The 27th Annual FilmFest DC officially began tonight in earnest with a full slate of films playing at various locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Our first film “coming straight out of Columbia” is the gritty drama, La Playa D.C.
The film focuses on Tomas (Luis Carlos Guevara), an Afro-Colombian teenager who fled the country’s Pacific coast pushed out by the war, faces the difficulties of growing up in a city if exclusion and racism. When Jairo (Andrés Murillo), his younger brother and closest friend disappears, Tomas plunges in the streets of the city. His search becomes an initiatory journey that compels him to face his past and to leave aside the influence of his is brothers in order to find his own identity. Through this journey, Tomas reveals a unique perspective of a vibrant and unstable city that, like Tomas, stands on the threshold between what once was and what might be.
Written and directed by Juan Andrés Arango Garcia, the film is a gritty tale of love, family and brothers at various levels of resignation and acceptance. Tomas is the older brother between his stylish older brother, Chaco and his drug-addicted younger sibling, Jairo. After his younger brother disappears for a couple of months in a drug binge and suddenly returns, his mother and step-dad refuse to let him stay home and soon Tomas follows him to the street. Jairo, in debt to drug dealers for getting high on his own supply, is resigned to his demise much to the dismay of Tomas.
After Jairo disappears again, Tomas hits the streets searching for him once again. He travels north and reconnects with Chaco and the two plan to leave but only after they’ve reconnected with Jairo. Under Garcia’s direction, to paraphrase Ice Cube, every hood is the same. If you stumbled into the film with no knowledge of the geography, it would be easy to assume that this story could have happened on the streets of NYC or in Cali. Chaco (James Solis) dreams of a better life, despite cutting hair part-time and washing cars to raise money. Meanwhile, Tomas is an artist and barber who only wants to save Jairo’s life by any means necessary.
La Playa D.C. is a bleak, somber look at life on the other side of the tracks where life doesn’t always give you want you want but definitely what you need.
Grade: B
FilmFest DC runs through April 21; for more information on tickets, visit http://filmfestdc.org/