A Haunting Discovered-Footage Thriller from Stillz and Concord Korine

Barrio Triste begins with a sudden theft. A subject reporter in Medellín, Colombia, relays that there have been quite a few studies of mysterious lights coming from the sky, accompanied by unusual metallic sounds. After which, in a flash, a bunch of younger, shaved-headed teenagers assault him, stealing the camcorder within the course of. From there, Barrio Triste takes on its kind as a found-footage thriller of an unusual type, with dollops of science fiction undergirding a unfastened narrative of deserted youngsters messing about the actual neighborhood that offers the movie its identify.

Helmed by photographer and music video director Stillz, who’s extra generally recognized for his frequent collaborations with music artist Unhealthy Bunny, Barrio Triste has plenty of non secular commonality with the movie’s producer, Concord Korine. Barrio Triste is EDGLRD’s first mission not directed by him, however Stillz’s characteristic debut is said to Trash Humpers as a lot in kind as in operate.

Extra vital than its wayward narrative beats is its clear function as a pseudo-documentary, if not in actuality than in spirit, shedding gentle on a era of late Eighties, early Nineties youngsters whose disappearances in each literal and figurative methods have left Stillz perpetually traumatized. The director described the sensation like a monster that hasn’t gone away in his introduction, learn in absentia, at Past Fest in Los Angeles.

Barrio Triste Is Movie As An Act Of Witness

True to that context, Barrio Triste is evident in its mission. Wielded by one of many gang members, the digital camera turns into a window into the chaotic neighborhood of a society left to die on the margins, a possible mirroring of Stillz’s personal understanding of the lens as witness. The digital grain and blown-out lighting, endemic to the camcorder of the time, simply interprets properly into Stillz’s pursuit of footage that feels each DIY and otherworldly.

In an early sequence, the gang robs a jewellery retailer and, in a frantic escape, kills an outdated male teller. However for probably the most half, the movie is each quotidian and ethereal, capturing in off-handed methods how neighborhood perpetuates itself even in occasions of magnificent strife. The movie has quite a few hanging compositions, maybe none extra so than the sight of a metallic band enjoying on the lip of a mountain of particles the place a home as soon as sat.

In between these odd scenes of this decrepit neighborhood is a sequence of intimate interviews with a number of of the younger characters. Who’s conducting these conversations and for what function isn’t made definitively clear, however one of many topics, Piojo (Juan Pablo Baena), movingly, devastatingly, describes how his parentage and the shortage thereof have straight led to the inadvertent abandonment of his personal youngster. The questions in these interviews are distinctly philosophical in nature — “Do you concentrate on goals?” “What does happiness imply?” — and in response, Piojo and firm present an perception that’s directly revealing and unnervingly self-aware.

About two-thirds of the way in which via, Barrio Triste makes a tough left flip in direction of science fiction in sequences which might be paying homage to AGGRO DR1FT of their mix of unique and lo-fi photographs. Provocative although these moments are, they by no means fairly work as something however a jarring departure. The movie is at its greatest when it’s earnest. Its extra experimental decisions appear considerably misplaced, and, consequently, the movie isn’t fairly the cohesive mission it desires to be.

Accentuated by Venezuelan artist Arca’s overwhelming and bombastic rating, which explodes out and in with out warning, the movie is an uncomfortable mixture of normalcy and destruction. That discomfort is, at occasions, thrilling and, at others, extreme. In an prolonged sequence, the digital camera follows a personality as they stroll up and down a dimly lit road whereas Arca’s rating rattles like an alien’s cry. However the continued exhaustion, purposeful although it might be, creates an undesirable boredom.

Nonetheless, the movie is generally fairly affecting, magnetic, and mesmerizing. The discovered footage of the movie offers Barrio Triste its clear function in capturing a way of those folks’s lives that goes properly past statistics. These should not merely “gangsters” however youngsters with goals which have largely been destroyed by a authorities that has largely deserted them, and in that absence, worlds proceed regardless. Males will bond, communities will develop, and, for higher or for worse, resourcefulness is borne from desperation.

Barrio Triste screened on the 2025 Past Fest.