19th-century Colombia. Karl and Petronella, a young Swedish couple, sail in search of fortune. The river carries them through desolate lands ravaged by the independence war. Their adventure loses its course, slowly swallowed by a strange and distorted time in which nothing but the reflection of their nostalgia and the ghost of the alienating unknown remains. In All My Journeys I Am Returning is a film about the journey of the soul, a whirlwind with no destination.
International Title In All My Journeys I Am Returning Year of production 2026 Length 87' Country Colombia Shooting Format16mm Aspect Ratio 1.66:1 Dialogue Swedish, Spanish, French, Polish
Director Manuel Ponce de León ProductionLos Niños Films Producers Manuel Ponce de León, Daniela Rocha Giraldo, Ana Winograd, Héctor Ulloque Writers Manuel Ponce de León, Cesar Alejandro Jaimes, Jeronimo Uribe Director of Photography Angello Faccini Production Designer Diego Ricardo Costume Designer Carolina Serna Editor César Alejandro Jaimes Colorist Nadia Khairat Gómez Sound Designer Antonio Ponce de León Original Score Damián Ponce de León VFX Luis Fernando Rojas, Daniel Guarín CastCamila Bejarano Wahlgren, Fredrik Lundin, Denis Lavant, Carlos Aragón , Julián Díaz, Carlos Mario Echeverry, Gabriel Ponce de León Festival selections Locarno Film Festival 2026 - World Premiere
Director's Statement León de Greiff was one of the first poets encountered, though wasn't aware of it at the time. Throughout my childhood, my father, poet himself, would often recite fragments of poems during moments of quiet reflection. One verse in particular, which stirred in me mixture of curiosity and irritation, stayed with me: All my journeys, all journeys are journeys of return." Over the years, stopped hearing it, and it gradually faded from memory, lingering only at the edge of my consciousness. When moved to Berlin to study filmmaking, had chance encounter with Colombian man in park. He handed me CD containing twenty-five of De Greiff's poems, read by the poet himself. One day, while listening to them at home and experiencing that particular loneliness that comes with living abroad, suddenly heard the very poem had thought had forgotten. It was the same verse my father used to recite: All my journeys, all journeys are journeys of return." Those words awakened memories thought had vanished, bringing me back to my childhood and to the image of my father. As immersed myself in De Greiff's poetry, discovered that his Swedish ancestry and his longing for distant homeland nourished his imagination. realized that what had experienced in Berlin was not so different from the nostalgia that shaped his work. Remembering those verses from afar became, in some way, my own journey of return. I came to understand the depth of that verse. Every journey forward contains something of return. Exile, whether poetic or physical, becomes an inner search, desire to reconnect with one's origins. That realization became the seed of this film. The journey emerged as its central theme—not only as physical movement, but as state of the human soul, gateway to imagination and the search for identity. Migration became an inevitable path toward otherness. In All My Journeys Am Returning is film about the human need to dream, in order to return to life that was lost, one that is desired in the future, or one that perhaps never existed. This film seeks to board that delirious train that seems to travel back to nowhere.
