The question addressed in this paper is how Colombian cinema has been analysed academically. Our hypothesis is that a wide range of publications instantiate what is known as the allegorical imperative, which has resulted in films being regarded as pieces of work in which the subjective and private dimensions need to be considered expressions of the national totality. This perspective has made more natural relations like those between realism and reality, and between reality and violence. The postulate is that the Colombian reality is violent and that films that take violence as a motive are inherently realistic. Similarly, ‘small stories’ are transformed into synecdoches of the national history.