The Stoplight Society (La sociedad del semáforo)

Feature film, 104 min, in Co-Production with DIAFRAGMA & LABERINTO (Bogota, Columbia) / Cinesud Promotion (F) El Baile Films (ES)
Written and directed by:
Ruben Mendoza
With backing of: FDC Columbia, FondsSud, Ibermedia, World Cinema Fund, Visions Sud Est
World sales: Ciné-sud Promotion (France)
Awards: Cali Film Festival, Colombia (Price of the Jury), Amiens Film Festival, Frankreich (Award of the city of the Amiens for best director), Huelva Film Festival, Spain (Award of the Jury und Best first feature film), Best Colombian Film, Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias 2010

Synopsis
Stoplights are hell for the people forced out of the countryside to beg in the city. One of them, Raul, a recycler alienated through his desire for absolute freedom and drugs, is set on using his cleverness to control the red traffic lights so that the street artists and vendors working at the lights can perform longer. This resembles his chaotic existence which turns into an ode to anarchy, despair and insanity.

Director’s note
I always insist, when introducing this film, that it is not political. It is not an attempt to redeem or explain the Third World to the First. I am neither an anthropologist nor a social worker. I am drawn to stories through revelations; I discovered a kind of social pyramid that existed among people living on the street, that reproduces the one familiar to us, with all its easily identifiable strata. I don’t feel I approached it with an apologetic or pitiful eye, especially as I began my discovery of this world.