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

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2019

Thinking like a Mountain

Directed by Alexander Hick

2018 – 91'

Synopsis

The Arhuacos are the guardians of the forest and the ice of Colombia’s highest mountain – the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. This indigenous community draw a sustained and singular spirituality from this unique environment, in which they have purposely isolated themselves. Whilst this community does not seem to have changed for centuries, its survival has been hard won. Thinking Like a Mountain is an elegant, meditative montage of images that introduces us to the Arhuacos, their cosmology, and their beautiful landscapes – and the shifting political contexts on the fringes of their lands. It is a story of resistance and preservation, through a voyage in space and time: from the shores of the Caribbean to the stars that light up the night on the glacier; from the Arhuacos encounter with the first European colonists, to the homecoming of an Arhuaco guerrillero following the laying-down of arms by the FARC.

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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.