Record Attendance and a First Netflix Tie-Up
What the Bogota Audiovisual Market Says About 20 Years of Colombia's Screen Industry

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The 17th Bogota Audiovisual Market (BAM: Bogotá Audiovisual Market), held in Bogota from July 6 to 10, has closed. Its 2,336 registered participants set a new record for the event, and 882 one-on-one business meetings and 271 industry programs took place. This market, which has grown into one of South America's leading venues for international co-production, quite clearly entered a new phase this year.

What happened

The biggest change this time was that BAM's flagship program, "Bammers," opened its doors to international filmmakers for the first time. In partnership with Netflix, project development was carried out by pairing 20 filmmakers from outside Colombia with 20 Colombian creators. A program that had until now specialized in developing domestic talent has begun to function as a gateway to international co-production.

Three newly created focus programs also drew attention: "emerging formats," "archive footage," and — timed to the ten-year milestone since the 2016 peace accord — "narratives of Colombia's peace process." Two projects won awards in the competition. In parallel, Bogota's TIS Studios opened a new roughly 1,700-square-meter soundstage, "Stage 7," part of an investment in facilities designed with large international productions in mind.

Context: 20-plus years since the Film Law

The industry survey figures released this year are striking. Colombia's Film Law (Ley 814) was passed in 2003. Before that, roughly two feature films were released per year, but over the eleven years from 2015 to 2025, a total of 548 films were released, attracting 160 million dollars in private investment along the way. A country that released two films a year became, in little more than a decade, a country producing over 500. This accumulation is why Colombia is increasingly seen in Latin America as "the country that succeeded in growing a screen industry."

The question: the map of Latin America's screen industry is shifting

Within a Latin American audiovisual industry long anchored by the two poles of Brazil and Mexico, Colombia has steadily raised its profile in recent years. From noir-tinged stories about drug cartels and armed conflict to works centered on the peace process, migration and urban culture, Colombian content is gaining viewers on streaming platforms worldwide. With BAM functioning as the supply-side foundation, a virtuous circle is emerging between the content industry and tourism and the creative economy.

The decision to put forward "narratives of reconciliation and memory" as a new industry theme, on the tenth anniversary of the peace accord, can also be read as an attempt by Colombia to brand itself as a post-conflict society. Not hiding the memory of the conflict, but retelling it and exporting it. Here you can see a domain where cultural policy and diplomacy overlap.

My perspective

What I found interesting in this news is the sheer length of time hidden inside the tidy story of "cultural policy turned into an industry." The Film Law passed in 2003, the first BAM was held in 2010, and the opening to the world came in 2026. Over more than 20 years, Colombia climbed the staircase from institutions to a market to internationalization, one step at a time — and none of those steps was built overnight. The fruits of policy often arrive long after the government that started it has gone. Colombia's screen industry is a living example.

And one more thing. In a Colombia where so much of the news is about security and political turmoil (this week I also covered the tensions around the presidential transition in a separate article), a story about the film industry shows us "another face of the same country." Reading the crisis coverage and the culture coverage side by side is, I believe, the surest shortcut to understanding this region in three dimensions.

Glossary

mercado audiovisual = audiovisual market; an industry trade fair where works are bought and sold and co-production deals are negotiated. coproducción = co-production; an international co-production is a coproducción internacional. posconflicto = post-conflict; a keyword for describing Colombian society since the 2016 peace accord.

A country that released two films a year became, in little more than a decade, a country producing over 500. It is one of the few real examples of cultural policy turning into an industry.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.