It has been about five years since I started filming PIEDRAS PRECIOSAS (GEMSTONES). By chance, I met the owner of a place where they sold stones and minerals. There, I felt the desire to capture images of the stones because of their textures, colours, and how they were pierced by light in front of the camera. These images remained stored on a hard drive but stayed in my mind as the foundation for a fiction project.
In collaboration with actor Juan Lugo, with whom I have worked for approximately ten years, I wanted to conceptualise a film based on the stones and his new life in Toulouse with his French wife, whom he met in Bogotá during the 2020 lockdown. PIEDRAS PRECIOSAS was born from the desire to create a dramaturgical exercise with Lugo, involving actions and adventures and his interactions with various characters who help him navigate a series of situations between both countries.
In cinema, I have always been primarily interested in the power of the false, in how the viewer can construct a narrative from artifice and the creation of a universe with particular spatial and temporal logics. Throughout my filmography, I explore and resolve the transition between spaces and the actions of characters who are moved and driven by chance and affected by the universe around them.
Simón Vélez
