Unless We Dance
2023 · 15m · Colombia
Directed by Hanz Rippe Gabriele, Fernanda Pineda Palencia
Genres: documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, provocative, tender
In Quibdó, Colombia, Jonathan and hundreds of young people use dance to confront violence, racism, homophobia, and transphobia.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A social justice doc that could've been a PowerPoint, except the directors seem genuinely uninterested in the sermon—they just watch bodies move through fear and find something nobody expected there.
The film understands documentary's inheritance from observational cinema; it resists the urge to explain what dance *means* and instead trusts the formal language of movement and editing to carry the weight of testimony.
The decision to let the dancing itself be the argument—no voice-over, no talking heads—means everything hinges on how the camera finds intimacy in collective motion, and Rippe Gabriele and Pineda Palencia make that choice sing.