BAM Bogota Expands With Netflix, Unifrance Partners
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- Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM) opens its 17th edition July 6–10 with ~2,300 accredited attendees, anchored by a Netflix alliance that sent 40 young producers aged 24–32 to the market — half from Central America, the Caribbean and the Andes, up from past Colombia-only cohorts.
- Unifrance and the French Embassy in Colombia are joining BAM for the first time, dispatching 12 French sales agents — including Le Pacte Films, Celluloid Dreams, Good Fellas, MK2 Films, The Pool Films and Les Valseurs — to meet roughly 30 Latin American distributors.
- BAM Talks expanded from 12 to 15 public sessions, headlined by director Alonso Ruizpalacios, producer Stacy Perskie, Venezuela's Mariana Rondón and Argentine documentarian Andres di Tella, with a closing panel on the impact of Netflix's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' adaptation featuring reps from the Inter-American Development Bank and Proimágenes Colombia.
- Proimágenes Colombia is launching a first-of-its-kind BAM industry track on audiovisual archives, citing three Colombian films selected for this year's Berlinale that incorporated archival footage as evidence of the format's rising creative value.
- BAM will debut 'Vaivén,' a free immersive installation by artist collective Project Aurora in partnership with Bogotá's Secretariat of Culture, marking the market's first public foray into immersive media and video games.
- Claudia Triana, head of Proimágenes Colombia, said the audiovisual sector is 'just waiting' on incoming right-leaning president Abelardo de la Espriella (August), but expressed confidence that incentives will survive the transition, noting the industry also weathered the left's arrival years ago.
Why it matters: BAM's 17th edition marks a structural shift from a Colombia-only industry confab to a regional hub, layering in first-time partnerships with Netflix (for training) and Unifrance (for distribution) and adding an archives track plus an immersive-media debut. With 2,300 accreditations and French sales agents meeting 30 Latin American distributors, BAM is positioning itself between Guadalajara and Ventana Sur — though the incoming de la Espriella government's stance on audiovisual incentives remains untested.
