Skip to main content

RAI FILM Festival takes place on 27-30 March 2025. Learn more.

Search our film database
2019

Cantadoras: Musical Memories of Life and Death in Colombia

Directed by María Fernanda Carrillo Sánchez

2017 – 70'

Synopsis

A portrait of life in rural Colombia, towards its Carribean coast, told through the words and songs of the resilient Afro-colombian singers that farm there. Through intimate interviews and the evocative chants of the bullerengeue (cumbia-based style traditionally sung exclusively by women), we learn of their everyday experiences of hardship and survival. They speak movingly of memories of violence at the hands of paramilitaries, and the power of song to build intergenerational strength and give voice to dignity and creativity. Weaving songs, interviews, and archive footage, Cantadoras is a musical journey through ancestral resistance to violence, from working in white-owned mines, civil war in which violence rest heavily on rural communities, and the challenges of today’s situation.

María Fernanda Carrillo Sánchez will attend this screening and take part in a Q&A.

View film website

RAI FILM Festival 2025

The next RAI FILM Festival will take place in person from 27-30 March 2025 at the Watershed Cinema and the Arnolfini International Centre for Contemporary Arts in Bristol (UK) and online throughout the month of April 2025.