“Barrio Triste,” a new film by photographer and music video director Stillz, presents a raw and intimate portrayal of youth navigating the turbulent streets of 1980s Medellín, Colombia. The project adopts a faux-found-footage style, opening with a television news crew investigating reports of mysterious beams of light illuminating local homes. However, the tentative journalistic endeavor quickly unravels when a group of neighborhood boys seizes the camera, plunging viewers into their chaotic world marked by rebellion and hardship.

The narrative follows the boys as they move through Medellín’s urban landscape, their search for meaning often entwined with acts of violence and defiance. A pivotal moment occurs during a tense jewelry store robbery, where the youth, masked and armed, threaten customers and shatter glass cases to steal diamonds. The robbery sequence, underscored by a tense score from the artist Arca and punctuated by a radio interview with a serial killer, stands out as the film’s most action-driven episode.

Despite the intensity of these scenes, “Barrio Triste” largely dwells on the drifting, unsettled nature of the boys’ lives. The camera serves not only as a witness but also as an observer of their collective malaise, capturing moments of idleness and vulnerability within their dilapidated living spaces. At one point, the cameraman himself appears briefly, offering a glimpse into the makeshift, cluttered environment shared by the group.

Stillz punctuates the visual narrative with carefully framed interviews and confessions from some of the boys. These moments reveal deeper emotional layers beneath their outward defiance. One boy breaks down discussing the pain of being separated from his daughter by his parents, while others address hypothetical future viewers, acknowledging the precariousness of their prospects. Recurring imagery of street fires, candles, and flickering bulbs reinforces the film’s meditation on fleeting hope amid pervasive despair.

Produced by Harmony Korine’s company, EDGLRD, “Barrio Triste” evokes comparisons to Dziga Vertov’s 1929 “Man With a Movie Camera,” but filtered through a more anarchic and raw aesthetic reminiscent of Korine’s own work. The film’s experimental format underscores Stillz’s desire to communicate the boys’ struggles as both a social reality and a cry for help. While at times overt in its messaging, the film offers an unflinching look at adolescence marked by alienation and the search for light in the midst of darkness.