An untraditional coming-of-age story that focuses on its protagonist’s rich sensory experience of the world more than on any transformative personal development

In Señoritas, the shape of Alejandra’s life is found in the juxtaposition of moments (in one scene, she masturbates midday; in the next, she’s cutting melons in the kitchen with her mother). Call it portraiture through accumulated exposure.

Partly inspired by the work of John Cassavetes, it’s as much an intriguing cinéma-vérité social study as a coming-of-age drama.

The first film from Canadian director Lina Rodriguez—is not a film propelled by story. It’s one that takes the temperature of what it’s like to be a teenage girl growing up in a thriving city (in this case, Bogotá, Colombia) and navigating her own road.

La historia que explora la sexualidad, el deseo y la identidad de Alejandra se proyectará en el ciclo de verano de TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Told in episodic, often single-shot scenes, Alejandra’s experiences are less a causal chain than an almost atemporal assortment of variations on a theme.

Amongst fragments of the everyday, situations are consumed within themselves, surviving long enough, so that a face can also survive on the surface of the image. A face that is the single anchor of and for the image, as we must remember that trying to find something behind a face, is the same as trying to find something behind a frame. Bergman has already showed us the consequences of this quest in Persona, when the images of the face and of the celluloid start burning.

This is one of the more exciting debuts on the radar, as the short, avant-garde works I’ve seen by Rodriguez are truly stellar.

Señoritas screens on Tuesday April 22 and Thursday April 24, 2013 as part of the series, Latinamerican Women Directors, organized by Fundación SGAE at the Sala Berlanga.

Señoritas screens in the Opera Prima section at International Festival of New Latin American Cinema 2013 (Havana, Cuba)

Lina’s film is important for a bourgeoning industry like ours,” said Orlando Mora, FICCI’s chief programmer. “There’s been a recent tendency in Colombia cinema to see inflating budgets, and it’s very hard to recoup the investment made in those films. A film like Señoritas shows us a different approach to filmmaking in both an aesthetic and commercial level.

The carefully crafted film certainly feels like something completely new in Colombian cinema.

With some experimentation reminiscent of the best of Gus Van Sant and the cinema of John Cassavetes, (Señoritas) describes the intimate experiences of Alejandra, a young colombian woman, and her relationships with her overprotective but amusing mother, with her friends and her occasional partners.

An urban, current film, and extremely indie version of those worlds we see in series such as GIRLS, or in some independent American cinema, SEÑORITAS is an extraordinary film that surprises.

With audacity, Lina Rodriguez focuses on her characters.

In Lina Rodriguez’s Protocol, a swift, 75-second exercise in a historical-materialist vein, the fluttering shadow of a flag against the monumental walls of the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas in Cartagena comes to signify the absence of that power which the structure was built to consecrate.