Italian sales agency Lights On has acquired international sales rights to Colombian director Manuel Ponce de León’s debut feature, “In All My Journeys I Am Returning”, before its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. The deal gives the film an international sales partner as it enters Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present competition, potentially strengthening its prospects for festival exposure and distribution.

Set in early 19th-century Colombia, the drama follows a young Swedish couple travelling up the Magdalena River to find a legendary gold mine amid a landscape marked by war. The film explores exile, memory and belonging, drawing on the poetry of León de Greiff and Ponce de León’s interest in philosophy; it was shot in sepia tones along the Magdalena River, with colonial-era Honda serving as a production base.