Igualada

Shot in a cinéma verité style, Mejía Botero's film follows Márquez's rise from a local leader in La Toma, a small rural town in Colombia's Pacific Southwest and home to over a quarter-million descendants of enslaved Africans. Rich in natural resources, the region is frequently targeted by multinational corporations and paramilitary groups. It was during a 2020 funeral for five murdered sugarcane workers that Márquez decided to launch her unlikely campaign. The film begins in 2009, when Mejía Botero first began documenting Márquez's efforts as a young land defender. The resulting footage reveals a rare, long-term portrait of a movement and a leader in the making—culminating in a watershed moment in Colombian history. With the support of a small, tireless team, Márquez's grassroots campaign—originally intended to spotlight the struggles of Afro-Colombian, rural, and Indigenous communities—quickly grew into a national movement. Her motto, rooted in African roots, declared: "I am because we are." Despite threats to her life, Márquez defiantly reclaimed the term "igualada"—a pejorative used to belittle those who demand rights seen as above their "place"—and she catapults the struggle for a more just Colombia into the upper echelons of power, rose to become a leading candidate in a broad progressive coalition led by Senator and former guerrilla fighter Gustavo Petro. (Cinema Tropical)