For your consideration
Llueve sobre Babel
Colombia’s official submission Best International Feature Film 99th Academy Awards
Written and directed by Gala del SolWorld premiere, Sundance Film Festival 2025
“A maximalist triumph.”Manuel Betancourt, Variety
Thursday, November 5
7:00 pm · doors 6:30 pm
3375 Barham Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90068
Q&A with director Gala del Sol and actress Celina Biurrun. Part of the FIACINE series. Academy members, guild members and press are welcome.
RSVP for Nov 5Saturday, December 5
Time to be confirmed
Saturday, December 12
6:00 pm CT
Screening followed by a virtual Q&A with Gala del Sol.
More screenings in Los Angeles and New York will be announced here. Academy members can now watch Rains Over Babel on the Academy Screening Room. Press and industry professionals can request a private screener.
In Madrid or Seville this November? The film is screening four times, two of them with Gala del Sol and Celina Biurrun in person.
Seven months after its 14-week theatrical run, the film is still traveling at home — cineclubs, festivals and cinematecas, from the Caribbean coast to the plains.
A group of wandering souls converges at Babel, a legendary dive bar in Cali that doubles as purgatory. La Flaca — the city’s Grim Reaper — runs the house with a smile and a die in her hand. Souls wager years of their lives against her, hoping to outsmart Death at her own game.
Over one feverish night, strangers chase love, redemption and a second chance. Dante’s Inferno, by way of salsa, trap, Balkan brass and flamenco — tropical, punk and queer.
What character have you always dreamed of playing?
During the pandemic, Gala del Sol gathered young theater actors in Cali and asked each of them that — and a second question: what character might help you heal something in your own life? Their answers became the roles. The characters were built through improvisation before a word of the script existed.
Too risky.
That was the verdict on a Spanish-language film centered on LGBTQ+ characters, with a predominantly Afro-Latino cast, made by first-time feature filmmakers in their early twenties. So they founded their own company and, through Colombia’s film incentive law, brought in investors from outside the industry: a construction firm, a real estate company, a textile company.
Artisanal Intelligence.
An abandoned building in Cali became headquarters and workshop. The art department built Babel by hand — every bar stool, altar and neon sign. The team has a name for it: human beings building worlds with their hands, in an era increasingly defined by AI.
“With her Sundance debut, writer-director Gala del Sol announces herself as a fabulous off-kilter voice in contemporary cinema.”
“As a showcase for del Sol’s playfully iconoclastic vision, the picture fizzes with energy and mischief.”
“An audacious, ambitious, kaleidoscopic carnival of queerness.”
“Simply thrilling… a booming film whose ambition can be heard from several blocks away.”
“There’s nothing like Rains Over Babel and chances are, nothing like Rains Over Babel will follow it.”
“Its crackling embers, bedazzled glitter and dances to salsa Caleña beats soothe and heal in equal measure.”
“Its style speaks for itself; Gala del Sol shoots the colorful, queer, costumed-to-kill film with DIY flair.”
“A triumphant work of magic realism.”
“A one-of-a-kind beguiling magical realism fantasia.”
“Overflowing with vibrant music and queer joy, Rains Over Babel is an ode to resilience and reinvention.”
“Gala del Sol is an absolutely visionary filmmaker.”
Scroll to explore scenes from the film.
Gala del Sol is a Spanish-Colombian writer, director, producer and editor whose films sit somewhere between fantastic realism and punk, with a tropical twist. Her Chapman University thesis short, Transient Passengers (2018), was a Student Academy Awards finalist. Rains Over Babel is her first feature.
She is a Berlinale Talents alumna, a member of the Colombian Academy of Motion Pictures and of CIMA, Spain’s association of women filmmakers, and is represented by Mosaic in Los Angeles. Rains Over Babel is the first chapter of City of Maya, the gothic-tropical, retrofuturist world that holds all of her stories.
“Rains Over Babel is a love letter to the city that shaped me. It reimagines my hometown of Cali as a purgatory — suspended between rebellion and nostalgia, beauty and decay, life and death.”Gala del Sol, director’s statement
The universe of Gala del Sol
City of Maya is Gala del Sol’s interconnected narrative universe: a Latin America in another dimension, where the boundary between the real and the fantastic dissolves, and demigods walk among mortals. Flying chivas — the region’s colorful buses — share the sky with floating chorizo stands and stalls selling bionic eyes. Beneath the city lie underground motels; one of them, My Little Pony, houses the headquarters of Hell. The extraordinary belongs to everyday life.
Every story unfolds within this city and its two neighboring towns, Salty Waters and Sugar Waters — Aguas Saladas and Aguas Dulces. Together, they form the geography of del Sol’s cinematic imagination and the foundation of her personal vision as a director.
Rains Over Babel opens the door. Future films are envisioned as interconnected stories within this same world: returning to familiar locations, crossing paths with characters we have met before, and discovering how their lives continue beyond a single film. Comic books are also in development, extending City of Maya onto the page.
Written and directed byGala del Sol Produced byGala del Sol, H.A Hermida, Natalia Rendón Rodríguez, Ana Cristina Gutiérrez, Celina Biurrun Executive producersH.A Hermida, J.C Bueno, Carolina Zárate, Diamond McNeil, Carlos López Estrada, Holly Stanton, Valerie Bush Associate ProducersCatalina Hoyos-Lago, Alicia Núñez, Antonio Rosa Lobo, Alessandra Hernandez Dolan, Sebastián Garay Director of photographySten Tadashi Olson Art directorJaime Luna Costume designerFelipe Giraldo EditorsGala del Sol, Hadley Hillel, Felipe Aguilar Original scoreMartín De Lima SoundGerry Vazquez, MPSE, and James Parnell, CAS Production companiesGala del Sol Films and Fabrica Mundi, in association with Antigravity Academy
Academy members can now watch Rains Over Babel on the Academy Screening Room. Press and industry professionals may request a private, password-protected screener of the full film with English subtitles.
Or write to info@galadelsol.com
Press kit, stills, key art and interview requests with Gala del Sol and the cast.
US publicity · Cinema Tropical, New York
Natalia Hernández Moreno
press@cinematropical.com
Gala del Sol Films
info@galadelsol.com
Antigravity Academy
holly@antigravityacademy.co