The Whanganui Film Society is screening Birds of Passage on Monday, April 12.
The ancient traditions of indigenous Wayúu are shaped by an ambitious matriarch seeking to stake a place for her clan in the burgeoning drug economy of the 1970s.
Review
"A vibrant Colombian indigenous culture that's survived centuries of colonisation takes on the 1970s drug trade … Directors Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego shake off the clichés of crime-war and imperialism and imbue their saga with surreal beauty and the elemental power of ancient proverb.
"The film's formidable matriarch knows full well that the young chancer who has courted her daughter could only have paid the outrageous dowry she demanded by selling dope to the gringos. But the seed is sown: insisting traditional honour codes be observed in enriching her clan, she bends her shamanistic authority to building an empire in the desert."
— Bill Gosden, NZIFF 2018
Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra • Colombia • 2018
125 mins • HD • M violence, offensive language & sex scenes
In Spanish, Wayúunaiki and English, with English subtitles