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‘Igualada’ Review: A Hagiographic Portrait of a History-Making Colombian Political Candidate
In Juan Mejia Botero's stirring doc, 'Igualada,' Colombian activist and presidential hopeful Francia Márquez turns an epithet into a rallying cry.
Even a viewer suspicious of the film’s more adulatory gestures will gain a deeper insight into the nation’s politics and its multiracial population through scenes of marginalized Colombians stirred into engagement, as well as the reactions of those in power outraged by Márquez’s run. An opening intertitle provides a definition: “A derogatory term (based on class, race and gender) used to designate someone who acts as if they deserve rights and privileges that supposedly don’t correspond to them.” It will be hurled as an epithet but also transformed by Márquez into a signifier of connection. So, as affecting as “Igualada” is, as catalyzing a leader as Márquez proves to be, it’s the waves of energy and engagement the film captures around the candidate — the faces in the crowds, the campaign workers in the streets — that deeply beckon with the promise change.
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