Movie Spotlight: Colibrí

A couple in Bogotá is about to find out they are going to be parents. The film begins before that moment lands and follows what it does to each of them, separately, while the relationship around them strains.

Francisco Salazar and Juanpedro David Salazar are brothers. They co-wrote and co-directed Colibrí, their second feature together, and the project started from someone close to them. “The idea started from a family member who was pregnant and saw herself having to make life choices that she didn’t expect,” Francisco says. The brothers chose not to tell that exact story. “We’ve seen other versions of that story and it didn’t feel like we were the right people to tell another version of it,” Juanpedro says. “So we instead brainstormed the possibility of a couple facing this situation and not finding themselves fully ready for it.”

Two arcs, not one

The conventional version of this film puts a couple inside one conflict and lets them either break or hold. Colibrí refuses that. Catalina and Germán each go on a separate emotional journey while the relationship strains around them. “The most conventional way to tell this is to have the couple engage in one conflict together and come away either broken or more united than ever. But that’s not how life works,” Juanpedro says. “Even when we are in a couple, we remain individuals with our own individual challenges that we must confront.”

Francisco frames it through what each character carries. “As an artist, I understand Germán’s insecurities especially as he doesn’t make as much as Catalina and he is going through an artistic crisis. As for Catalina, she is trying to make up with her family, with whom she parted ways years ago.” Two stories. One household.

The hummingbird

The title is a Colombian word for the bird, and the bird is the metaphor. “A hummingbird comes and goes quickly,” Francisco says. “I always felt that it’s about these fleeting moments and holding on to them because they go quickly. Catalina and Germán are not taking the time to hold onto the moment.”

Juanpedro takes it further. “Its wings move quickly (80 times per second), emphasizing this shift. In the film, we align the concept to Catalina’s brother and his song in which he grapples with his sense of identity.” That identity question pulls in both leads. Catalina is uncertain about becoming a mother before she has reconciled with her own family. Germán is afraid of repeating his father.

What “forgive and forget” does not fix

The film sits on a quiet line about how adults handle their own past. “We all have trauma and a lot of the time, we don’t acknowledge it or confront it. It’s easier to simply ‘forgive and forget,’” Juanpedro says. “But the reality is that unless we’ve actually confronted the situation, it always seeps through in other ways. We never forget.”

Catalina realizes she never actually forgave her brother, and the unspoken cost of that was the relationship. Germán never had a father to model from, and the gap is still load-bearing. “Will Catalina be a good mother if she couldn’t forgive her brother? Will Germán become his father without understanding his mistakes?” Francisco adds the harder note. “We have to move forward and accept that some things can never be changed.”

Colombia, told from inside

The brothers are children of Colombian immigrants who grew up middle-class in the United States. They were deliberate about not filtering Latin America through the lens international audiences usually expect. “For so long, Latin American cinema around the world has been fixated on a very agenda-driven perspective on Latinx communities,” Juanpedro says. “Those themes usually focus on immigration, poverty, war, drugs, and often those themes are portrayed through a negative lens. Rarely do we see Latin American films that depict its characters as people of the middle class living lives that are universal the way we see in European films, Asian cinema or independent cinema in the U.S.”

Francisco frames the texture in terms of what the film actually shows on screen. “We grew up in a very Colombian household and many of the conversations with the family were taken out of our experiences. For us it was about creating the most accurate representations of our culture from Christmas to the sounds of Bogotá to the way they speak and the various locations of the city that we encounter in the film.”

Two brothers, two roles

The Salazars have made shorts together for years. Colibrí is their second feature, and the roles split cleanly. “Francisco has more of a producer mindset so he was involved with the production team at every step of the way and was the driving force behind the film’s release and festival run,” Juanpedro says. “In my case, I took a lead as the editor and had a bigger role in crafting the post-production of the film.”

That structural divide shaped the set. Because Juanpedro knew he would be cutting later, he could anticipate. “Juanpedro edited the film, so he had a clear vision of what we needed on set and how it would work while he was in post-production,” Francisco says.

The toughest scene to land was Catalina with Jenny, a long static dialogue where Nathalie Rangel had to find a win without unloading her full emotional payload too early. The fix happened twice. First in performance, with Rangel finding the restraint. Then in the edit, where Juanpedro reshaped dialogue to keep the exposition moving. “That was the scene I was editing up until the final moment that we picture locked.”

What to know before you press play

“It’s a story of a couple that is like many couples around the world trying to figure out if they are ready to be a parent,” Juanpedro says. “It’s emotional. It is a film that strives for a simplicity in its storytelling and characterization. It may feel familiar in its portrayal. We hope that you have a great experience watching it.”

Drama

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Streaming now on Relay.