Colombia’s Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM) has wrapped its seventeenth Version July 10 with an uptick in attendance. The numbers say all of it: 2,336 accredited individuals and 271 business actions and 882 one-on-one enterprise conferences connecting chosen initiatives with a bunch of worldwide friends, advisors and potential companions.
“BAM as soon as once more confirmed that Colombia has world-class tales to inform and the expertise to convey them to international audiences. We’re assured that lots of the initiatives that got here by the market depart stronger than they arrived—and one step nearer to turning into the movies, collection, and audiovisual experiences audiences will see within the years forward,” mentioned BAM director Carlos Eduardo Moreno.
The ever-expanding five-day occasion was filled with panels, masterclasses and coaching classes amongst a dizzying array of actions. It solely paused when Colombia performed in opposition to Switzerland in its failed bid to make the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup on July 8. Even the traffic-clogged streets of Bogotá went nearly silent.
This 12 months’s version awarded 70 in-kind prizes from nationwide and worldwide companions to chose initiatives and rising expertise throughout varied classes together with Fiction Movies, Documentaries, Collection, Tough Options, Animation, Tough Shorts and Bammers. Among the many large winners was José Luis Rugeles and Ana María Tarazona of Rhayuela, who took house 5 awards for his or her TV collection mission, “Rookies” (“Oficina de Detectives”).
Jose Luis Rugeles and Ana María Tarazona of Rhayuela Received 5 Prizes for ‘Rookies’Credit score: Paul Cataño
Amongst documentary characteristic contenders, “La Sombra de Yolüja” by Hanz Rippe Gabriel and Fernanda Pineda and “De la Villa” by Mónica Taboada and Beto Rosero break up the prizes.
In the meantime, Agamenón Quintero’s “De naranjas y otros demonios” snagged essentially the most awards within the fiction characteristic part.
Organized by Proimágenes Colombia and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, BAM stays a key engine driving Latin America’s audiovisual sector.
TIS Studios Opens Large 18,300-Sq.-Foot Stage 7, VFX Corporations People, Loma Broaden Clientele
BAM came about simply as TIS Studios, which has hosted a slew of high-profile initiatives, introduced the opening of Stage 7, a brand new 18,300-square-foot soundstage, primed to host large-scale worldwide movie and TV productions.
Stage 7, TIS Studios
“TIS Studios brings extremely educated crews, worldwide manufacturing requirements and the protocols to handle large-scale initiatives, all backed by almost three a long time of delivering premium content material,” mentioned Samuel Duque, president of TIS Studios. “Stage 7 provides to that basis. Mixed with Colombia’s manufacturing incentives, it offers producers, showrunners and manufacturing studios world wide another reason to convey their most bold initiatives right here.”
The launch of Stage 7 marks the subsequent section in TIS Studios’ enlargement, constructing on almost 30 years of manufacturing experience and a observe document of initiatives for main international platforms and networks together with Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, CBS Studios, MTV, Fox Tv Studios, Nickelodeon, NBCUniversal and Telemundo.
At 18,300 sq. ft and 40 ft excessive, Stage 7 is Colombia’s largest soundstage and one of many largest in Latin America.
In the meantime, VFX firm People Bogotá, run by Andrea Espinal, has attracted a slew of worldwide initiatives to its studio, lured by its extremely aggressive charges.
The reveals it has serviced embrace Netflix’s epic “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” and “Lioness” (Seasons I and II), Rodrigo Prieto’s directorial characteristic debut “Pedro Páramo,” AppleTV’s “The Morning Present” and survival horror pic “Boiúna: Legend of the Amazon,” previously titled “Titan,” which shot within the Colombian Amazon.
Launched in 2019 beneath Espinal, People Bogotá studio was established to harness Colombia’s inventive expertise for high-end VFX productions. What started by supporting the Montreal staff grew right into a full-service studio delivering visible results for main Latin American and worldwide titles.
One other burgeoning VFX firm, Loma, with deep roots as a family-owned rental gear firm, has expanded into the digital manufacturing enterprise. Its 200-square-meter digital manufacturing studio combines customized LED volumes with real-time applied sciences together with Unreal Engine, digicam monitoring and media servers to ship in-camera VFX and prolonged actuality (xR) productions.
