Kikuyo

Kikuyo is an ancestral, omnipresent force that consumes everything in its path, every sidewalk and every childhood memory. We have played, loved, and slept on its soft green surface, and one day we will also rest forever covered by it.

Kikuyo surrounds Bogotá and covers it completely, becoming invisible to those of us born after its arrival. Almost a hundred years later, it is impossible to imagine our landscape without it. Pennisetum clandestinum, described in botanical encyclopedias as aggressive, greedy, and bold, is a testimony of colonization: a relentless devourer that shapes the environment.

This film is a poem dedicated to Kikuyo, guided by voices that narrate its relentless invasion of abandoned houses and buildings in Bogotá. It is an exploration of the intimate connection between colonization and forgetting, about the silent and restless homogenization created by grasses around the world. Kikuyo tells the story of a forgotten city devoured by a type of grass that will continue to thrive long after we have all disappeared.