Virus Tropical

This animated film is adapted from the autobiographical graphic novel of the same name by Colombian illustrator Power Paola. It tells the story of Paola breaking free from the constraints of a conservative South American middle-class family.

Paola’s very birth was treated as a kind of “miracle” — doctors had told her mother she’d already gone through menopause, and even referred to the child in her womb as a “tropical virus.” Because her father had once been a priest, her childhood was shadowed by religious conflict and family upheaval. In high school, she and her mother left Ecuador for Cali, Colombia. Far from home, Paola went through the usual confusions of adolescence. In Cali — a city both seductive and turbulent — she experimented with drugs, lived through the disillusionment of first love, felt the hardship of striking out on her own, and worked hard to find herself through art. After graduating, Paola packed her bags amid the chaos and said goodbye to her family…

The soundtrack, composed by Adriana García Galán, blends Latin indie rock with psychedelic folk — a nostalgic mood thick with tropical humidity, bittersweet yet full of life. Paired with the film’s raw, sensitive black-and-white hand-drawn animation, it becomes deeply affecting.