Search Film, Company, People...

MATIAS' TREE

EL ÁRBOL DE MATÍAS

By Pilar PERDOMO

BOGOTÁ AUDIOVISUAL MARKET - as PROMO

Drama - Post-Production 2020

My grandfather was killed at the beginning of the war, after that several men in the family have chosen weapons. Not my father. That is the hope that I hope illuminates my son and us, the children of Colombia.

- Year of production
- 2020
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- COLOMBIA
- Languages
- SPANISH
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 70 mn
- Director(s)
- Pilar PERDOMO
- Producer(s)
- Pilar PERDOMO (Medusa Films)
- Synopsis
- Matías, my 6-year-old son, has argued with his best friend on political issues. He say this to me on the way to the polling station. Matías tells me that he would like to vote YES in the plebiscite for peace agreement with the FARC-EP, because the war killed his great grandfather. We didn´t meet him, either my father. We travel to Chaparral with my father and one of his sister. Memories, a happy childhood by the countryside like a working peasant family. The peace ends when war reaches them. They flee the farm. One day, my grandfather Daniel is beheaded in front of his son José (11 by then).
  
  Drawings of fear and horror. Telling a small child what war is, how unfair. After my grandfather´s death, my grandmother worked as a day laborer. The family
  had to split up, and everyone had to leave and seek a new life for themselves, leaving their birthplace behind. The women worked as housekeepers. The brothers
  moved ahead with a lot of determination, had their children and have given them whatever they could. Only Libardo, my father, went to school. He was two years old when my grandfather was killed, so he really doesn´t have any recollection of my granddad.
  
  Weapons have attracted some of the men in the family. Two of my cousins went to jail for homicide. One of them was assassinated in October 2016. Four years ago, my cousin´s son was injured in combat by the paramilitary, whom was recruted with only 15 years of age. Now he is also a father to two children. What kind of life will he want for them?
  
  The lure for children and teenagers to be attracted by weapons are everywhere. Revenge for the loss of a relative, the hunger for acknowledgment or just to being part of something, drives them easily down that road. I would wish for my son or anyone else´s son, to understand that weapons only bring pain and loss. Let the paths not repeat themselves. My father managed to build a different life for himself, apart from the adversity of the context where he was raised. Thanks to that, we have been able to walk another road. Hope can light up my son's life and mine, and all of ours, the
  children of Colombia.