – which is kind of Horizon’s point. “Everyone was telling me nobody [at home] wanted to see more violence that relates to Colombia, but internationally people were telling me that nobody wants to see anything spiritual.” He rolls his eyes. Still, the presence of Cataño and García couldn’t have hurt. Cataño wasn’t a brand when Horizon started shooting but now he’s recognisable as the star of Netflix’s adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (below, left). García, on the other hand, was a brand, and the Chilean actor, playwright and stage director is, ironically, possibly best known outside South America as Hermilda Gaviria, Pablo Escobar’s mother in Narcos (below, right), a series many argue glorifies the celebrity drug traffickers inextricably linked with the Colombian conflict and its bloodshed.
Horizon is Acevedo’s first film since his Camera d'Or-winning Land and Shade in 2015, and it represents a significant formal and creative leap from a decade ago, even though Acevedo’s debut was artistically impressive. Shooting in Colombia’s beautiful Tauramena, Cumaral, Chingaza and Las Mercedes regions (among others) was key to the ideas Acevedo was exploring. He points out the referendum was probably decided by people living in Cali, Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena and other cities, which are disconnected from events, and life, in the rural areas. “The idea was to find a way to understand that huge disconnection, because there’s no one in Colombia that hasn’t been affected by violence, directly or indirectly.” It’s a reason the main characters are family, a reason Basilio is repeatedly confronted with his past and its fallout, and a reason for them to find common ground. “The only time that forgiveness happens when both of them have experienced the same journey, when they recognise each other’s feelings. That’s the first step.”
That was the starting point for Horizon’s gorgeous aesthetic that Acevedo describes as moving from darkness to light in its discussion of national trauma and, maybe one day, happiness. “Once I realised that the poetic structure was the perfect way to address all these things, it was a matter of how to use it as an image. And when talk about poetry, I don’t mean in a strictly literal form, but about how to approach emotions and feelings.” The film has shades of A24 style horror to it too, best illustrated in Mateo Guzmán Sánchez’s lyrical cinematography and designer Camilio Martinez’s evocative soundscape. There’s no blood and no gore in Horizon in the traditional sense of the words, but the aural echoes of the violence that would have inevitably led to blood dot the soundtrack, and Basilio and Inés exist in a kind of purgatory, a netherworld between life and death that Sánchez weaves together seamlessly. In Colombia, they’re one and the same. Regardless of how optimistic Acevedo may be, Horizon doesn’t force a happy ending – but it’s not despairing. “Inés was looking for heaven, and for her heaven is her family, her land. Basilio needed to destroy his persona, his emotions and his spirit to remake himself in order to regain his humanity. I think it’s a bright end. Because the horizon isn’t just the line that joins heaven and earth. It’s the line where you start building.”
Where we were
The Mira Hong Kong, TST • Hong Kong International Film Festival
Hong Kong • April 17, 2025