Like Magic

“Cali is a magical place, but it’s also a dangerous one,” a young girl learns from her grandmother. It will take her years of pain and confusion to fully comprehend the meaning of such a warning and the profound contradictions that make up this city in Colombia. Here, a genuine joie de vivre and a deep disdain for life coexist in explosive ways, and it’s here where she grows to become a filmmaker in search of answers.

For her feature debut, Colombian filmmaker Melissa Saavedra Gil embarks on a journey that takes her as close as possible to confronting the story that shaped her life. Growing up in the 1990s, she experienced to some degree — as did many of her fellow countrypeople — the violence that permeated the social fabric of the city. As many ‘magicians’ dreamed of and fought to become obscenely rich overnight and as widespread corruption ensured justice became an abstract concept separated from reality, people suffered.

Weaving a vast trove of archival footage with testimonies from the time of the crime she investigates, Mela, as her grandma calls her, opens up cracks to shed light on both the personal and the collective stories that shaped the identity of her generation. In so doing, she finds a place where her relationship with the truth might just allow space for healing to take place.

DIANA CADAVID