BARRIO TRISTE
(director/writer: Stiliz; cinematographer: Stiliz; editor: Adam Robinson; music: Arca; cast: Brahian Acevedo (Apestado), Juan Pablo Baena (Piojo), Jorge Cano (Reporter), Joan Casas (Punk Band guitarist), Samuel Velazquez (Mundomalo), Tomas Tinoco Hiquita (Calambre), Bryan Erlin Garcia (Rata); Runtime: 88; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: James Clauer, Esteban Zuluaga, Eric Kohn; EDGLRD; 2025-Colombia/USA-in Spanish, with English subtitles)
“It’s a bleak story with no resolution.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Colombian-America director Stiliz (whose birth name is Matias Vasquez) is a celebrated photographer turned director. He did musical video clips for the rapper Bad Bunny. His experimental feature film is a curious found-footage horror movie that makes one feel uneasy because its story is so bleak and puzzling. It takes place in the 1980s, in Medellín, Colombia, as the crime-ridden city is terrorized by both a possible invasion by extraterrestrial beings and a crime wave.
It’s a Harmone Korine produced film through his EDGLRD company.
A group of neglected and troubled teenage boys are living together in the ghetto on the outskirts of the city apparently without adult supervision. They live in squalor and have shaved heads. They go into town after stealing a camcorder from a local TV news reporter on the job covering a story of a possible alien invasion that has lights shining on Medellín. The boys without remorse violently rob a jewelry store and kill a worker while filming the crime and return to the barrio on foot.
The film veers back and forth between the unknown strange lights covering the city and the boys being interrogated by the police at the station house, with the kids talking directly into the camera as they confess.
It’s a bleak story with no resolution, and the unpleasant characters are not likeable even if believably real as society’s rejects.
The dissonant electric score by the Venezuelan musician Arca and its strange disturbing visuals ensure us that this blend of a found footage sci-fi film and a juvenile crime drama will get under your skin.
The uncompromising filmmaker eviscerates the backward impoverished country for its economic melt-down, high crime-rate and failure to properly care for its youth.
Showing how hopeless the country is left me feeling sad but not enlightened or entertained or sated.
It played at the Toronto International Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 2/1/2026 GRADE: C+
dennisschwartzreviews.com