A trap that some documentaries fall into is thinking that superlative access to a subject—a rock star, a murderer, a politician—is enough to make it into a compelling, worthwhile movie. But, ironically, proximity only gets us so close. We may be rubbing shoulders with Francia Márquez, the politician who is now (spoilers!) Vice President of Colombia, during Juan Mejía Botero’s Igualada, but its design as an underdog campaign narrative lacks the detail, context and pacing to be more than a loose promotional video for its subject.
To be sure, Márquez is an impressive figure to follow. A Black Colombian with decades of experience protesting mining companies trying to pillage her rural community of La Toma (and the paramilitary groups serving as their enforcers), she’s an imposing, tough, principled leader. She’s stared down death threats—surviving one assassination attempt, which injured two of her bodyguards—and the dark coalition of Colombian politicians, organized right-wing thugs and international corporations behind them. The most evocative, staggering image Botero captures in his doc is Márquez, delivering a campaign speech, slowly and unceremoniously being blocked from view by a pair of riot shields. Márquez has also faced discrimination, and made it part of her political identity; “igualada,” a derogatory term leveled at those uppity lesser-thans who dare ask for equality, becomes a reclaimed battle cry.
So it is all the more disappointing that Botero’s access does not result in intimacy or understanding. These biographical details are spread out in cutaways to archival footage from Márquez’s early days as an activist, the timeline leaping with such abandon that every other sequence is reoriented by on-screen paragraphs. Even with these explanations, the order can get unclear, with historical context and narrative progression fighting for dominance, and the jumps back and forth can seem arbitrary. Just as it’s impressive that Botero was along for the ride in the very early stages in Márquez’s run for President, it’s impressive that there’s such a treasure trove of footage from her early career. But its deployment is all over the place, simultaneously sapping the campaign side of things whenever it picks up steam and getting its legs cut out from under it whenever we start learning too much about rural Colombia’s dire history of military-economic exploitation.
The combination of top- and ground-level documentation gives the worst of both worlds. As soon as we’re prepared to watch how—in the grand tradition of recent election movies like Knock Down the House—Márquez snatches victory from the jaws of defeat and snatches grassroots popularity from the doldrums of anonymity, her meteoric rise becomes a watered-down montage.
After so much of the 80-minute movie is spent establishing the scrappy, ineffective start to her run, we breeze through the success. We watch scene after scene of dull conversation between her young team of leftist volunteers, emphasizing her outsider bonafides. We see a botched speech where, thanks to miscommunication, nobody at all turned up. Racist comments on social media bubble up on screen, reminding us of what Márquez faces not just as a political underdog, but as a Black woman living in this world. When we finally get to the film’s first debate, the movie’s almost over! A supercut of speech clips, debate images and mic-drop lines leads to a montage of posters and positive social media posts. It’s as disordered as Márquez’s early campaign events, and shockingly impersonal—which is a trend throughout the film.
Igualada doesn’t allow us to celebrate with Márquez when she’s selected as the running mate to the Historic Pact for Colombia’s primary winner, Gustavo Petro. Botero does little to position these strategic developments in relation to Márquez’s goals, or the political history of Colombia. Igualada doesn’t show us Márquez’s personality or platform, beyond her political persistence and defense of underrepresented groups. The most relatable she’s allowed to be is flopping facedown on a hotel bed, exhausted yet aloof. And, most confoundingly, Igualada doesn’t bring us into the campaign with any sense of practicality: The day-to-day minutiae of the trail are paved flat by broad, vague strategy meetings shot mostly as reactions.
With its closeness to its candidate, Igualada had every opportunity to be more than a standard campaign documentary. Its subject is a winner, with a fascinating and progressive history that represents so much of her country’s struggles. Its locale’s political environment is electric: Petro is Colombia’s first leftist President, reversing the country’s course after a long regime by Álvaro Uribe and his successors. But lost in the film’s jigsaw construction is its identity—and that of Francia Márquez. Igualada hints at an insider look at an amazing story, but all its access goes towards a surprisingly anonymous film.
Director: Juan Mejía Botero
Release Date: January 21, 2024 (Sundance)
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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