When Melbourne based filmmaker, Mateo Arango Guerrero heard his name announced as the winner of the inaugural Banff Pitch, he froze. For two years he had poured himself into a project that seemed, at times, destined to live only on his hard drive—surviving countless grant rejections and stalled applications. In disbelief, he assumed the final pause before the winner’s name was simply the end of his run. “I thought my chances were over,” he says. “But man oh man was I wrong.” Even now, he insists he won’t fully believe it until he’s standing in Colombia, camera powered on, face to face with the people whose story he has set out to tell.
The win almost didn’t happen. Mateo had already stepped back from submitting applications, intending to wait until he could travel to Colombia to film a proof of concept. But when a notification from Banff popped up—triggered by his earlier submission of his short documentary Black Eyes—he shrugged, thought “why not?”, and sent it off. The casual decision led to a defining moment in his career. “It was worth the shot—and here we are,” he laughs, still sounding as if he’s waking up inside the dream.
Even the pitch itself unfolded in an unexpected way. A visa issue forced him to return home to Australia from Banff earlier than planned, leaving him to deliver his pitch remotely. What should have been a setback became an unlikely advantage. Instead of staring down an intimidating panel of world-class filmmakers, he found himself in the familiar glow of a video call. “I didn’t research any of the judges—I didn’t want the pressure,” he says. “I just focused on my story.” In the end, the simplicity worked. Mateo’s voice, unfiltered and unguarded, carried the emotional weight of his project across continents.
The story that captured the jury’s attention began thousands of kilometres from home. After eight years living in Australia and exploring its national parks, Mateo became fascinated by the parks rangers who safeguard these landscapes. It made him realise how little he knew about the people protecting Colombia’s own vast ecosystems—regions shaped not just by nature, but by decades of armed conflict. His curiosity led him down an online rabbit hole, where he discovered a two-hour YouTube video of environmental advocate Gisela Paredes discussing an emerging victims’ report. In her voice, he found something electrifying. “I immediately knew this was the perfect story to reconnect with my roots and give a bit back to my country,” he says.
The connection between filmmaker and subject was instantaneous. After watching the YouTube video, Mateo searched for Gisela on LinkedIn, sent a message, and soon found himself on a video call that neither of them expected to become emotional so quickly. “Five minutes in, we were both crying,” he recalls. Every conversation since has confirmed that her story—intertwined with the struggles and triumphs of Colombian park rangers—is not only compelling but urgent. One detail struck him deeply: as part of Colombia’s reparation process for victims of the conflict, a symbolic act of restoration is required. “Gisela told me that telling their story would be the perfect symbolic reparation,” he says. “Do I need anything more than that?”
But this is no ordinary production. The locations Mateo will film in are some of the most remote, contested, and logistically demanding places in Colombia. Many are areas where the government has little presence and where fifty years of conflict still echo through the trees. Trust must be built carefully, and plans change by the day. Coordinating it all from Australia has been a puzzle with half the pieces missing. “As of today, I still don’t have a clear idea where I’ll be filming in the next 10 days,” he admits.
Creatively, he is setting himself an equally daunting task: no interviews. Instead, he plans to recreate pivotal moments in the rangers’ lives using non-actors, crafting scenes that honour lived experience without retraumatising the people whose reality he is depicting. He wants audiences to feel the awe and terror of working in Colombia’s most beautiful—and dangerous—places, but without exploiting trauma or repeating harm. Layered over this is Colombia’s ever-present thread of magical realism. Gisela herself has a symbolic, almost mythic connection to the jaguar—a creature revered in Amazonian cultures—which she says speaks to her in dreams. Mateo is determined to weave this mysticism into the film, capturing the intangible forces that shape the landscape and the people who protect it.
Though the Banff Pitch prize covers only a fraction of the project’s overall budget, Mateo sees it as the beginning of something much larger. With this initial funding, he can finally film the proof of concept that will anchor future applications. “It’s all uphill from here,” he says, “but the motivation is higher than ever.” He hopes that once the snowball begins rolling, it will carry him and his team to more parks, more rangers, and more stories that will form the spine of the feature documentary to come.
When audiences eventually watch the finished film, Mateo wants them to walk away with a deep emotional imprint—an understanding of the devotion, danger, and duality the rangers live with every day. “I want them to feel the awe, the inspiration to protect what belongs to the world,” he says. “But I also want them to feel a piece of the hell that rangers experience in paradise.” Above all, he hopes people will finally see the tireless, under-resourced heroes who protect Colombia’s wild heart. “They show up every single day,” he says. “Resources they don’t have—but their passion never wavers.”
Mateo and his team have just begun the first steps of this project- If you feel you have something to contribute to the project, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Mateo. This is still a small, growing initiative with plenty of gaps to fill, so any help, connections, resources, or ideas that align with the project are truly appreciated. You can reach Mateo via email: matangog@gmail.com, or through his Instagram account HERE
Thanks and acknowledgments to the following people who are working with Mateo to make this project happen:
Cinematographer: Daniel Bedoya
Sound recordist: Daniela Cano
Camera and direction assistant: Camilo Arboleda
Lead character: Gisela Paredes
Special thanks to the Park rangers collective and the Paramillo National Park team.
