A Destination Guide to Filming in Colombia: Medellin

Medellin – Colombia's Second City and Innovation Capital

Flourishing Under a Fresh Reputation

A Destination Guide to Filming in Medellin, Colombia

Medellin has come a long way from the days when it was known globally as the world's most dangerous city. Back in the worst days of the mid-90s, offering production services in Medellin would have been unthinkable. Thankfully, Medellin has firmly turned its back on the past and risen like a phoenix from the ashes to become an energetic, innovative, and exciting global city with an endlessly bright future. With a growing culinary movement, a vibrant music scene, buzzing tourist districts, spectacular natural surroundings, and the most welcoming people in Colombia, Medellin is an ideal location for all manner of film productions.

Pre-Production, Logistics, and Field Production

WhereNext offers complete production services in Medellin. With our extensive local knowledge and network of contacts, we are perfectly positioned to plan and execute your Medellin production smoothly and effortlessly from start to finish.

Transport – Getting There

As Colombia's second city, Medellin has excellent transport infrastructure, and its new-found popularity with tourists has hugely increased the city's international connectivity in recent years.

Air Travel

The city has two airports: Olaya Herrera Airport (EOH) is located in the city center. Jose Maria Cordova Airport lies 29km east of Medellin in the city of Rionegro. Olaya Herrera serves regional and domestic flights, as well as private charters. The two leading flights to this airport are Satena and EasyFly. It is the principal point of access to Colombia's spectacular Pacific coast region (see 'Surrounding Destinations' below). There are also regular flights between Bogota and Medellin with Satena that land at Olaya Herrera, a convenient option to avoid the sometimes busy roads connecting Jose Maria Cordova Airport with the city center.

Jose Maria Cordova Airport (MDE) is the second-largest airport in Colombia and served over 9 million national and international passengers in 2019. It has been transformed and modernized in recent years. It now serves a variety of global destinations, including Miami, Madrid, New York (JFK), Orlando, Mexico City, Lima, Panama City, and all major Colombian destinations.

Public Transit

Two bus terminals connect Medellin with the rest of Colombia by land, and there are regular local services to many of the stunning regional destinations in the department of Antioquia. As in many major Colombian urban areas, traffic in the city can be extremely challenging during rush hour, but the excellent public transport network of the Medellin Metro and cable-car services has eased traffic pressure in recent years. However, it is always important to factor in traffic delays when planning a Medellin production.

Professional Drivers

As part of our production services in Medellin, WhereNext works with a professional team of drivers with access to a fleet of vehicles which can comfortably accommodate the needs of a large production team and their equipment.

Traditional ‘chiva’ buses are still the main form of rural transport around the mountainous villages of Antioquia department.

A Spring-Like Climate Year-Round

The weather in Medellin is warm year-round with very few extreme fluctuations. Its location at 1,500 m.a.s.l. in the tropical Andes gives the city an average annual daily temperature of around 22.5°C, with an average high of 27.8°C and an average low of 17.4°C. This wonderfully pleasant temperature gives Medellin its nickname "The City of Eternal Spring."

As in many Andean cities in Colombia, rainfall fluctuates throughout the year – the driest months are January, February, and December, while the most rains falls in April, May, September, and October. For dry, warm days, the best months for a production in Medellin would almost certainly be at the start of the year, in January and February.

Key Locations

Trendy Modern Neighborhoods

A visit to El Poblado, Laureles, or Patio Bonito is a must to experience contemporary Medellin. These neighborhoods are the city's most chic and modern, home to a range of boutique hotels, fancy restaurants, stylish cafes, and bars. They offer a fascinating glimpse of how much Medellin and grown and developed during the 21st century.

Historic City Center

Downtown Medellin is still a bit more rough-around-the-edges but is ideal for a more authentic look at the city. The neighborhoods surrounding the central plazas of Botero and Berrio is a chaotic maze of market stalls and local restaurants, punctuated by impressive monuments to Medellin's past and future, including over a dozen giant bronze sculptures by Fernando Botero, the city's most famous artistic son, and the modernist Lights Park, a square filled with over 300 dramatic light poles. Nowhere in the city is the fascinating contrast between the past and the future more starkly illustrated than this neighborhood.

Medellin’s architecture is a fascinating blend of traditional Spanish colonial-era buildings and modern designs.

