Where the River Begins

Juan Andrés Arango

Drama

Programme: Centrepiece
Year: 2026
Runtime: 102 min
Country: Canada, Colombia, Norway
Language: Emberá / Spanish
Premiere: World Premiere

Yajaira, a young but strong Embera woman, lives with her daughter Maria in a violent Bogotá neighborhood. Haunted by dreams of the jungle, she longs to return to the village she once called home. After a tragedy strikes, they have no choice but to leave. Jhon, a charismatic young gang member, joins them on their dangerous journey to the Andágueda River, driven by motives he keeps hidden. Donde Comienza el Río is a poignant, poetic film where a perilous escape becomes a journey of healing. As the jungle reemerges through memory and dream, masks fall and reality is touched by the magic of Yajaira’s inner world.

From the TIFF programme

In Juan Andrés Arango’s bracing and poetic third feature, an Emberá woman displaced by violence undertakes a dangerous journey to find a better life for herself and her daughter.

Working with an extraordinary cast of non-professional actors, Juan Andrés Arango returns to the Festival with a vividly rendered story of migration, memory, and resilience that may be the Colombian Canadian director’s strongest work to date.

Arango’s third feature stars Girleza Duave Cerezo as Yajaira, a young Indigenous woman living in Bogotá after being displaced from her Emberá village in the Chocó rainforest due to paramilitary violence. By day, she sells handiworks on the street while caring for her daughter María (Ana Michell Nama Dumaza); by night, she dreams of the world she was forced to leave behind. In the wake of another tragedy, Yajaira sets out on an arduous and sometimes dangerous voyage home alongside María and Jhon (Juan David Junca Linares), a teenage gang member with a terrible weight on his conscience.

Arrango earned international renown for La Playa DC (2012) and X500 (TIFF ’16), two other gritty dramas featuring remarkable young casts. While his latest shares those films’ urgency and richly textured naturalism, it also introduces elements that are more poetic and more poignant.

Equally affecting is the way in which Yajaira’s story becomes a means to convey wider hopes of finding ways forward — and homeward — after decades of war and displacement. With its powerful flow of images and emotions, Where The River Begins becomes an uncommonly moving experience in every sense.

JASON ANDERSON

Content advisory: coarse language, violence