The protagonist of Augusto Sandino’s new film, A Vanishing Fog, known simply as F., lives in the high mountains of Colombia, taking care of his ailing father and what remains of their household and land. He doesn’t speak. He only thinks, and his thoughts are read on the screen. Light-footed, he roams through the canyons with the curiosity of a child, the wisdom of a saint, and the fragility of a moth he tries to save.

His world is threatened. We know how, we don’t need to see any more than an exchange of dollar bills in a truck or hear more than an occasional mining explosion. Nearby, the earth is being exploited, gutted, torn apart. But F. is still safe in his playpen of nature and fantasies.

A Vanishing Fog has a language of its own. It isn’t a documentary or, strictly speaking, a fiction film. It’s a reflective piece of filmmaking that resembles a poem – a visual poem. “I am a cineaste, a filmmaker who is exploring the elements that cinematic language has [in order to] try to express myself about things that matter to me,” Sandino told the HFPA in an online interview. “I think this film is about solitude, but at the same time, I’m addressing a few political social, and environmental situations that are really hurting the world.

“Film has the power to become a historic document,” he continued. “It’s important for a contemporary filmmaker like myself to talk about these things.” He explained that Colombia has one of the highest records of internal population displacement. In the past 35-40 years, there have been over 7 million people pushed away from their lands and into the cities, because of decades-long civil war and violence.

Moreover, Sandino added, indigenous leaders have been assassinated over the years due to corporate mining interests, and water and land exploitation.  “These are not regular people. They are not criminals. They are social leaders who are standing up for their territories and who are [fighting against] multinationals.”

Unfortunately, the sociopolitical conditions in Colombia have worsened since 2018, due to the current government’s efforts to undermine a peace agreement with the FARC guerilla group. A Vanishing Fog is an homage to the over 2,000 people in the last two years who have been killed for protecting their lands.

Yet, the film is the antithesis of political and social commentary. “I wanted to talk about an insignificant human being,” Sandino said, his voice and eyes softening. “To get to know him in a profound way … his humanity, spirituality, sexuality, all the components that make a human being. And hopefully, once we get to know him, we will start to care about these invisible people that live in the deep mountains, valleys, and jungles, who take care of nature and the natural resources. 

“The film has been conceived as an experience for the spectator to be immersed in, through images and sound. A lot of people connect with it. They don’t know why, but they don’t need to know. They don’t need a beautiful story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Narrative filmmaking is great, and I admire a lot of films that are plot-driven. But with A Vanishing Fog, I wanted to use the potential of cinematic language to defy time and place.”

Rather than follow a logical chronology, the film “invites the spectator to a journey,” he said. “In that journey time does not exist and the place is there as another character.”  Through associations of images and sounds, a story is generated within, however. “My main concern is that the film takes you to places you have not been before,” Sandino added, “that you see someone you have not seen before and that you connect with a different reality.”

The vehicle for Sandino’s visual poetry is his protagonist. Sebastian Pii, who plays F., is a photographer with a rare genetic condition that makes him look unique, just like the world Sandino portrays in the film. The director, however, wanted to render his actor’s unusual physicality “invisible” by causing the spectator to “feel him, to understand what he is going through … And I wanted to make him a genius… building a spaceship to go somewhere else… not to focus on the superficial aspect of his looks.”

“I think modern society is just so into looks, into beauty – a very specific and distorted beauty to me,” he explained. So it was a conscious challenge to make F. “dear and loving,” and to have the audience “walk away feeling that he is beautiful.”

“There is always a naïve point of view. [F.] does not look at women in a sexual way. There’s a sense of wonder.” The character and his “innocent gaze” were the guiding force for the director: “I always reminded myself that this film had to have [the character’s] point of view. With this in mind, I kept myself on track doing what I set out to do, which was to exalt this invisible, insignificant human being, and to make him special for you after you’ve seen the film.” 

By rendering an unusual-looking character lovable through the loving gaze of the camera’s eye, the director trains us not only to connect with F. and his enchanted world but also, by default, to become aware of a sense of shame. It is the absent ones, the ones complacently receiving the gains of exploitation – us, the audience – who are blind to his beauty and to the beauty of his environment. We, the ones watching from the comfort of our seats, are the culprits. 

“The film makes a commentary on colonization,” Sandino stated.  “The world is coming to a crossroads where the big and the powerful are taking over. Three or four languages are [becoming] hegemonic. They want to make everything homogeneous, they don’t like differences. Colonization can happen through the internet, communications, and media. They are colonizing minds, concepts, tastes, everything.

“Young people are becoming standardized all over the world,” he continued. “A kid in Colombia feels the same way as a kid in England because they are consuming the same kind of information, jokes, entertainment, music. And that’s very dangerous because [it can cause] a lot of cultures to disappear … We cannot forget about the parts of the world that need their cultures to survive.” 

As bleak as he sees a near future when the almighty forces of greed and exploitation prevail, Augusto Sandino is not all pessimistic. Despite overpopulation and poverty in the world, he believes that “we could all live together in a more horizontal way.

“Our job as artists is to try to document a place and time, and to do it in a spiritual way,” he said raising his hands. “Art dignifies humankind … The only way that we are going to be remembered in the future, after decades or hundreds of years, is by the art we are making. So, we have to try to talk about ourselves as …” he paused. He searched for the right word, then ended softly, “… magnificent.

“Humanity is going through a crisis, and crisis can be a good thing,” he concluded. “We are going to have to live differently – [become] more considerate, more empathetic, more respectful. That’s the basic spiritual principle: try to be a good person.”

F. stands gazing at the wonder of a foggy meadow surrounded by mountains. A homemade contraption he uses as a telescope sticks out from his forehead. He wears a woolly poncho and his arms wrap lovingly around a toy kitten. His nose is thin and hooked like a beak, big ears reach down toward the edge of his jaw, hollow cheeks wrinkle with a gentle smile… It’s an image of a magnificent human being.