Best Colombian documentary movies

The Heights of Cumanday (1965)

Calentoso, is a young boy that must transport mules across the mountains. He will be challenged to discover the deep secrets that the summit entails. This film is based on the legend of the ghost of the Ruiz Snow Mountain in the Region of Cumanday in Colombia.

The Boy from Medellín (2020)

Colombian reggaeton singer J Balvin prepares for his 2019 homecoming concert amid intense political turmoil.

Morat: Balas Perdidas (2021)

Morat, the band with the highest amount of tickets sold in LATAM and Spain in the past years offered an unforgettable concert on December 15th at Wizink Center in Madrid as a final clasp of its mythical "Balas Perdidas Tour". They went through the greatest hits that they have been harvesting year after year consolidating them as an icon on the Pop Scene.

Back to Escalona (2023)

Carlos and Egidio embark on a journey to find Rafael Escalona’s lost notebook. This notebook contains unpublished songs as well as the composer’s greatest hits and will be the roadmap for the legendary band La Provincia to record a new album like never before.

The Evolution of Horror Cinema Worldwide (2025)

Why do people no longer see this type of stories nowadays? How can this notion be awakened? Which films should begin to feed back from the past and balance them with the current horror?

Mute Fire (2019)

On 6 March 1906, four men were executed for the attempted murder of Colombian president Rafael Reyes. The event was photographed, and the photos were later used for a fictionalised film on the failed coup. From then on, cinema in this South American country has been inextricably linked to its violent history. Moving images have been used for historiography, propaganda, disinformation and to instil unity in a nation that refuses to come together. Falsos positivos, murdered youths disguised as guerrillas by the army to simulate military success, are a common element.

Colombia rumbo al mundial (1997)

If God Were a Woman (2021)

Laura lives with her parents in L’Alfàz del Pi, in Valencia. Three years ago, she started her transition. Laura now faces adolescence, and with it, a series of changes that will mean a new chapter for her and her family. Each decision they make could be definitive.

Gamin (1977)

After an extensive immersion work on abandoned childhood, Ciro Durán presents, from his point of view, the life of street children, who have broken all family ties and have regrouped to survive in the concrete jungle.

Carropasajero (2024)

The sound of metal creaking as if something is about to break. An old pickup truck adapted to carry passengers crosses the La Guajira desert in Colombia. With the wind come voices that merge among the passengers who travel there. A Wayuu woman returns to her territory, accompanied by her family, after years of exile due to a paramilitary massacre. A cyclical journey where the time layers of the territory touch and the border between the living and the dead is diluted.

Decembers (2018)

The ghost of a photo-journalist killed during the December 1989 US invasion of Panama returns exactly 10 years later to resolve his family’s conflicts. Inspired by the story of his own family, in his feature-length debut, Enrique Costas Ríos poetically blends together archival footage and fictional scenes that recreate events from the invasion while tracing links to the true-life story of Spanish journalist Juantxu Rodriguez who was killed during the invasion.

The Lost Children (2024)

After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.

Operation Hope - The Children Lost in the Amazon (2024)

The incredible true story of four children, who survive a plane crash deep in the dangerous Colombian Amazon. They are lost and alone for 40 days while the military and indigenous guard race against time to find them.

Higuita: The Way of the Scorpion (2023)

From humble origins to soccer legend, this documentary captures the rise of Colombia’s René Higuita, from iconic career to personal controversies.

Colombia: Wild Magic (2015)

A wonderful country full of amazing creatures in America called Colombia, seen as never before, accompanied by incredible shots, make it a must-see place for adventurers and wildlife lovers this natural paradise.

The Accidental Twins (2024)

Two sets of identical twins switched at birth in Colombia explore their complex history and new identities in this captivating documentary.

El Sendero de la Anaconda (2019)

In the most remote areas of the Amazon rainforest, a writer and his anthropologist friend find communities that have resisted change for centuries.

Broken Idol: The Undoing of Diomedes Díaz (2022)

This documentary chronicles Diomedes Díaz's rise as one of Colombia's most iconic singers, and his downfall after being accused of killing a fan.

El Film Justifica los Medios (2021)

Through the recovery and re-montage of various film fragments and the commentary of three filmmakers - Carlos Álvarez, Marta Rodríguez, and Carlos Sánchez - a historical and aesthetic journey is proposed through a foundational moment for filmmaking in Colombia (1965-1975), whose images constitute a revolution on the screen. This documentary journey tells how, at a time when the film industry was just being consolidated, a generation of young filmmakers brought about a moment of rupture, subverting official cinema by taking the media to experiment, denounce and narrate other realities in Colombia at the end of the 1960s.

