Colombian-Canadian filmmaker Juan Andrés Arango returns to features with “Where the River Begins,” a Colombian-set drama that follows a young, widowed Emberá mother and her daughter as they leave a violent Bogotá neighbourhood and attempt to reach the Andágueda River, the jungle landscape they once called home.
The film marks Arango’s first time centring of an Indigenous female protagonist and continues his exploration of migration, marginalisation and the blurred line between memory and present reality, themes that have shaped his work since “La Playa DC” (Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2012) and “X500” (TIFF 2016).
Shot across Bogotá, Medellín, Quibdó and deep into the Chocó rainforest, “Where the River Begins” combines social realism with a strong sensory dimension, drawing on Emberá cosmologies, the belief of the jungle as judge and the experience of communities displaced by Colombia’s long conflict.
Working with non-professional actors, the director cast Girleza Duave Cerezo from the Emberá Dobidá community as Yajaira, and Juan David Junca Linares as Jhon, a teenage gang member who joins the journey after a confrontation leaves Yajaira’s nephew dead. The film follows the characters’ movement from cramped urban peripheries to a rainforest marked by loss, armed groups and erasure; an all too real trajectory that mirrors the displacement of many Indigenous communities and the disappearance of villages across Colombia’s Pacific coast.
“This return is a complex and non-linear process, since the violence has mutated and continues to exist in many of these territories, and because the war has transformed these spaces, distancing them from the places of memory that their former inhabitants carry within themselves. This search for the spaces of our roots in a country transformed by war is my main motivation for telling this story.” the director told Variety.
Produced by Paola Pérez Nieto of Inercia Películas, with co-production partners Midi La Nuit (Canada) and Stær (Norway), the film accumulated substantial international support during development. It participated in the Cinéfondation Workshop, Sørfond Pitching Forum, Cine Qua Non Lab, BAM Stories and San Sebastián’s Co-Production Forum, where it won the Dale! Award.
Backing includes SODEC, Telefilm Canada, Sørfond, CALQ, the FDC production fund, and regional support from the Cali city authorities. The production wrapped a two-month shoot in July 2025. “Juan Andrés and I first met on his debut feature, ‘La Playa DC,’ where I worked as the line producer. Since then, we’ve maintained a creative relationship.” said Perez Nieto. “However, it wasn’t until 2019, when I shifted fully into producing through Inercia Películas and he began developing this profoundly feminine film, that he saw me as the right person to produce his project.”
Presenting at Ventana Sur’s rough-cut Primer Corte, the team is seeking an international sales agent, distributors in key territories and festival programmers, alongside partners to close the remaining financing on a $2.2 million budget.
Variety spoke with Arango about the film’s political and cultural context, his work with Emberá collaborators, and how the edit is shaping the emotional spine of the story.
The film ties territorial displacement to a more inward exile — loss of voice, of community, of spiritual grounding. How early did this dual structure emerge in your writing?
Juan Andrés Arango: “Where the River Begins” wants to explore the return that thousands of Colombians have gradually begun to make after the peace agreements with the paramilitary groups and the FARC allowed them to go back to the territories they were forced to abandon because of the war. This return is a complex and non-linear process, since the violence has mutated and continues to exist in many of these territories, and because the war has transformed these spaces, distancing them from the places of memory that their former inhabitants carry within themselves. This search for the spaces of our roots in a country transformed by war is my main motivation for telling this story.
Several scenes hinge on Yajaira sensing danger or “hearing” the jungle. How did you work with the community to depict spiritual knowledge without exoticising it?
The film’s script was inspired by several years of conversations with Embera youth living in Colombia’s main cities. One recurring element in these conversations was the longing for the space of the rainforest and how it remained present in the dreams and imagination of Embera adolescents in the city. The film depicts this presence of the jungle, which at moments takes the place of the city, suggesting the space it occupies within the protagonist. The script went through different versions that were shared with members of the Embera community in order to refine the way the jungle’s spiritual presence is portrayed and to present the Embera community in a respectful way.
You’ve consistently used non-professional actors. What specific processes did acting coach Catalina Arroyave and you build to help Girleza Duave Cerezo access Yajaira’s inner world?
Girleza, or Anyela as she prefers to be called, has a personal history and an expressive essence that are very close to those of the character Yajaira. The work with Catalina focused on jointly finding the expressive paths specific to her personality so that she could convey to the other actors and to the camera the energy we already knew she possessed.
The film touches directly on paramilitary displacement, a topic deeply linked to land restitution debates in Colombia. How did you balance political precision with the film’s dream-memory tone?
My intention with the film is to explore war, displacement, and land restitution without ever exposing them explicitly or taking a political stance toward them, but rather by giving them the role of a backdrop—an omnipresent force that influences the characters’ everyday lives. This comes from my interest as a filmmaker in exploring conflict not through explicit violence, but through the psychological consequences that decades of war have left in us, and how we must learn to coexist with these consequences in order to move forward.
The film avoids easy redemption arcs. Was it always clear to you that forgiveness in this story would be conditional, ambiguous, and rooted in place rather than personal transformation?
The film aims to be as fair as possible to the character of Yajaira. For this reason, it does not present a clear redemption or an ending in which all the threads of the story are resolved, but rather a direction of movement. Through the story, I hope to bring the viewer closer to the complex and harsh reality faced by young Embera people in the cities, but also to the great human and cultural strength they possess. I believe that it is in this resilient strength where the film’s hope resides.
You shot from Bogotá to the Chocó rainforest with local communities supporting the production. What agreements or collaborative structures were essential for filming respectfully?
The film is the result of three years of joint work with Embera communities located in the Chocó rainforest and in Bogotá. This work was coordinated by Nury Dumaza, the project’s researcher, who is a member of the community. Together with her, we approached the community leaders and elders to present the project’s initial idea as well as its development through the different versions of the script. They contributed – and continue to contribute – their knowledge and guidance, without which it would have been impossible to carry out the project. On a practical level, the communities took part in the film’s production at every stage, with members participating in the production and directing teams, acting, food preparation, transportation, and guidance within the territory.
As you assemble the first cut with editor Xi Feng, what has surprised you most, any emotional through-lines that only arose in the edit?
I think what surprised me the most during the editing process with Xi was the expressive force with which the jungle emerged in the film. We had always been aware of its importance in the story, but shooting in the rainforest is a bit like swimming in a river – you become so absorbed in the current that it’s difficult to analyze anything rationally. Rediscovering the jungle in the footage was therefore a very emotional surprise.
You call this your most personal film. Has making it shifted the direction of your next project, in terms of scale, geography, or thematic concerns?
I don’t think there is a change of direction in my work as a director, but rather a deepening of the themes of identity, transformation and belonging that fascinate me. I believe that “Where the River Begins” allowed me to approach these themes from a more intimate and spiritual perspective, one that will continue to grow in my future films.
Anything else you would like to say…
This film is the result of passionate work carried out under difficult shooting conditions by people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. I believe that it is precisely the fact that we are different, yet want to communicate something essential together, that gives strength to the process and shapes this film’s final result.
variety.com
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