Proxima Special Jury Prize, Karlovy Vary Film Festival
This experimental essay interweaves three stories: a female director reconstructing the life of a dead transgender woman through film; an intimate study of the filmmaker’s family, who also dealt with a missing relative; and the testimony of forensic pathologist Karen Quintero. This formally unremitting work finds a compelling balance between the personal and the political, adding conceptual reflections on the texture of the region, on cartography, and the unspoken traumas of Colombia’s modern history.
Federico Atehortúa is the director of the documentary feature Mute Fire (83`), which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2019. The film received the Best Trans-Andean Film award at the Transcinema Festival and the Idartes Award for Best Feature Film in Colombia. In 2022, he directed the documentary series A More Conclusive Destiny Three-episode series, each 25 minutes long), which examines the Colombian peace process. In 2025, he completed his second feature film, Forensics, focusing on the critical issue of disappearances in Colombia.
Invasion Cine
