Queer/cuir moments and “que(e)rencias” in Colombian narrative cinema

This article recognises the notable absence of queerness in narrative cinema made in Colombia, while surveying how feature films have offered types of LGBTIQ+ representations that have been entangled with debatable, inconsistent or, more recently, with exceptional discourses. Informed by multidisciplinary approaches from queer/cuir studies, film studies and decolonial thought, this text seeks to provide the readership with a useful state of affairs as of today on how queerness is addressed through narrative cinema in Colombia, and to continually problematise and rethink what ‘queer’ means within the Colombian and Latin American contexts. By tracing the available corpus, the article exposes what we have chosen to name ‘queer/cuir moments,’ acknowledging there is still much to be done within the film industry to be able to suggest a robust queer/cuir strand. Nonetheless, the article also acknowledges how those moments have preceded a more recent era of self-aware filmmakers that put forward LGBTIQ+ questions on the big screen in the Colombian context. The 21st-century initiatives the article considers have paved the way for ‘que(e)rencias’—political acts of affection, enunciation and intervention—where queerness seemingly activates an unexplored prism via narrative films made in Colombia.