Documentary Achievement Award

Directors Laura Angel Rengifo and Noah DeBonis will be in attendance and will participate in a post-screening panel discussion with producer Colleen O'Brien, Co-producer Margaret Cardillo, Josefina Echavarría Álvarez, a foremost expert on Peace and Reconciliation, and Jim Virga, an award-winning photojournalist and documentary filmmaker.

After a lifetime of battle, nearly 10,000 FARC combatants are preparing to leave their jungle strongholds and return to Colombian society, but will a war-weary Colombia accept them? Strangers to Peace chronicles the challenges of reintegrating rebel fighters into a society that views them as terrorists.

The narrative is told through the eyes of three former FARC guerrillas currently undergoing reintegration: Dayana (47), the market vendor negotiating the stigma of her guerrilla past and her new identity as a transgender woman; Ricardo (26), the government employee who secretly maintains his communist ideology; and Alexandra (21), the indigenous woman yearning to reconnect with the family and tribe she left behind as a child soldier. In its watershed moment Colombia is documented through these characters: both they and the country reimagine their identities after living through a lifetime of war.

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Laura Angel Rengifo and Noah DeBonis are husband and wife filmmakers. Their work has been supported by the Television Academy, Sundance Institute, Bogotá Audiovisual Market, and various film festivals. Strangers to Peace is their first feature film.

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Virtual Screening is geo-blocked to the United States and available from March 8th to 13th.