Vladimir Durán

Vladimir Durán is a Colombian actor and director based in Buenos Aires. He graduated in Anthropology at the University of Montreal and trained in acting and directing actors at Nora Moseinco’s school. He studied Film Directing at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. He directed the short film Soy tan feliz (2011) and the feature film Adiós entusiasmo (2017), which premiered at the Berlinale. As an actor, he has appeared in films such as The Face of the Jellyfish by Melisa Liebenthal, Litigante by Franco Lolli, For the Money by Alejo Moguillansky, and La Flor by Mariano Llinás.

Vladimir Durán participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Vladimir Durán’s submission:

Obviously—it goes without saying—making these lists is arbitrary, considering all that gets left out and should be there: Six Men Getting Sick by Lynch, The Red Balloon and its New York counterpart The Black Balloon by the Safdie brothers, Mother by Sorogoyen, which is devastating in just a few minutes—to name just a few that come to mind right now...

— Vladimir Durán

Movie	Original Title	Director	Country	Year
Death in Vignoles Mort à Vignoles	Olivier Smolders	Belgium	1999	25’
A wonderful autobiographical film essay—a radiography of cinema filming death as it does its work, as Smolders himself puts it, and at the same time defying it. A radiography of the passage of time, of what is filmed and what never is. The voice-over accompanies the images, becoming an image itself.
Gasman	Lynne Ramsay	United Kingdom	1997	15’
Truly great cinema. Few films use cinematic language and resources so deeply to make the viewer play—to make them do the work. Everything is mystery, and each frame is a small painting full of clues. The sound carries a sinister, mysterious resonance that also takes part in the game. Everything is known, yet nothing is known. Everything is meticulously planned, and at the same time, everything feels alive and unpredictable.
Little Death La petite mort	François Ozon	France	1995	26’
A great medium-length film that delves into the character’s twisted psyche — full of rage, sensuality, and darkness. Tell me about daddy issues. Few cinematic works explore them so deeply. The father is an image and a voice that keeps giving orders from within. His figure seeps into the gaze, into sexuality, into the way the character seeks or destroys love.
Journey سفر	Bahram Beyzaie	Iran	1972	34’
This is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve seen in a long time. The beauty of the shots, the astonishing performances of the children, the dreamlike yet realistic journey, the light, the freedom, the play. Extraordinary cinema.
Solecito	Oscar Ruiz Navia	Colombia	2013	20’
Endearing characters that make you fall in love with them and radiate authenticity. I don’t know how they managed to capture teenage romantic courtship with such truth and spontaneity.
Asparagus	Suzan Pitt	USA	1979	20’
I can’t get those images out of my head. Absolute wonder. At one point, when the faceless woman gives the asparagus a blowjob, amid its many metamorphoses, the asparagus turns into celluloid. A self-blowjob of the film on itself. I don’t know what I’m saying, but absolute wonder.
Antoine et Colette	François Truffaut	France	1962	30’
But of course it has to be here — obviously.
Nalike Village Aldeia de Nalike	Claude Lévi-Strauss, Dina Dreyfus		1936	16’
Various ethnographic films by Dreyfus and Lévi-Strauss in the 1930s in Mato Grosso, preserved by the Cinemateca Brasileira. In reality, the films of Nalike Village are only two, 13 and 9 minutes long. The rest are films of the Bororó and a film of cattle herding on an extensive farm. This last film is presented as the looming threat over what we see in the subsequent films. A world that disappears—or will completely disappear—is captured thanks to the cinematograph. In other words, the past as a treasure and the future as a threat, following the extractivist, productivity-driven logic that will erase the world.
Customs Visit Visite de la douane		France	1905	2’
They were beginning to have fun with the visual and humorous possibilities of the cinematograph.
Du côté de la côte Along the Coast	Agnès Varda	France	1958	25’
Only Varda could turn a commission from the Ministry of Tourism into such beauty. How she had fun filming, how she delighted in the world.