Food & Drink

Traditional Cooking

Medellin has yet to develop the foodie paradise reputation of Bogota. Still, a strong culinary culture is slowly building in Colombia's second city, helped in no small part by a strong regional gastronomic tradition linked to Antioquia region's typical cuisine. The classic local dish is bandeja paisa, or 'Paisa Platter' (Paisa is the term for people from Antioquia), a monstrous, belt-bursting plate of beans, rice, pork crackling, chorizo, a fried egg, fried plantain, and avocado, traditionally served on a tray slab or wood. An arepa corn cake generally accompanies this dish.

Modern Cuisine

For a more contemporary slice of Medellin culinary culture, it's best to head to El Poblado and Laureles' more modern neighborhoods, where a range of regional and international restaurants, cafes, and bars operate. Stylish eateries like Carmen, In Situ, La Provincia, and El Cielo all offer modern, trendy takes on traditional Colombian dishes and are products of the city's new, innovative attitude. Medellin's new luxury gastronomy market, Mercado del Rio, opened up in late-2016 and contains 40 or 50 restaurants in a modernized warehouse space near the Medellin River.

Cultural Attractions

Medellin is rightly famed for its cultural attractions, strongly linked to the Paisa culture mentioned above. The city is home to several National Monuments of Colombia and approximately 40 museums, 21 public parks, 28 theaters, and several public libraries.

Museums and Public Art

The most famous galleries and museums include the Museum of Antioquia, the Museum of Modern Art of Medellin, the El Castillo Museum, Parque Explora Interactive Museum, the Medellin Planetarium, and the San Pedro Cemetery Museum (also a National Monument). The city is also renowned for public art, with many spectacular sculptures by Fernando Botero, Hugo Zapata, and Sophia Vari dotted around the city's public spaces. Street art is also enjoying new-found popularity, and the street art tour of the former no-go Comuna 13 neighborhood is one of the most popular tourism attractions.

Events and Festivals

There are also many popular festivals which take place in Medellin. The most famous is the annual Medellin Flower Festival, held in late July and early August. The smalls towns around Medellin are known for their flower-growing industry, and this festival celebrates every aspect of that cultural tradition, with giant flower arrangements filling the city and a series of parades culminating in the 'Silleteros' Parade, during which flower growers parade through the streets with colorful arrangements on their backs. Medellin's Christmas lights are also world-famous, with millions of individual lights and displays illuminating the city during December. Medellin has even been named one of the top 10 places to see Christmas lights in the world.

Surrounding Destinations

Geographical Diversity

Medellin is ideally located to explore some of Colombia's most beautiful small towns, many biodiversity hotspots, and some unique regional landmarks. As one of the largest of Colombia's 32 departments, Antioquia contains everything from Caribbean coastal regions to high-Andean moorlands and Pacific lowland jungle – you could reasonably base your production in Medellin and film some of the best of Colombia just in Antioquia.

Coffee Plantations

To the south of Medellin lies the northernmost reaches of the famed Colombian Coffee Triangle. These lush, coffee-growing regions also include the stunning little Heritage Towns of Jardin and Jerico, as well as the adventure sports paradise of Tamesis, where rafting, paragliding, and canyoning are just some of the adrenaline sports that can be enjoyed. Just north of the city is another famous Heritage Town, the delightfully well-preserved Santa Fe de Antioquia, famous for its hot climate and annual film festival.

The little rural town of Jardin is just one of many lovely traditional towns surrounding Medellin.

Spectacular Scenery

Less than an hour east of Medellin is the colorful little town of Guatape, which sits on the banks of a giant reservoir, popular with day-trippers for boat rides and canoeing trips. Overlooking this vast body of water is the surreal and iconic El Penol Rock. This granite inselberg juts incongruously out of the surrounding hills and towering over the lake and town below. The view from the top of the rock is one of Colombia's most famous.

The spectacular El Penol Rock towers over the surrounding waters of Guatape reservoir.

Great Biodiversity

Medellin is also an excellent base for natural history productions. The region is one of the best in Colombia for bird diversity, with parks like the Yellow-eared Parrot Reserve, the Chestnut-capped Piha Reserve, Las Tangaras Reserve, and La Romera home to a fascinating mix of endemic and endangered Colombian bird species. The only commercial flights to the spectacular Pacific coast region also depart from Medellin – here, you can film lush jungle, colorful poison frogs, and giant humpback whales after just a one-hour light-aircraft flight from the city center airport.

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