The Colombian Film Academy announced today that La Suprema, the debut feature by Felipe Holguín Caro, will represent Colombia at the 97th Academy Awards in the International Feature competition. This Afro-Colombian drama was also selected as the country’s official candidate for the Goya Awards in Spain.
The film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last year, follows Laureana, an Afro-Colombian teenager living in La Suprema, a town in the Colombian Caribbean erased from the country’s maps, where electricity has yet to arrive. When she discovers that her uncle, Anastasio Páez, will fight for the world boxing title in an event broadcast live on television, she tries to convince Efraín, Páez’s former trainer, to train her to box professionally. The biggest obstacle to her ambitions is her grandmother, Pabla, who—under the pretext of wanting to protect her—tries to impose her will.
Motivated by Laureana and her friends, Carmelo and Ramón, the community comes together against all odds to bring electricity and a television to the main square in order to watch the fight. In the end, the events serve as a catalyst to reveal that their true battle is against being forgotten.
Colombia earned its first and only Oscar nomination in 2015 with Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent / El abrazo de la serpiente, and was shortlisted in 2018 with Birds of Passage /Pájaros de verano, also directed by Guerra, this time in collaboration with Cristina Gallego.
