Please note: This was screened in
Ciro Durán’s debut film La Paga is an important rediscovery. Considered subversive, it was banned in 1963 by the Venezuelan government after a single screening in Caracas. Soon after, the 23-year-old Colombian writer-director was jailed for his union activism, the film disappeared and only resurfaced sixty years later at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and Il Cinema Ritrovato.
La Paga is the stark, nearly abstract vision of a peasant in the Colombian Venezuelan Andes who rebels violently against the exploitation that keeps him and his family impoverished. With a pregnant wife and a son in desperate need of medication, the man sees only one way out. Durán self-produced La Paga a few years after the Cuban Revolution had inspired him to relocate from a traditional Catholic village in Colombia to the vibrant cultural scene of Caracas. Considered a pioneering work of Latin American social and political cinema, the film draws on Durán’s own childhood experiences, and was influenced by Soviet montage and Italian neo-realism.
Restored in 4K in 2025 from a 35mm dupe negative by Joyce Ventura, Maleza Cine and Fundación Patrimonio Filmico Colombiano in collaboration with Cinemateca de Bogotá and Fundación Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela. With the support of the Fondo para el Desarrollo Cinematográfico de Colombia (Colombian Film Development Fund) with the General coordination of the son’s director and filmmaker, Vladimir Durán.