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Juanita Onzaga

The Jungle Knows You Better Than You Do

Doc. expérimental | 4k | couleur | 20:20 | Colombie | 2017

Colombia is a land of ghosts. Two siblings roam these mystical landscapes in search of their dead father`s spirit. Their journey takes them from Bogota to the Colombian jungle, through realms of thought and deep into their haunted dreams. Here they will find some answers and attract unexpected company.

Juanita Onzaga is a Colombian-belgian film director and cinematographer playing with hybrid forms between the fiction, the documentary and the experimental. Within her narrations she touches the importance of memory, death and imagination, creating tales that reflect different ways of perceiving reality within strong political contexts. We wander in dreams, jungles and cities surrounded by spirits. Marrying this way a sense of emptiness in realism in an intimate way with a quest for mysticism, where the invisible gives more answers and meanings than the physical world. Her short film The Jungle Knows You Better Than You Do won the International Jury prize for best short film generation 14plus at Berlin International Film Festival 2017, the highly acclaimed VAF Wildcard and other prizes, while being selected worldwide in festivals as San Sebastian, Sao Paulo, Reykjavik, Vilnius and Cartagena. She studied cinema in Brussels, obtaining a Bachelor in Direction of Photography at IAD and a Master in Film Direction at Sint-Lukas Brussel. She worked as a director and DOP for several short films, documentaries and video clips. Now she is currently developing her first feature film "The Landscapes That You Seek" at Torino Film Lab.