The Colombian armed conflict is the longest internal conflict in the world. According to the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica [National Historical Memory Center], 81 % of casualties in this conflict were civilians and more than 5 million people were forcibly displaced between 1958 and 2012. Through all these years, national artists have portrayed the stories of those civilian victims in different art forms and narratives. Colombian cinema has been no stranger to this process. In the first two decades of the 21st century, the national cinema has represented this subject in different film genres, aesthetics and formats; feature length documentaries are not an exception.
This research focuses on documentaries of 52 minutes in length or more that represent the Colombian armed conflict. These films were produced in the country with the support of the Fondo de Desarrollo Cinematográfico (FDC) [Cinematographic Development Fund], a state film funding scheme established by Law 814 of 2003 in the Republic of Colombia. The sample of this study is composed of 21 documentaries released between 2005 and 2018. All of these nonfiction films have received the FDC’s financial support in one or more production stages. Through a content analysis using a quantitative approach the study determines who are the social groups represented in the documentaries (e.g. civilian victims, guerrilla forces, paramilitary forces, drug lords, government forces, political leaders, external forces or others). Likewise, the study identifies which of these social groups are the main characters (protagonists) of the films, and which are represented the most. Furthermore, by establishing a parallel with the history of the Colombian armed conflict, the study provides a specific idea of the main historical periods represented in these films: the beginnings (1930-1946); partisan violence (1946-1958); the Marxist guerrillas and drug cartels (1958-1982); the rise of the paramilitary (1982-1996); the conflict upsurge (1996-2005); the paramilitary demobilization (2005-2012) and FARC peace process (2010-2016). Moreover, the study observes the perspective of the armed conflict adopted in each film, including the regions where the stories take place, and how often these areas appear. The results provide useful information to understand how the Colombian armed conflict has been represented in national documentary films of the 21st century. Our findings also give an in-depth perspective on the audiovisual representation of the specific social groups in this particular war setting.