During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.
Directors:
Cristina Gallego,
Ciro Guerra
Stars:
Carmiña Martínez,
José Acosta,
Natalia Reyes
Traces the journey of a suburban family - led by a well-intentioned but domineering father - as they navigate love, forgiveness, and coming together in the aftermath of a loss.
Director:
Trey Edward Shults
Stars:
Kelvin Harrison Jr.,
Lucas Hedges,
Taylor Russell
After the death of her grandmother, Teresa comes home to her matriarchal village in a near-future Brazil to find a succession of sinister events that mobilizes all of its residents.
Directors:
Juliano Dornelles,
Kleber Mendonça Filho
Stars:
Bárbara Colen,
Thomas Aquino,
Silvero Pereira
Four African American vets battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen squad leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide.
Director:
Spike Lee
Stars:
Delroy Lindo,
Jonathan Majors,
Clarke Peters
In a popular suburb of Dakar, workers on the construction site of a futuristic tower, without pay for months, decide to leave the country by the ocean for a better future. Among them is Souleiman, the lover of Ada, promised to another.
Martin is a fisherman without a boat, his brother Steven having re-purposed it as a tourist tripper. With their childhood home now a get-away for London money, Martin is displaced to the estate above the harbour.
The story of the relationship between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his people, and two scientists who work together over the course of forty years to search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant.
Director:
Ciro Guerra
Stars:
Nilbio Torres,
Jan Bijvoet,
Antonio Bolivar
In Monterrey, Mexico, a young street gang spends their days dancing to slowed-down cumbia and attending parties. After a mix-up with a local cartel, their leader is forced to migrate to the U.S. but quickly longs to return home.
Director:
Fernando Frias
Stars:
Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño,
Xueming Angelina Chen,
Coral Puente
Hoping that self-employment through gig economy can solve their financial woes, a hard-up UK delivery driver and his wife struggling to raise a family end up trapped in the vicious circle of this modern-day form of labour exploitation.
1945, Leningrad. WWII has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Two young women search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.
Teenage commandos perform military training exercises by day and indulge in youthful hedonism by night, an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force know only as The Organization. After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, both the mission and the intricate bonds between the group begin to disintegrate.
I see people saying you need to know about the Colombian context in order to truly understand this film. Maybe that is true to an extent, but the director deliberately removes any context that would tell you about the situation. That is for a reason. Because context is removed, you don't know who the characters are fighting for or why they're fighting. You can't say whether they are on the 'good' or 'evil' side, if there even is one at all.
From the get-go the film immerses you into their lives forcefully and vividly. You don't need to know what the wider context or motive is to understand the very human drama. What I see is children making decisions based on a range of factors: fear, power, pride. But I also see children who are missing vital components of a human's existence because of the war that forces them to think like robots at times. Paradoxically, they also have the freedom and lack of authority to let them run riot at times, manifesting in wild, irrational decisions and bizarre, disturbing rituals. This unnatural state of being, war plus lack of social structure, is the cause. Yet you do get glimpses of their youth being expressed in more innocent ways, that remind you that there is still some humanity buried in there.
I like that despite the situations the characters are in, Monos isn't bothered with making you pity them. It's interested in things other than that well-worn trope. It doesn't try to make you hate them either. Rather, it shows how they can do evil things, irrational things, and occasionally, good things. But ultimately, child or adult, war makes demons of us all.
Another thing that really hooked me into this film is the cinematography, which is at times beautiful but is foremost fixed on expressing the characters' emotions. During crazy ritualistic behaviour, it becomes frenzied. As the group becomes increasingly disjointed, the camera is increasingly disorienting too.
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I see people saying you need to know about the Colombian context in order to truly understand this film. Maybe that is true to an extent, but the director deliberately removes any context that would tell you about the situation. That is for a reason. Because context is removed, you don't know who the characters are fighting for or why they're fighting. You can't say whether they are on the 'good' or 'evil' side, if there even is one at all.
From the get-go the film immerses you into their lives forcefully and vividly. You don't need to know what the wider context or motive is to understand the very human drama. What I see is children making decisions based on a range of factors: fear, power, pride. But I also see children who are missing vital components of a human's existence because of the war that forces them to think like robots at times. Paradoxically, they also have the freedom and lack of authority to let them run riot at times, manifesting in wild, irrational decisions and bizarre, disturbing rituals. This unnatural state of being, war plus lack of social structure, is the cause. Yet you do get glimpses of their youth being expressed in more innocent ways, that remind you that there is still some humanity buried in there.
I like that despite the situations the characters are in, Monos isn't bothered with making you pity them. It's interested in things other than that well-worn trope. It doesn't try to make you hate them either. Rather, it shows how they can do evil things, irrational things, and occasionally, good things. But ultimately, child or adult, war makes demons of us all.
Another thing that really hooked me into this film is the cinematography, which is at times beautiful but is foremost fixed on expressing the characters' emotions. During crazy ritualistic behaviour, it becomes frenzied. As the group becomes increasingly disjointed, the camera is increasingly disorienting too.