NEWS

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QUICK TAKE | LAND AND SHADE [COLOMBIA]

Seventeen years after walking out on them Alfonso returns home to tend to his son who is gravely ill. He finds that his old house hasn’t changed, the woman who was once his wife is still working away with his daughter-in-law and grandson. The house is tucked away in the middle of sugar cane plantations that produce constant clouds of ash. Seventeen years after abandoning them, Alfonso will try to fit back in and save his family. In LAND AND SHADE (LA TIERRA Y LA SOMBRA in the original Spanish title) Colombia’s César Acevedo trains his camera on a small family living on a sugarcane farm, and with restraint and poetry expounds on the hazards of single crop farming, the nostalgia of separation and betrayal and the constant pain of survival.

Film’s had an excellent festival run, gathering a few prizes along the way, among other the Camera D’Or at the 2015 Cannes Festival and Special Jury Award at Thessaloniki.

Theatrical rollout information: film was released in its home country of Colombia in July of 2015 and in Brazil this past December. It is coming out in European theaters this month. No U.S. release date set as of yet.

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