All the Flowers (Todas Las Flores) is the third film in the three-part
series Caribbean Eye: Auteur Cinema from Puerto Rico and the Dominican
Republic. Caribbean Eye is part of the 2024 Fotofocus Biennial:
backstories. The biennial theme, backstories, focuses on stories that
are not evident at first glance. They offer context for what happened
previously or out of view, providing narratives not yet told or
presented from a new perspective. Once told, they shed light on
current circumstances and events.

About All the Flowers:
With rare exceptions, media accounts of the neighborhood of Santafé
in Bogotá, Colombia portray a ghetto without laws or civility, a
barrio of thugs, drug dealers, prostitutes, and war criminals willing
to hustle any unsuspecting passerby. However, Carmen Oquendo’s
experience working closely with residents has shown her other, much
more human, aspects of life in this complex environment. After years
of working in Santafé and gaining the trust of its residents, Oquendo
tells the story of this unique neighborhood in a non-sensational way.
All the Flowers is the story of a neighborhood whose residents cling
to life fiercely, despite being tremendously, sometimes fatally,
impacted by the conditions in the neighborhood they live in. The story
is mainly told from the point of view of the trans people that
practice paid sexual activities in Santafé, especially those related
to Tabaco y Ron (Tobacco and Rum), the oldest
brothel in the neighborhood.

Using a raw aesthetic that conveys immediacy, Oquendo follows
different characters with a handheld camera as they navigate the
brothel and the streets of a rough and unforgiving neighborhood
populated with marginalized people displaced by the Colombian civil
war. Members of Santafé’s trans community provide the narration and
speak about their dreams of a safe space for marginalized people.
Vérité-style scenes depict the daily rounds in the neighborhood as
they deal with all kinds of situations: from sex workers in desperate
need of health services to those surviving homeless and police
brutality. Their perspectives are complemented by interviews with the
brothel’s residents and administrators, with Santafé’s neighbors, and
with politicians. Conceived as a choral portrait, the rhythm of the
film’s montage and structure is determined by its portrayal of a group
of diverse characters all linked to the centering presence of the
brothel.

About Caribbean Eye:
The Caribbean is the site of a dynamic new emerging film culture. In
the last decade or so, Caribbean films by an exciting new generation
of filmmakers have been winning prizes at international film
festivals, finding more distribution than ever before, and surprising
viewers around the world with stories that are new for international
audiences. The films in the series Caribbean Eye: Auteur Cinema from
Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic tell stories we may not have
not heard, and are set in places we may think we know but may not have
really seen, using fresh approaches that will leave viewers with new
images of the Caribbean and new ideas to think about.