Silence in Paradise

In El Paraíso, one of the poor neighbourhoods of Bogotá, twenty year old Ronald and Lady are in love. Ronald is looking for a better life and is taken in by the promise of work. The people who abduct him are from inside the army; the aim is to dress Ronald as a guerrilla, kill him, and collect the bounty paid per body. At the end of the film the mothers from Soacha appear giving their own testimony. Colbert García's first feature rests on the events known in Colombia as the false positives: cases in which the army killed civilians, presented them as guerrillas and was rewarded for it. The film was going to carry that term as its title; it was changed out of concern about censorship. The telling does not accuse the army as a whole; it shows how the thing became possible. It was supported by the Colombian film fund.