Epic in the grandiloquence of The Godfather, BIRDS OF PASSAGE follows the family fortunes and fallout of the nascent Colombian cartels.

Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra’s Birds of Passage is a rags-to-riches-to-rags crime saga, a genre film infused with a rich cultural fabric.

The film recalls Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, in that it explores the disparity between an ancient code of ethics and the destructive gnawing worm of narcissism
Raphayet (Jose Acosta) is reminiscent of Michael Corleone, a man of honour albeit engaged in an illegal enterprise. In need of raising a dowry to secure the hand of Zaida (Natalia Reyes) he goes into partnership with a boyhood friend to sell pot to American Peace Corps youth working in Colombia to stamp out Communism and promote Capitalism.

Raphayet takes to capitalism like a duck to water, feathering his nest while behaving honourably, comfortability his creed, not greed. He wants his business to be as legitimate as possible, honouring deals and keeping the chain of production flowing to everyone’s benefit.

But as the stacks of cash roll in, the bad eggs reveal themselves and the bounty of a rich cash crop and inter-tribal peace is scuppered by a swathe of unnecessary humiliations and brutal honour slayings.

Nefarious ambition provides the ammunition from within and without of his organisation, jealousy and treason and the excess of success a breeding ground for a bleeding round.
The message here is not so much crime doesn’t pay – it does. The illicit is lucrative. The message is that killing is not good for business, spiralling into psychosis, paranoia, and an unending cycle of revenge.

Beginning in the mid ’60s and climaxing in the early ’80s, BIRDS OF PASSAGE is an epic and generational experience.

Towering over the film is Carmiña Martinez, playing Ursula, Zaida’s imperious, unsmiling mother self- tasked to preserving the family bloodline with extreme prejudice. A realist in chillingly robust ways, she is not averse to citing superstition. Visions come to her in lucid dreams, and she also receives signs from nature in the form of visiting birds and insects. She uses these supernatural omens to bolster her own status and control.

BIRDS OF PREY employs conventional plotting but in a precise way and the unique setting further lifts this crime genre film well above the flock.