Fimed in 16mm, Camilo Restrepo’s first feature film (La impresión de una guerra, IndieLisboa 2016 e Cilaos, IndieLisboa 2017) is an escape, an hallucination and a fever. Pinky runs away from a sect and takes refuge in a factory of illegal t-shirts. There is a hypnotic journey to be made between corridors, paints, slogans and guns. The aim is liberation. A cinema that dreams of another Colombia: without oppression, corruption or religious instrumentalization.
—
A survivor escapes from his religious sect and finds it hard to blend into the outside world, still imbued with the violence he witnessed and instigated. For his first feature film, Colombian director Camilo Restrepo is inspired by the true story of his friend Luis Felipe Lozano, “Pinky”, who plays his own role in Los conductos. It is a film inhabited by violence, a philosophical and supernatural tale taking us to the limits of the instrumentalization of religion and widespread violence in Colombia. It is a cathartic film that Restrepo offers to his friend, in a form of docu-fiction filmed in 16 mm, The film captures many symbols, as well as a certain theatricality to best represent Pinky’s internal emotions, in a fragmented montage. Between realistic passages and scary projections, Pinky’s journey is not an easy one. After the murder, supposed to free him from his indoctrination, his anger remains in a world which refuses to open its doors to him. Various historical or literary figures from Colombian culture visit him to confront him with the moral dilemmas he faces. Because if in our reality the murder never took place, in that of Los conductos, it questions fluid concepts like Good and Evil, which Pinky has trouble conceiving since for so many years he thought he was “Chosen”. (Mickael Gaspar)
