Organized crime and drug dealing has been a topic of many a film, sometimes even glamorizing the whole endeavor, but rarely do these depictions acknowledge the weight it can do to a culture, particularly indigenous cultures. Birds of Passage is a film about drug dealers, but it’s a much more distinct take, tackling Colombia’s reputation for the drug trade through the lens of an indigenous group that hasn’t been totally colonized, that still keeps its language, rituals, and legends, but is still pushed to the brink due to far more lucrative reasons. It does take fairly familiar plot points, but Birds of Passages transforms the narco crime drama with a different direction.
"Richly textured images both unfold the action in tense detail and enmesh it in its social context, rescuing cultural memory from tragic devastation."
— Richard Brody
During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.
La Guajira peninsula, Colombia, late 1960s. To pay off the dowry for his marriage to Zaida of the influential Pushaina family, fellow Wayuu Rapayet and his family enter the marijuana business, though this eventually triggers a fratricidal war that ends up destroying their lives and culture.
The Wayuu people. Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra are not Wayuu, but they introduce Wayuu cultures and traditions with a lot of care that more directors should emulate.
Maybe it’s because 2018 was a pretty competitive year for the Oscars, but we can’t believe this wasn't nominated.
Cannes
1 nomination
Sundance
1 nomination
"Suffice it to say that while watching Birds of Passage this critic couldn't stop thinking about Martin Scorsese's Casino, with its lucid and kinetic dissection of the annihilation of a subculture at the hands of global capitalism."
— Manu Yáñez