José Alejandro González Vargas

Lázaro is a film that portrays the journey of a father to the depths of his mind and the places where he built his life. Upon learning of his illness, he decides to bring his family together: a wife that he was separated from for twenty years and who returns to care for him, and a son who returns from a long journey to be by his side. An attempt is made to mend a broken bond, to unite a family in the moment of parting.

José Alejandro González traveled the world with a camera, capturing faces, voices, and fleeting encounters with strangers. On one of those trips, while working as a cleaner in a hotel in the north, the camera turned on itself. Habitante was born from that gesture: an intimate logbook made up of personal archives, fragments of travel, and shared silences. Through a sensitive and fragmented montage, the film explores the resonances between the filmmaker's life and those he encountered along the way, revealing common echoes of migration, uprooting, and searching. More than a portrait of the other, Habitante is a question about how we inhabit the world, about the sometimes impossible desire to belong. Between tenderness and discomfort, between observation and self-exploration, the film becomes an emotional diary that, by looking outward, ends up revealing the inner landscape of the filmmaker.

In search of adventure and fleeing from himself, Álvaro (70) arrived in the United States from Colombia 45 years ago. Instead of escaping his demons, however, New York provided ways to bring him face to face with them, dragging him into a life of raw extremes and uncertainties. Recently separated from Doris, his only true love, Álvaro finds himself alone in his small Harlem apartment and decides to return to Colombia to try to reunite with his estranged family. 'Álvaro' is an intimate portrait that exposes the unhealed wounds of loneliness and uprooting, but also the strength of a man who refused to give up.

Lázaro is a film that portrays the journey of a father to the depths of his mind and the places where he built his life. Upon learning of his illness, he decides to bring his family together: a wife that he was separated from for twenty years and who returns to care for him, and a son who returns from a long journey to be by his side. An attempt is made to mend a broken bond, to unite a family in the moment of parting.

José Alejandro González traveled the world with a camera, capturing faces, voices, and fleeting encounters with strangers. On one of those trips, while working as a cleaner in a hotel in the north, the camera turned on itself. Habitante was born from that gesture: an intimate logbook made up of personal archives, fragments of travel, and shared silences. Through a sensitive and fragmented montage, the film explores the resonances between the filmmaker's life and those he encountered along the way, revealing common echoes of migration, uprooting, and searching. More than a portrait of the other, Habitante is a question about how we inhabit the world, about the sometimes impossible desire to belong. Between tenderness and discomfort, between observation and self-exploration, the film becomes an emotional diary that, by looking outward, ends up revealing the inner landscape of the filmmaker.

In search of adventure and fleeing from himself, Álvaro (70) arrived in the United States from Colombia 45 years ago. Instead of escaping his demons, however, New York provided ways to bring him face to face with them, dragging him into a life of raw extremes and uncertainties. Recently separated from Doris, his only true love, Álvaro finds himself alone in his small Harlem apartment and decides to return to Colombia to try to reunite with his estranged family. 'Álvaro' is an intimate portrait that exposes the unhealed wounds of loneliness and uprooting, but also the strength of a man who refused to give up.