EXCLUSIVE: Film Movement has acquired North American rights to Barrio Triste, the feature debut of photographer and music video director Stillz, who is best known internationally as a long-time collaborator of Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny.
News of the acquisition follows hot on the heels of Bad Bunny’s historic Super Bowl half time show on Sunday, for which Stillz directed the teaser.
Set in the Colombian capital of Medillín in the early 1990s, Barrio Triste follows four teenage boys who steal a television news camera and begin filming their reckless, often violent exploits across the city’s streets, hills, and raw brick neighborhoods.
Their trippy, found-footage–style chronicle of bravado and transgression gradually reveals a deeper undercurrent of loneliness, alienation, and social rupture.
The film world premiered in the Orizzonti section of Venice Film Festival last September, where it won praise for its immersive visual language and uncompromising portrait of youth on the margins, before also playing at the Toronto and New York film festivals.
Barrio Triste is the first feature film to come down the pipeline from Harmony Korine’s multidisciplinary company EDGLRD since its creation in 2023.
The acquisition was announced by Michael Rosenberg, President of Film Movement and James Clauer, Head of Development for EDGLRD.
“Barrio Triste is an unflinching, deeply immersive debut that announces Stillz as a fearless and essential new filmmaker,” said Rosenberg. “With its raw immediacy, poetic undercurrents and electrifying score, the film captures a world rarely seen with such intimacy. We’re proud to bring this bold and challenging work to audiences in theaters across North America.”
“Barrio Triste is exactly why we built EDGLRD – to back bold filmmakers and deliver high-octane content at the speed of culture, without compromising craft,” addedClauer. “The North American theatrical debut is a major milestone, and we’re proud to bring Stillz’s urgent, unapologetic vision to audiences.”
Film Movement’s current catalog also features LGBTQ-animated drama Bouchra from visual artists Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani, as well as Chie Hayakawa’s drama Renoir and Dominik Moll’s police procedural Case 137, which both premiered in Competition at Cannes in 2025.
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