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REQUIEM NN

REQUIEM N.N..

By Juan Manuel ECHAVARRIA

LULOFILMS - as PROD

Documentary - Post-Production 2012

“Here we rescue their victims, we do not allow them to be disappeared, besides we believed in their souls and in their grace, we baptize them in death, we make them our own.”

- Year of production
- 2012
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- COLOMBIA
- Languages
- SPANISH
- Budget
- 0.3 - 0.6 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Juan Manuel ECHAVARRIA
- Writer(s)
- Jaime ESCALLON BURAGLIA, Juan Manuel ECHAVARRIA
- Producer(s)
- Ximena SOTOMAYOR (LULOFILMS), Jaime ESCALLON (LULOFILMS)
- Synopsis
- When the paramilitaries came into the Middle Magdalena region to fight against the guerrilla groups Puerto Berrío, a mid-size town, was at the center of the violence, the place where bodies or human remains came down the Magdalena river and were rescued by some citizens and buried in the local cemetery in anonymous graves, marked “N.N.”
  Later, people “choose “ and adopt a corpse, they petition its soul for favors and promise to take care of the grave, as an exchange. They pray for them, arrange and decorate the tomb, and give thanks with written inscriptions or marble gravestones. Furthermore, they baptize the body with first and last names, sometimes with their family names, restoring their humanity.
  In November, the month where the Catholic Church remembers the Saints and the Dead Souls, the cemetery doors open at midnight and a man dressed in a black, cape, the Soul Man, invites the faithful to come in procession, carrying candles to pray for the souls of the departed so that they can obtain eternal rest.
  This adoption process is related to an antique belief in the Souls, their strength and could be the expression of grief, of the loss felt by those whose friends and relatives have disappeared, an exchange of services, the respect for the relationship between body and spirit, or an expression of resistance to violence.
  Juan Manuel Echavarria, a photographer, who has focused on representing Colombian violence and its effects on ordinary lives, came to Puerto Berrio five years ago. This film tells the stories of the people who rescue the anonymous victims in Puerto Berrio.
- Beginning of shooting
- Nov 01, 2010