Music video director STILLZ makes a stunning feature debut with a trippy, found footage–style descent into ’90s Medellín. Backed by ARCA’s electrifying score, Barrio Triste follows four teens as they document their own rowdiness in a hauntingly poetic portrait of violence and loneliness.
For his feature directorial debut, STILLZ, best known for his music video work with artists like Bad Bunny, delivers a bold and hallucinatory vision that marks him as a filmmaker to watch. Fans of American auteur Harmony Korine might recognize his thumbprint here (more Trash Humpers than Mister Lonely, to be clear) although this is the first film made by Korine’s production house without him at the helm. And this project is quite something. STILLZ plunges the audience into the heart of a marginalized neighborhood in Medellín, Colombia, likely in the early ’90s, an era of searing violence and social rupture.
This take on the found-footage genre follows four teenagers as they go for broke on the streets, hills, and raw brick houses of an indifferent city. After stealing the camera of a local TV news crew reporting on a bizarre story supposedly taking place on their very turf, the kids never stop shooting their violent antics.
Steering clear of exploitation, Barrio Triste delves deeper into the ’hood and deeper into the night in a trippy, strangely poetic way that slowly reveals the loneliness behind the boys’ cruelty. The non-stop soundtrack was composed specifically for the film by avant-garde provocateur ARCA, and it makes the highs and lows of the narrative all the more enthralling.
Be bold, like this unflinching film, and see if you come out of Barrio Triste feeling the same way you did when you entered.
DIANA CADAVID
Screenings
Scotiabank 9
TIFF Lightbox 2
Scotiabank 11
Scotiabank 7