La Laguna del Soldado (2025): A film by Pablo Álvarez-Mesa

Part of the Dandelions Screening Series presented by Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E).

Synopsis: 200 years after Simón Bolívar’s liberation campaign across Colombia, The Soldier’s Lagoon retraces The Liberator’s journey across the high-altitude marshlands while searching for glimpses of his ghost still present in this historically contested territory. Reflecting on the construction of oral history and its relation to the land, La Laguna del Soldado traverses the páramo, a living and elusive archive, navigating through the dense fog suspended between Simon Bolivar’s past and Colombia’s present. La Laguna del Soldado is the second in a three-part series of films exploring the intersection of oral narratives, political outcomes, and the territories marked by Simón Bolívar’s passage during the Liberation Campaign of Colombia in 1819. The first completed part is Bicentenario (2021).

Bio: Pablo Alvarez-Mesa is a filmmaker, cinematographer and editor working mainly in non fiction, whose films have played and earned awards at international film festivals including Berlinale, IFFR, Viennale, MoMA, Visions du Reel, and RIDM. His work in cinema lies in the relationship between fact and fiction; between what is recalled and what is inevitably constructed. Pablo is Sundance Doc Fund grantee, an affiliate member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University, and a Berlinale Talents, Banff Centre for the Arts and Canadian Film Centre alumnus.

Location: Critical Media Lab, Peterson Hall, Room 108