At this year's edition of the SXSW festival the second feature A Vanishing Fog [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Augusto Sandino
scheda film] by Colombian director Augusto Sandino won the award for the Best Cinematography. We talked to the director about the particularity of the area and the landscape in which the story, about a man and his elderly father, is set, and about working with the film's unique protagonist.

Could you tell us where the inspiration for the film came from? Was there first the wish to shoot in this particular environment, or a story?
Augusto Sandino: I incorporated many things. I had lost my father recently. I had this thing inside of my calling for understanding. I went to this beautiful place, and saw a breath-taking setting and landscape, I learned about the social and political issues that have affected this ecosystem throughout history, and how Paramo of Sumapaz in particular has suffered many of Colombia's tragedies. Then I met the character and I knew I wanted to work with him. All these elements, my own personal emotions about the setting and the character, came together.

Did you develop the main character together with Sebastian Pil?
Yes. I never thought about anybody else but him to play this role. We had to do it together, because it had to come naturally to him, he had to become this little man we created. The film is very personal. It's me talking, it's me reflecting. What I did with the actor is mainly to give a physicality to the character in order for him to understand. To have a presence so strong, so full of different little details, that is so unique, that I wanted him to embody, it was important for me to get to know Pil very well, to be able to ask him to do this.

You use a nearly non-verbal dialogue. Was it the plan from the beginning?
Because when you are up there, you don't have anybody to talk to. It was a challenge to build a narrative in loneliness, to figure out how to explore communication if you have nobody to communicate with. The initial idea of the film was to explore a fragile human through different phases and layers of the self, physically, spiritually, sexually. I didn't want to explain, but rather to use cinematic language to express what goes on in your head when you are up there. We speak another language in the film, an indigenous language, through which it was interesting to make a commentary on colonisation. According to official numbers from the Unesco, five languages are lost every week, which is very dramatic. We are in a transition to something else also concerning a broader way of life. This is not a political film per se, but if I was going go to speak about the inlands, the mountains and isolated areas, I had to depict the political issues a little. But we are concentrating on the love relationship of a father and his son, and how he prepares a farewell to a better future.

The film has both a melancholic and a playful side. Would you say this is representative of you own way of looking at the world?
We have to be hopeful, there has to be a better tomorrow. We have to keep something we can dream about. It is a hopeful film because the protagonist is hoping for something better. He has to move on. This is the struggle a lot of people go through. That's why there are so many migrants out there. But in order to make art we need to be more fatalistic, we have to see the radical side of things. The responsibility here is to talk about important issues, and to make an historical document.

Could you tell us more how you developed the visual concept for the film? What were the most important aspects? You play a lot with colours, for example.
I was trying to make a film in Colombia that is very green. I wanted to enhance the natural greenery of the country and use natural lighting. It was hard to bring stuff out using a one-colour palette as the base, but it was the perfect setting to do so. Otherwise I tried to be open to what came to me, since we also had to rely on the characteristics of the area, which is very uncontrollable.

And the same for the sound design. How did you create it?
We conceived it in pre-production, we decided not to have a sound mixer on set, but to record a massive amount of wild tracks. The sound had to reinforce the dreamlike pulse, to sustain the emotional and confusing moments. The film is like a meditation.