One of the directors ot follow in Latin America.

As in a Chekhov play, Rodriguez enthuses trivial moments with unexpected poignancy.

Lina Rodriguez’s writing is very precise in never giving way to pathos; she strings together scenes that serve as many antidotes to the explosion of grief, up to the last image.

Mañana a esta hora is very much a film about a sense of the personal spaces of the characters, and about how the fleeting present inhabits these spaces and turns them into memories almost instantly.

Far from imposed dramatism or from structures that tend to soften hearts prone to immediate emotional empathy based on cheap blows. Honest, simple and direct, the offer from the Colombian director is precise.

The Filmmakers of the Present section features 13 world premieres, including “This Time Tomorrow,” the sophomore effort from Colombian-Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez.

Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present section will feature the world premiere of Mañana a Esta Hora (This Time Tomorrow) from Colombian/Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez.

With a subtle and daring language, Lina Rodriguez brings her first feature film to Cine Tonalá’s cinemas.

The film itself is a personal search, and avoids taking the easy way out by showing what has become popularly defined as “sexy.”

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

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.

With tight framing and disorienting rhythms, Rodriguez and her talented star infuse every scene with a naturalistic intensity and a whiff of mystery.

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.

Rodriguez’s personal connection to her film shines through, and her skills behind the camera establish her as someone to watch in the coming years.

This is exactly what makes SENORITAS so mesmerizing and this is why Rodriguez will be a filmmaker to watch for as her career progress in the years to come.

In many ways, Rodriguez’s work feels like an interesting counterpoint to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a film that also finds depth and meaning in sometimes fleeting and seemingly insignificant moments.

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.

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.

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.

The colombian filmmaker talks about her film Señoritas, in competition in the Opera Prima category at the 35th Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (La Habana, Cuba)

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

Here are her thoughts on her first feature film, casting her own mother, and Lena Dunham’s Girls.

This Colombian/Canadian feature is less about “girls” plural and more about one girl.

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.

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.

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

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.