What Five Years, Four Months is about
Five Years, Four Months centres on Martha, a 45-year-old woman who has spent years trying to find her son — lost to Colombia's long and brutal armed conflict — through every official channel available to her. When the latest exhumation yields no bone concordance, no match, no closure, she's done waiting on institutions that keep handing her paperwork instead of answers. She finds her way to a collective of women searchers, and it's there that she hears the rumour that changes everything: somewhere in a remote village on Colombia's vast flatlands, you can ask a dead person for a favour. Alongside Sandra, a fellow searcher she's only just met, Martha sets off on a journey that stops being a road trip almost immediately — and becomes something stranger, more spiritual, and far harder to categorise.
How Five Years, Four Months came together
The film is the second feature from Colombian co-directors Juan Miguel Gelacio and Esteban Hoyos García, and it carries the weight of a project that clearly took years to earn its shape. Produced by Selva Producciones with co-production partners Chicamocha Films, Andante Producciones, and Redline Enterprises, it's a Colombia–US collaboration that draws on a subject — forced disappearances and the women who refuse to stop searching — that is painfully specific to the Colombian experience while being, in the most human sense, universal.
The lead role of Martha is played by Jenny Nava, and even in the brief footage available from the festival circuit, her performance has a quality that's hard to fake: exhaustion that doesn't tip into defeat. That distinction matters enormously for a film like this.
What put Five Years, Four Months on the international map was its selection as — according to Screen Daily, which debuted the film's first trailer — the first Colombian film to compete at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. That's not a minor footnote. Karlovy Vary is one of Europe's oldest and most respected festivals, and landing a competition slot there signals that programmers saw something genuinely distinctive here, not just a well-intentioned social drama. The project also won the Platino industry award for best Latin American work in progress at the San Sebastián Film Festival, which tends to reward films that show both artistic ambition and commercial viability. Hard to say if that combination will translate to wide streaming audiences, but the pedigree is real.
As of early 2026, the film remains on the festival circuit rather than in wide commercial release, and no aggregator scores from Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, or Letterboxd have been published yet. Box-office figures don't apply at this stage. Movie OTT tracks current streaming availability across major platforms and will be updated as distribution deals are confirmed.
Why Five Years, Four Months stands apart from other conflict dramas
What's striking is the way Gelacio and Hoyos García refuse to let the film settle into the grammar of a documentary or a straightforward grief narrative. The premise — that Martha and Sandra travel to ask a dead person for a favour — could easily tip into magical realism as aesthetic decoration, the kind of thing that signals "Latin American cinema" to festival programmers without actually doing the harder work. This film doesn't seem to do that. The supernatural element feels earned, rooted in the actual folk practices and spiritual traditions of Colombia's llanos region, and the blurring of the living and the dead mirrors something real about how families of the disappeared exist in a kind of permanent threshold — not mourning, because there's no confirmed death, and not hoping, because hope has a cost.
The structure is quietly radical. Mothers searching for their children, children searching for their mothers: the film holds both directions simultaneously, and that doubling gives it an emotional architecture that most grief films don't attempt. Jenny Nava's Martha doesn't perform suffering for the camera — she carries it the way people actually do, in the set of the jaw, in the way she listens to Sandra speak. The relationship between the two women is the film's real engine. Two strangers who share an unbearable thing. That's enough.
Movieott.com editorial staff, who cover Latin American cinema regularly, have flagged this as one of the more formally interesting films to emerge from the Colombian industry in recent years — a country whose cinema has been producing quietly remarkable work that international audiences are only beginning to catch up with.
Where to stream Five Years, Four Months online
Five Years, Four Months is currently available on major OTT services, though its distribution footprint is still expanding as the film moves through its festival run. The Where-to-Watch widget at the top of this page gives you the most current platform breakdown — that's the fastest way to check which service has it in your region without hunting across tabs.
For anyone who follows international and festival cinema, Movie OTT aggregates availability across streaming platforms so you're not left guessing whether a title has landed on a service you already subscribe to. Given that the film's streaming deals are still being finalised in some territories, checking back regularly is worth doing. Distribution for festival titles like this one can move quickly once the buzz from Karlovy Vary settles into concrete offers.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who directed Five Years, Four Months?
Five Years, Four Months is co-directed by Juan Miguel Gelacio and Esteban Hoyos García, a Colombian filmmaking duo working on their second feature together. The film is produced by Selva Producciones alongside co-production partners Chicamocha Films, Andante Producciones, and Redline Enterprises.
Q: Who plays the lead role in Five Years, Four Months?
Jenny Nava plays Martha, the 45-year-old mother at the centre of the film. Martha has spent years searching for her son through official channels before turning to a collective of women searchers and eventually embarking on a journey into Colombia's flatlands.
Q: Is Five Years, Four Months based on a true story?
The film is not based on a single documented case, but it draws directly from the real experience of Colombian mothers who search for children disappeared during the country's armed conflict. The collective of women searchers depicted in the film reflects actual grassroots organisations that have operated in Colombia for decades.
Q: What award did Five Years, Four Months win at San Sebastián?
The film won the Platino industry award for best Latin American work in progress at the San Sebastián Film Festival. It also made history as the first Colombian film to compete in the main competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Q: Where can I watch Five Years, Four Months?
Five Years, Four Months is available on major OTT services — check the Where-to-Watch widget at the top of this page for a live, region-specific breakdown. Movie OTT updates platform availability as new distribution deals are confirmed, so it's the most reliable place to check if the film has arrived on a service in your country.
Who should watch Five Years, Four Months
This one is for viewers who want cinema that takes grief seriously — not as spectacle, but as a condition people actually live inside. If you responded to films like Nora's Will or even the quieter registers of Roma, Five Years, Four Months is working in related territory, though its folk-spiritual dimension gives it a texture that's entirely its own. Eighty-four minutes. Not a frame wasted, from what early festival coverage suggests. Patients of slow, precise storytelling will find it rewarding. Those who need momentum and resolution may find it demanding. Both reactions are honest.