Immersive Lab
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The space
In person! Seven days between the mountain and the river.
You arrive with an idea. You leave with a clear film.
An intimate and collective process in which, cinematically, we explore territories beyond reason: the body, intuition, the senses. All at the service of your project.
For those who are willing to fly very high.
Walking two opposite paths to go further
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
The lab works in two directions at the same time.
Cinematic writing
Each project is the center of the space twice during the week. In the first, the director presents the project in a fluid and holistic way; doubts and fragilities are welcome, and the project receives a collective gaze. In the second, after having lived the full experience, we return to that project from another place, different and deeper. Between those two sessions there are reflection exercises and writing exercises: logline, synopsis, motivation, narrative structure, director’s vision, teaser, and other explorations with the material. The tools of documentary development applied directly to each project.
Working from intuition and the body
Throughout the week there are spaces to open up possibilities: meditations around questions about the project, movement sessions to explore experientially what the mind cannot resolve, intuitive writing, sensory work, and tarot and astrology readings as tools for creative self-knowledge.
These two dimensions do not inhabit the same plane. They constantly feed one another. What emerges in a body session illuminates the writing work the next day. What appears in meditation opens a possibility that the group explores collectively. Clarity comes neither from reason alone nor from intuition alone. Between them we reach far deeper clarities.
Depending on the stage of development, at the end of the lab each filmmaker takes away something concrete: greater clarity about what film they want to make, why, and how. A project that is more solid, more honest, more their own.
THE PLACE
El Corazón del Mundo
(The Heart of the World)
A private place surrounded by nature, between the mountain and the river, near Santa Marta. The Caribbean and the Sierra Nevada coexist here in a way that exists nowhere else. That energy gives shape to your experience.
Accommodation: Included throughout the seven days
Meals: Fully included throughout the seven days
Transport: At each participant’s own expense
THE PARTICIPANTS
Who it’s for
For filmmakers with a project or an idea they want to develop in depth. You don’t need an advanced pitch document or previous workshop experience. You need to be open to letting something shift.
This is not a technique workshop. It is not a space to confirm what you already know. It is a process of creative transformation where the project evolves. And so does the filmmaker.
THE PROCESS
Selection
The lab works by open call. We review each application to form a group that can contribute to one another and that is open to the kind of explorations we propose.
To apply, we need to know who you are, what project you bring, and why you feel this is the space for you.
Capacity: Twelve filmmakers
Frequency: Once a year
Leave us your details to be the first to know when registration opens.
Mentors
We are Clare Weiskopf and Nicolás van Hemelryck, filmmakers with an intimate gaze and a deep interest in exploring taboo subjects, stories that unsettle, that ask questions, that refuse to settle for the surface.
We teach from inside the process, because we have never stopped making. Clare has taught film at the National Film School since 2018, and at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Javeriana, and Magdalena universities. Nicolás has been an advisor and lecturer at the EICTV in Cuba, at Uniandes, and at the National Film School. Together we have led workshops at the University of Bern in Switzerland. We are both frequent jurors and advisors for national and international film funds and calls at institutions such as HotDocs, IDFA, and MiraDoc.
Our latest film, ALIS, has won 30 international awards, including the Crystal Bear and the Teddy Award at the Berlinale. Our debut AMAZONA premiered at IDFA and was nominated for Best Ibero-American Film at the Goya Awards. Today we are still in full production: we have just finished DORULE, our first fiction short film, and we are developing EL DORADO, our first fiction feature, and NO SE VOLVER A CASA, a new personal documentary about existence and mental health. We also work on international projects as co-producers and screenwriters, such as ESTRELLAS MIGRATORIAS (in post-production), CUBA Y LA NOCHE (Miami IFF 2026), and CYCLOVIA (in production), as well as the already-released HOMO BOTANICUS (DOK Leipzig, Torino IFF – Best Film) and LIMBO (Sheffield, Cinéma du Réel). Our work has been supported by Sundance, Tribeca, IDFA Bertha Fund, Ibermedia, Chicken & Egg, Catapult, and Proimágenes. We have co-produced with Romania, Chile, France, the United States, the UK, Mexico, Spain, and Cuba, and have been selected for EAVE, La Fabrique Cinéma at Cannes, IDFAcademy, Dok.Incubator, GoodPitch, and Tribeca TFI Network.
Through Casatarántula we have accompanied other filmmakers’ projects at every stage, from development to distribution, and we have given development, financing, and writing workshops in Colombia and abroad. Casatarántula LABS is born from that accumulated experience and from something deeper: the need to have a creative space of our own, where cinema is developed collectively without haste, from questions and not from answers, from the gut and not from the market, from curiosity and not from trends.
Guest Mentors
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