Maribel Arenas Vadillo
Bogotá, 22 Dec (EFE).- A kidnapping, an armed group made up of the sons of members of the former M-19 urban guerrilla and two US soldiers are the main elements of the fiction “Echo 3”, the first of the Apple TV platform filmed in Colombia and relives part of the country’s armed conflict.
Under the name of “2.0”, a new binational guerrilla group operating in Colombia and Venezuela seeks to destabilize the Colombian government while kidnapping Amber Chesborough, an American scientist at the border, trying to start one of her own investigations.
“It’s a way to demonstrate how a militia can start with a social goal and end up being well tainted,” María del Rosario Barreto, a Colombian actress who is part of the series that premiered on November 23, told EFE .
Born in Buga, in the Valle del Cauca department (southwest), Barreto assures that this action “thriller” is a reflection of “something that has happened and is still happening” in his country: the violence of the emerging guerrillas who it materializes in the form of kidnappings while they are “sponsored by coke”.
MEMORY OF WHAT HAPPENED
Barreto plays Graciella, a non-binary university student, daughter of a former M-19 leader and 2.0 guerrilla, whom she defines as “a lion outside a circus where some manage others (…) and where they really sow causes that we believe are for everyone , but in reality it is for the good of a few”.
As a Colombian citizen who has also lived through armed conflict, Barreto acknowledges that some of the sequences written and directed by two-time Academy Award winner Mark Boal bring her back to news stories about violence in the country during her childhood.
“There is a scene where we drink water from a stream. There I remembered the video of Ingrid Betancourt (presidential candidate who was kidnapped for more than six years by the FARC). I was very young and I saw this woman totally malnourished. A That image stuck in my head as part of all the things that we Colombians have experienced,” she recalls.
In this sense, the artist celebrated the openness of the writer and director of the production, Mark Boal, when it came to listening to his proposals and the decision that the Colombian characters would be interpreted by the locals since, initially, the her role was intended for Charlie Chaplin’s niece, Oona Chaplin.
In this regard, the Colombian admitted laughing that, when filming of the series began between the town of Ciudad Bolívar (south of Bogotá), and Girardot (department of Cundinamarca), she feared for the scenes that were filmed in English because he had started learning the language six months earlier.
However, the bilingual nature of this series meant that what she terms “splashing English” in which Spanish and English with a Latin accent are mixed, was well received and even applauded by Boal.
THE IMAGE OF COLOMBIA
Beyond the guerrilla warfare, Barreto claims the importance of some scenes in the series to show the world that Colombia is also part of America, beyond the United States.
On the audiovisual perpetuation of her country’s image as a violent place, the actress insisted that it is no longer necessary because “violence has been normalized” after more than five decades of conflict.
“Now all this is being discovered and we are trying to stop the normalization of violence”, he added, stressing that the “first step” for peace is to “recognise”, “verbalize” and “name” that Colombia has “rooted violence in many places”.
Convinced that the message that each viewer will receive from the series will be different depending on their life experience, Barreto assures that this production seeks to “shake up so that what happened in the country is not forgotten” through scenes that remind “what happens when there it’s something out there where kidnapping and torture are not considered outright a crime against humanity.” EFE extension
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