Darkness, apprehension, fear, and a longing for escape sit at the heart of Stillz’s experimental, unnerving, and fascinating debut feature, Barrio Triste, screening at SXSW London.
Set in the late 1980s in the neighbourhood of Barrio Triste in the centre of Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city, Stillz’s movie sits somewhere between found footage, coming-of-age, and a photographic and sonic essay. This is a movie that has no firm narrative guardrails or need for genre labels, as it captivates and confuses the audience simultaneously.
There is no screenplay per se, just feeling, atmosphere, and a clear desire to reflect upon the trauma of kids forced to become adults before their time in a city where beauty and ugliness go hand in hand. In the winding lanes of this mountainous city, nestled in the Andes, life is a game of survival that starts at an early age, and for a group of teenage boys, a stolen TV camera offers them the opportunity to document that life and the chaos, criminality, trauma and search for meaning it breeds.
As our teenage boys become cameramen, each only a stone’s throw from an act or decision that could see them disappear forever in a world of cartels, fear and social control – the missing kids posters serving as a continual reminder – the intensity of Barrio Triste becomes almost unbearable.
The grainy, frenetic Betamax film introduces us to their volatile, dangerous world, from a violent jewellery store robbery to the hideouts they call home, the religious iconography that surrounds them, and the horror that lurks around every corner, all of which the teenage mind of each boy finds difficult to process. Interspliced with this found footage is a documentary-like interview with a boy in which the feelings he keeps locked away begin to surface, providing us with the devastating emotional heartbeat of this unique picture.
Many will be familiar with Stillz’s previous work alongside Bad Bunny and others on a range of music videos, but Barrio Triste is an entirely different beast. Barrio Triste has a guerrilla-filmmaking aesthetic, enhanced by Stillz’s decision to cast local kids and earn the trust of the cartels that run many of the neighbourhoods he filmed in. Add to this guerrilla-style Arca’s invasive electronic score, and the result leaves you breathless, disoriented, and in need of some quiet reflective space as the credits roll.
There are parallels with films such as City of God. Yet, in rejecting a traditional narrative path, Barrio Triste feels utterly unique in its exploration of violence, trauma, and the brutality of growing up in neighbourhoods where drugs, crime, and fear sit at the heart of the adolescent experience.
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