Birds of Passage

In northern Colombia, Rapayet, of the Wayuu people, has to raise the bride price to marry. He starts by selling marijuana to young Americans. The business grows, the family gets rich, and the rules of the clan begin to collide with the rules of trade. It ends in a family war. The subject is not the drug trade but tradition dissolving in the face of money. In Wayuu society disputes are settled by a word-carrier who mediates; as the money grows nobody listens to the mediator, and that is where the tragedy comes from. The form is divided into five parts, each named like a song, and the narrative moves in the order of an oral epic. Dreams and bird omens are part of the plot, not decoration. The production tells the marijuana boom Colombia lived through in the seventies from the Wayuu side; that was the country's first great wave of drug trade, before cocaine. Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego co-directed, working with Wayuu actors and the Wayuunaiki language. It was submitted as Colombia's Oscar entry. José Acosta plays Rapayet and Carmiña Martínez the woman at the head of the family. Who it is for: viewers who like epic structure and indigenous narrative tradition. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a fast crime film; the narration is heavy and the violence arrives at long intervals.