Cesó la Horrible Noche (2013)

The film is based on the material filmed by the director's grandfather in the terrible days of the outbreak of the Bogotazo (to understand us, and saving all distances, something like the Civil War for the Spanish), some images that by themselves justify the existence of the documentary, and that at some point they come to shudder. The horrible night ceased (title extracted from the Colombian national anthem) manages to catch the viewer with his warm portrait of the figure of the father and, above all, his remarkable ability to evoke a seemingly idyllic but that ends up revealing in his interior an uncontainable fury and destructive Frankly, we thought that this documentary essay would take some prize, and we are sure that it will be like this in the near future, because it has something, in its images and in the way of treating them, that remains in the memory.

Ciro and Me (2018)

Ciro Galindo was born on August 29th, 1952 in Colombia. Wherever he's gone, war has found him. After twenty years of friendship, I understood Ciro 's life sums up Colombia's history. As so many Colombians he is a survivor, who has run away from war for more than sixty years, and now dreams of living in peace. "Ciro and Me" is a journey to memory, seeking to give sorrow words; a journey, similar to that of Colombia in times of peace, in search to recover its dignity.

Golden Girls (2021)

They graduated from a boarding school in 1968. 50 years passed very quickly. Amelia and her classmates meet today at their old school to celebrate their past times at the boarding school, knowing that this may be the last time they see each other alive.

Horsemen of Paradise (2020)

'El Llano' is offered as a paradise; a delirious experience where nature discovers its enigmatic beauty in couplets. Here, music, landscape, riders and horses star in a vibrant and robust culture, brought to the world stage in the verses and voice of Orlando "El Cholo" Valderrama, but unknown in its greatness by the inhabitants of the city.

El testigo: Caín y Abel (2018)

The Colombian photographer Jesús Abad Colorado looks back into his photographic work portraying the Colombian armed conflict and visits territories affected by it, including San José de Apartadó, Ganada and Bojayá to show the photographs he took to those who appeared in them. He reflects on the horrors of war and the future of peace in Colombia.

A Paper Tiger (2008)

The life of Pedro Manrique Figueroa, a pioneer of collage in Colombia, is both incomplete and contradictory. Taking his life and work as a pretext, this mockumentary takes the viewer on a journey through history from the year 1934 up until 1981, when the artist mysteriously disappeared from view.

Carta a una sombra (2015)

In August 1987, Héctor Abad Gómez was murdered on the streets of downtown Medellín during the darkest moments of the dirty war against the Colombian left. Why was he killed? Who could have had a vested interest in silencing a university professor, human rights activist and doctor who was a precursor of the concept of "public health" in Colombia?

Patient (2015)

PATIENT is the word that defines us as we follow medical instructions or have to stay calm while we wait. In Colombia, a country where the harsh health system requires its users to face absurd bureaucratic obstacles to access its services, PATIENT is not only the one who has the disease, but also the one in the daily struggle ensuring that his or her loved one receives all necessary needs. Nubia is a PATIENT, a mother who, despite living with the anguish of possibly losing her daughter to an aggressive cancer, firmly gets to overcome the labyrinths established by the Health System processes upon which her daughter's life depends.

The Supreme Uneasiness: Incessant Portrait of Fernando Vallejo (2003)

Freely expressing his loves and hates, controversial Colombian and openly gay writer Fernando Vallejo (living in Mexico) breaks with an ingrained literary tradition: that of the omniscient writer who sees and knows everything. The film covers his literary output and his many interests: film, music, science, and politics. Made with the full support and participation of the author, it provides a portrait of one of the best Spanish-language writers.

The Tower (2018)

On March 17, 2004, an explosive device was activated at the Piloto Public Library in Medellín, where much of the photographic archive of Colombian history is kept. A photograph is the only evidence of this barbarism.

Under Fire (2020)

Bajo Fuego depicts the unraveling of peace for a group of coca growing peasants in the southwest of Colombia. The film takes the perspective of the ‘cocaleros’ and over a period of 3 years shows how they survive in the midst of the most difficult circumstances. The government delays in fulfilling what it promised in the agreement, economic difficulties arise for families that substituted their coca trees, and the increasing presence of armed groups start to terrorise the region. The promised peace in Colombia turns out to be an illusion when the newly armed groups take control, assassinations occur, and the films’ main protagonists are being threatened with their lives and displaced. Even though peace was supposedly signed in Colombia, Bajo Fuego shows that for many in the southwest of Colombia the war continues.