Matar a Jesús / Killing Jesus

Gazing over the rooftops of her hometown, the city of Medellín, 22-year-old Paula relives recent events: the shooting of her politically engaged father by two motorcyclists as they drove home together. Paula recognised one of them, but the local police showed no interest in investigating the case. When a few months later, she coincidentally comes across the man, she makes a drastic decision. Caught between fear, fascination and compassion, she takes cautious steps ever closer to her father’s contract killer – a path that leads from her middle-class family home into the depths of the hillside slums of the Colombian metropolis. Director Laura Mora’s captivating, social realist thriller MATAR A JESÚS harks back to her own traumatic experiences as a child and acts as a vent to deal with her long-standing wish for revenge and justice. It is not only against this backstory that the character Paula, embodied by Natasha Jaramillo Loaiza, gains tragically profound depth.