X500
Thousands of kilometers apart, three young migrants undergo mental, emotional, and physical transformations in order to survive the violence of their new worlds. Maria arrives to Montreal from Manila to live with her grandmother and struggles to adapt to her new environment; Afro-Colombian Alex is deported from the US to Colombia, in his old neighborhood now controlled by criminals; David leaves his indigenous village after his father's death to find work on a construction site in Mexico City. The film follows these three teenagers living in different cities of the Americas yet going through the same experience of grief, migration and transformation.
SCREENING | THURSDAY, JULY 13TH |CROWLEY THEATER
FEATURE | Canada/Columbia/Mexico 104min.
Juan Andres Arango was born in Bogota, Colombia. He studied most of his high school in Bogota but was awarded a scholarship to finish it in Vancouver, Canada. After graduating from high school, he studied Cinematography and Television in the National University of Colombia in which he directed and scripted his first movie "Eloisa y las Nieves" as his thesis dissertation.
He lives in Montreal, Canada and is working in his upcoming film "La Playa", a movie that has been part of the Buenos Aires Lab del Bafici in 2010, the Mannheim Meetings of the International Festival of Mannheim, the Coproduction Encounter in the International Festival of Film in Cartagena, Colombia in 2009, the International Festival of Film of Rio de Janeiro - Rio Market.
"La playa" has also been awarded a production grant by the Colombian Fund for the Development of Cinematography in 2008 and is participating in the 20th version of the San Sebastian Festival, Spain.