La Sirga

CANNES 2012 HIGHLIGHT: William Vega's La Sirga (Colombia, 2012) - A slow-burn Andean fable of considerable evocative power, William Vega’s first feature is the latest in an impressive string of Colombian arthouse films that includes Los Viajes del Vento and El Vuelco del Cangrejo (on which Vega worked as assistant director). Set on the remote La Cocha lake high up in the mountains of south-western Chile, this is a film that overcomes the occasional mannered art-film cliché to weave a dreamlike elegy about a war-torn part of Colombia that is at the same time a nicely underplayed coming-of-age story.