Sofia and the Stubborn Man

An old woman living in a quiet village in the Andes has never seen the sea. For years her husband has promised to take her to the Caribbean, but the plans fall through every time for one reason or another. As the distance between the promise and its keeping grows, the matter stops being a holiday and becomes a reckoning. The film does not present the man as ill intentioned; it tells how the habit of putting things off can fill up a lifetime. The account gives the daily work of the village in detail and does not hurry. The woman’s stubbornness becomes the engine of the story. The sea stands in the film less as a place than as a promise given. Carmen Maura and Gustavo Angarita appear in Andres Burgos Vallejo’s eighty four minute Colombian film, completed in 2012.