“Barrio Triste” follows four lawless young men in Medellín, Colombia in the ’90s who steal a television camera and document robberies, crime and the unrelenting pace of street violence. Stillz, the photographer and music video director who wrote and directed the film as his debut feature, says the genesis for his film came from childhood.
“I had inspiration from a lot of personal things in my life,” he says. “When I was growing up, I heard a lot of stories in my family from Colombia about kidnappings and things like that. I think it’s a way of me visualizing what that felt like as a kid hearing those stories.”
“Barrio Triste,” which is set to open at Toronto Film Festival on Wednesday, is a whirlwind blend of motion, thanks to the always-moving found footage style, courtesy of the stolen camera. In reality, Stillz held the camera the entire time, except for one shot where a character looks at himself in the mirror. He continued this control throughout the movie, which looks frenetic and on the edge of control, but was, in reality, very planned out.
“Everything was permitted,” he says. “Each day, we would create a world, and I would allow myself to have freedom in each world. I would build and try to create these long, wandering shots. It really felt like a kid had just taken the camera and was just filming a couple hours in his life. But everyone in the film is an extra. All the cars you see on the street, we put all those cars there. We did a lot of production there, and the whole concept was to make it feel stolen and found.”
Also adding to the tense, sprawling film is a loud, dynamic soundtrack, courtesy of electronic artist Arca. With nearly wall-to-wall music over a bed of noises and sound, it is a central force inching the audience to a panic attack.
“During the filming of the movie, I was so used to creating music videos that I had to have some kind of musical point of view while filming,” Stillz says. “I just became obsessed with her first album while filming. At the same time, I got a feeling of the pacing and was obsessed with the idea of her creating an original score. So I approached her and she was very emotional about the film, and hearing the songs from her first album that we were editing to at the time, just as a placeholder. We stayed in Japan for a couple weeks to do the score, just me and her at the hotel.”
Stillz also had another essential collaborator: director Harmony Korine, who acted as a sounding board.
“What was great about Harmony was opening my mind to not having to do things in such a traditional way,” he says. “I had come from these really big music videos with a massive production and a massive team, and in my head I always thought I had to do my first movie with an insane production, if the videos are already this big. It never clicked to me until I started speaking to him … all these things that he put in my head made an importance of using things like places and people and not having to learn every single thing traditionally, but rather just use what I’ve learned in my craft already. We spoke for a long time, and he was probably the biggest reason I was able to figure out how to get this off the ground.”
Korine was also thrilled to produce the film alongside his company, EDGLRD.
“Stillz is great,” Korine wrote via text message. “I wanted to be a part of his first film. I support his vision as a director.”
Stillz’ vision has also been crafted by his longtime collaboration with superstar Bad Bunny. The pair shot over 20 music videos together, which have amassed billions of views.
“It’s been amazing,” Stillz says. “It has given me freedom and creativity through these works. He’s an amazing collaborator, especially continuing to collaborate with him as long as we have. I learned a lot from working with him, just because of all the opportunities he was giving me.”
