Juan Paulo Laserna, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2022, Columbia University, Screenwriting Award

Project Type: Feature 

Genre: Drama

Length: 123 pages 

Field of Science: Agriculture

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

Hernando Chindoy wakes up from a deep alcoholic sleep to the marching sounds of a heavily armed guerrilla unit entering his marginalized village, Aponte. Their leader, Black Blood, has enslaved the locals to work the opium poppy fields so he can sustain their war effort against the state, in the process destroying their ancestral culture. As the Colombian state ramps up the war on drugs the opium fields are sprayed and destroyed, causing Hernando and his best friend Mateo (also the mayor) to fall short on their promised deliveries to Black Blood. The consequence is the execution of Mateo and the village’s further plummeting into disgrace. Mateo’s dying wish is that Hernando can take over him, one which due to his heavy reliance on alcohol and depression he seems very unfit to perform, but one he reluctantly takes. Hernando realizes the only way to save Aponte is to replace the poppy for coffee, but has no idea how to work the land. As Black Bloods threats get worse and Hernando’s attempts at reviving the barren land fail, he sets upon a journey to find another tribe in the mountains north of Colombia in the hopes they can help. As he experiences a very different kind of indigenous World, Hernando reconnects again to the land and to the spirituality his people once had. After he has to face the paramilitaries that rule the mountain to save his child mentor, Hernando has to overcome his crushing fear of death. He returns to Aponte, finding his family and friends think he’s a deserter, but works his way into successfully rehabilitating their land and planting the first coffee bush to grow there ever. The village has their hopes awoken and they unite in expelling the guerrillas, forever changing their reality.