Run by COO Francisco Forero, the Bogotá-based facility helps characteristic movies, collection, commercials, reside broadcasts and R&D initiatives, providing filmmakers a state-of-the-art setting for digital manufacturing and next-generation visible results workflows.
Amongst among the reveals they’ve serviced are Netflix’s fact-based skyjacking collection “The Hijacking of Flight 601,” SPT’s “Hasta que amanezca” and “Como perderlo todo” from Dago Prods. in addition to BAM’s Vaivén, a large-scale immersive audiovisual set up created by artist collective Challenge Aurora.
Not surprisingly, its largest shopper, as is the case with TIS’ and People,’ is Netflix, which has continued to develop its slate in Colombia, just lately tapping Ana Maria Londoño as Head of Content material in Bogotá.
Venezuelan Filmmaker Mariana Rondón Displays on ‘All Her Nights With out Caracas’
Taking the stage for her BAM Speak, Venezuelan filmmaker Mariana Rondón mirrored on her path to cinema, from her award-winning “Unhealthy Hair” (“Pelo malo”) to her newest characteristic, “It Would Be Night time in Caracas,” produced by Edgar Ramírez.
Rondón revealed that her inventive journey started with an surprising fascination: genetics. She spent a decade growing her personal “genetic laboratory” by artwork, creating an set up that imagined transgenic beings and produced simply 12 seconds of shifting imagery. “That course of reworked my understanding of cinema: highly effective tales can start with a picture, not solely with a script,” she mentioned, emphasizing the emotional energy of photos to generate curiosity, surprise, and that means.
The Venezuelan exodus later reshaped her creative focus. “Seeing folks stroll from Venezuela all the way in which to Chile—step-by-step, crossing borders on foot—felt nearly biblical,” she mentioned, describing a disaster that pressured many, together with herself, to rethink identification, belonging and the opportunity of imagining a future.
Unable to movie “It Would Be Night time in Caracas” within the Venezuelan capital, Rondón and her co-director Marité Ugas recreated the town in Mexico, working with a whole lot of displaced Venezuelans. Throughout scenes recreating protests, the boundary between fiction and actuality collapsed. “We’d name ‘reduce,’ however there was no technique to cease,” she recalled. Many individuals have been reliving their very own experiences, main the manufacturing to supply psychological assist.
Finally, the movie turned an act of reconstruction – a technique to reconnect with a rustic many had misplaced and to discover identification by cinema. “That query of identification is on the coronary heart of why we make movies,” she mentioned.
Colombia’s Movie Increase Has a Sustainability Drawback
A brand new business research offered at BAM confirms the historic influence of Colombia’s Movie Regulation 814, which, by the Movie Improvement Fund (FDC) and tax incentives, reworked the nation right into a thriving manufacturing hub. Between 2015 and 2025, Colombia launched 548 characteristic movies—in contrast with roughly two per 12 months earlier than 2003—with public assist and tax incentives financing greater than half of them and attracting round $160 million in personal funding.
However the research additionally reveals a serious problem: manufacturing development has not translated into stronger firms. Solely 25% of manufacturing homes supported by the FDC or tax incentives have returned for a second mission, leaving 75% unable to construct long-term capability. With most firms working with simply two workers and cinema representing solely a part of their income, the report warns that Colombia is efficiently financing movies—however not but constructing sustainable movie companies.
The research proposes 12 methods to strengthen the ecosystem, together with increasing funding instruments, enhancing tax incentives, supporting distribution and promotion, and recognizing the operational prices wanted to construct resilient manufacturing firms.
“The research confirms the necessity for a extra built-in strategy to movie coverage. 26 years in the past, the precedence was to create Colombian movies. Right this moment, these movies exist—however their market share stays minimal, and they’re nonetheless not reaching audiences,” mentioned producer-director Cristina Gallego (“Birds of Passage”), who led the panel.
“We have to embrace technological change and incorporate it into financing methods, shifting past fragmented pursuits. Screenwriters, regional filmmakers, employees, festivals, producers, distributors, and public establishments—together with the ministries of tradition, training, expertise, and commerce—all have a stake within the audiovisual sector, but they typically function individually,” she added.
“And not using a sustainable ecosystem that helps each firms—manufacturing and distribution—and the individuals who energy the business, long-term development will stay inconceivable.”
TIS Studio’s New Stage 7
