RETENCIÓN

Directed by Gonzalo Escobar Mora

WiP | Colombia, USA | 2027

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At 37, Marta's life is suspended after the murder of her teenage son, Freddy. She spends her days obsessively following Jeison, the adolescent who shot him. Although Jeison is eventually apprehended and sent to a juvenile detention center, Marta finds no sense of closure. Consumed by grief and rage, she embarks on a quest that few can understand: she seeks a face-to-face meeting with her son's killer.

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In a judicial system more accustomed to punishment than reconciliation, Marta's request presents an unusual opportunity. As victim and offender move toward an encounter that challenges everyone around them, a systemic question emerges: could there be another path toward accountability, rehabilitation, and healing?

Blending documentary observation with dramatic reconstruction, RETENCIÓN is inspired by real events and developed in close collaboration with the people who lived them. While the film explores the possibilities and limits of restorative justice, at its core, it is the story of a grieving mother who seeks a salve to her pain outside the conventional definition of ‘justice’.

Year of production 2027 (estimated)
Length Feature Length
Country Colombia, USA
Shooting Format Digital
Dialogue Spanish
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Director Gonzalo Escobar Mora
Producers Gonzalo Escobar Mora, Emma Rozanski, Bianca Lucas
Production El Parpadeo, Love Dogs
Writer Gonzalo Escobar Mora
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Supported by 

Produced in association with: FromAway Films
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Director's Statement

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Thanks to this project, I have reaffirmed that trying to "know the other" is, at the same time, "knowing oneself," by realizing that we are not so different. And this is what happens to Marta's character (and what happened to the real character, Gloria). In her attempt to get closer to the young man who murdered her son, she also draws on shared similarities: absent fathers, single mothers fighting for their children's well-being, and who sometimes need to reclaim their lives to truly be able to be there for them. The aesthetic proposal of Retención stems from the conviction that cinema can—and should—be a space for questions, not just answers, especially when it comes to representing the experience of grief.

We seek to open an ethical and formal space where loss can breathe. We understand grief not as a story with a beginning and an end, but as a suspended temporality, a rift in everyday experience. In cinema, this rift translates into still shots, prolonged silences, and framing that avoids guiding the viewer's gaze, inviting them instead to sustain a presence.