‘A Vanishing Fog’ Review: SXSW-Winning Eco-Parable Excavates the Fading Highlands of Colombia
Hope Runs High Pictures
Since its genesis in the mid-20th century, Magic Realism has become one of Colombia's most influential contributions to its vibrant and complex cultural fabric. Concretized by famed writers such as Gabriel José García, the creative movement combines the hardships of everyday life with ruminations on historical memory and touches of surrealism and science fiction, forming highly distinctive impressions of the place and time in which they were produced. For his latest feature, A Vanishing Fog (Entre la niebla), Colombian filmmaker Augusto Sandino channels the traditions of Magic Realism to assemble a dreamlike (or nightmarish) eco-parable that fictionalizes the annihilation of one of the country's last untamed landscapes and the tribulations of those who call it home.
Roughly one hundred miles southwest of Bogotá lies the rugged moorlands of Páramo De Sumapaz, where sky and earth intermingle among otherworldly terrain. Living in a small bungalow on the desolate plateau is the lonesome figure of F (Sebastian Pii in his first on-screen role), a thirty-something guardian of the mountains whose only companion is his incapacitated father, whom F cares for. Having lived in the area his entire life, F is deeply familiar with the landscapes he roams, every tree, rock, and birdsong, and fights to protect it at all costs. Through radio transmissions, we learn that F's homeland is under the siege of encroaching Capitalist interests from America, with mining operations increasingly depleting the region and forcing out its Indigenous populations through payoffs and violent intimidation. Caught between the link to his native lands and a longing for human connection somewhere far away, F is forced to face his dilemma: should he stay or go?
Hope Runs High Pictures
Abstaining from a conventional narrative structure, Sandino's self-penned screenplay for A Vanishing Fog chooses to lean into its Magic Realism impulses to deliver a truly sensorial experience, one much more fascinated with delivering mood through imagery and sound rather than traditional storytelling. This approach is most evident through the film's expressive visual language, brought to life by the efforts of cinematographer Gio Park. Utilizing the earth tones of Páramo De Sumapaz's rugged terrains, scenes shift between quiet reveries of nature to jarring punctuations of bullet-riddled meadows and grotesque panoramas of mining facilities. Mirroring this oscillation, Park's camera also tracks F through the mundane and lonely reality of his day-to-day life and contrasts it with surreal visions of his inner fantasies and dreams.
While the film nearly refrains from dialogue altogether, Sandino and his collaborators developed a fictional language called Sunapakún, used by F and his community, drawing inspiration from the Indigenous societies of Colombia's hinterlands and their traditions. In a measure to accentuate F's isolation, A Vanishing Fog's most consistent form of communication comes by way of subtitled excerpts from the protagonist's journal, including lines that perfectly reflect F's frame of thinking in the face of his rapidly deteriorating predicament: "There is no future here."
Sandino's vision interacts with Colombia's past and present economic circumstances in opaque yet intriguing ways. As with other regions of the world transformed by European colonization, the country has struggled to dismantle the exploitation of its people and abundant natural resources. Through F's experience, the film emphasizes the continued interference of global superpowers in forcing Colombia's infrastructure to align with Capitalist ideas, the continuation of valuing monetary gain over human souls and natural ecosystems despite the threat of their erasure in particularly vulnerable areas, such as that of Páramo De Sumapaz.
Hope Runs High Pictures
In confluence with A Vanishing Fog's more profound views, we have the perspective of F as a mesmerizing central figure, the sort of cinematic physical presence that coordinates with the work's particular surreality. In the role, Pii begets an aching desolation, a heartbreaking longing for contact or touch that leaves him resorting to soft fruit. The surrounding landscapes have anchored his entire life, yet he learns English and contemplates his capitulation to the corruptions of the contemporary world, understanding he would leave behind everything he has ever known.
With A Vanishing Fog, Sandino proves his ambitious filmmaking sensibilities, producing a genre-bending work of surrealism that platforms his anxieties for the welfare of Colombia's fate, particularly as it further converts into a Capitalist power. The first feature to ever be shot in the Páramo De Sumapaz region, the movie's concentration on Indigenous and environmental degradation at the hands of unseen forces communicates effectively with contemporary crises worldwide. Although some viewers could experience its art film leanings as too arcane, the marvel of its visual language alone suggests A Vanishing Fog could find a laudatory audience.
4/5
2021 | 76 min| Color | English & Sunapakún (tongue)
‘A Vanishing Fog’ had its world premiere in competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. The film went on to win the ZEISS Cinematography Award at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. ‘A Vanishing Fog’ begins its U.S. theatrical release at Los Angeles’s Laemmle Theatres on April 23, courtesy of Hope Runs High Pictures. Click here to find showtimes near you.