Hundreds of proposals were presented to numerous industry professionals, with 44 eventually succeeding in negotiating deals, of them 32 were cinematic projects and 12 for television.
The Camara de Comercio’s Monica de Greiff explains, “BAM is nationally and internationally renowned as the perfect space to promote and strengthen the audiovisual market, make alliances and do business.”
This year’s invited country was Mexico, with a delegation of 20 television and cinema producers, distributors, television channels and cinema festivals.
Mexico has long been at the pinnacle of Latin American cinema, with a extensive and successful tradition. This has continued recently, with Mexican successes at the Oscars, Cannes and more for the likes of Alejandro Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro, Gabriel Ripstein and Alfonso Cuarón.
As well as the cinematic presence of the Colombian delegation, there was also a rather bizarre 5-a-side football tournament, pitting Colombian cinema against its Mexican counterpart. Colombia fielded the directors of numerous recent releases, including La Tierra y La Sombra (see film review on page 18), El abrazo de la serpiente and Alias María.
Past guest countries have included the UK in 2014 and Canada in the 2013 edition.
The festival, which has grown more than six times since its inception in 2010, included screenings, talks, workshops and the participation of a number of international industry professionals, including Sundance Festival programmer Trevor Groth, Diego Avalos from Netflix Latin America, HBO’s Néstor Hernández, among others.
Organised by Bogota’s Camara de Comercio and Proimagenes Colombia, BAM’s growth goes alongside that of the Colombia cinema industry as a whole, with more and more films gaining international recognition and critical acclaim.
Head of Proimagenes, Claudia Triana, explains, “The success of our industry is not just about the number of films produced, but also the sustained growth in the number of creatives – screenwriters, directors etc. – technical services in the production chain, the improvement of our infrastructure and the international presence of films in markets, festivals and award ceremonies.”