Los Lobos

(Los Lobos)

Samuel Kishi Leopo / Mexico / 2019 / 95 min
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  • Berlin Film Festival

    Jury Grand Prix Generation KPlus & Independent Peace Film Award.

  • Havana International Film Festival

    Best Film SIGNIS Award

  • Miami International Film Festival

    Best Film HBO Ibero-american

  • Fribourg International Film Festival

    Special Jury Prize

  • Olhar de Cinema

    Critic’s Award

  • Guanajuato International Film Festival

    Best Film

  • Melbourne Film Festival

    Jury Special Mention

  • Nara International Film Festival

    Crystal Shika Award

  • Calgary International Film Festival

    Honorable Mention
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Spanish and Cantonese with English subtitles - Spanish language audio description available *

With Martha Reyes Arias, Maximiliano Nájar Márquez, Leonardo Nájar Márquez, Cici Lau, Johnson T. Lau

Following his success with We Are Mari Pepa, director Samuel Kishi Leopo approaches a more personal topic in the moving autobiographical film.

With touches of The Florida Project, Los Lobos follows brothers Max and Leo who, together with their mother Lucía, have just crossed the border from Mexico into the United States in search of a better life. But it is not easy for them to gain a foothold in their new home country. While waiting for Lucia to return from work, the kids build an imaginary universe with their drawings and think about mom’s promise of “Disneyland”, their land of dreams.

Told with unmatched authenticity, including powerful documentary footage mixed with fiction and playful animation (reminiscent of the Puerto Rican coming-of-age masterpiece We the Animals), Kishi Leopo’s film is unique and breathtaking. The film blossoms into a wondrous adventure story as the two brothers gather the courage to venture outside and explore the strange new world just outside their tiny apartment door.

Los Lobos is an absorbing coming-of-age story about migrant life through the prism of its most innocent figures.

* Spanish language audio description available via All4Access App and/or .wav file when purchasing a DSL license.

Accessibility for these films was created by DICAPTA and funded under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education- Office of Special Education-OSEP, project “Enhanced Access to Video for Students with Sensory Disabilities through Emerging Technology,” TV Access H327C210001.

Press

“Strikingly photographed and appealingly acted by the two children, the film deftly blends fiction and documentary elements into a portrait of an immigrant community which shares some of the innocence and optimism of the kids at the heart of the picture. ” – Wendy Ide, SCREENDAILY

“An already moving film is given an unforeseen blush of relevance in these trying times by refracting an immigration story through the prism of a childhood experience of forced isolation.” – Jessica Kiang, VARIETY

“An absorbing coming-of-age story about migrant life through the prism of its most innocent figures.” – Eric Kohn, INDIEWIRE

“In a world so severely lacking compassion, Kishi Leopo’s latest feels like the cinematic equivalent of a tight embrace that reminds us we can howl ourselves out of any storm.” – Carlos Aguilar, ROGER EBERT

About the Director
Samuel Kishi Leopo was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1984. He studied audiovisual arts at the University of Guadalajara. His work has appeared in over one hundred national and international exhibits and festivals, including the Berlinale, Clermont-Ferrand (France), and International Critics’ Week at Cannes.

Samuel Kishi Leopo - Los Lobos

Available for Q&As, Masterclasses, and workshops upon request, in English or Spanish.
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In 2009, he premiered his short film Luces negras (Black Nights). This was followed by Acerca del drama de los calcetines in 2010. In 2011, Mari Pepa won Best Short Film at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. A year later, it won an Ariel Award, granted by the Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences, and the Jalisco State Youth Prize.

In 2013, Kishi Leopo finished his debut feature-length film, We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa, 2013). It premiered the following year in the Generation 14Plus section of the Berlinale. The film received Ariel nominations for Best Original Music, Best Actress, and Best Male Revelation; it won the CCAS award Toulouse Latin American Film Festival.

In 2019, Kishi Leopo premiered his second feature film, Los Lobos (2019), at the Busan International Film Festival. It was also included in the Generation Kplus 2020 section at the Berlinale, winning the Grand Prix of the International Jury Kplus and the Cinema for Peace Award.

More recently, he directed the TV series I Am Your Fan: The Party Continues and Nobody Will Miss Us.

Notes on Film

“When I was five, my mother left my father and took me and my three-year-old brother to the US. We crossed the border on tourist visas by declaring we were going to Disneyland. My mother had neither job nor lodging, not an inkling of English, and traveled light: our possessions were just a change of clothes, a few toys, and a Fisher-Price audio recorder.

Los Lobos emerges from the hazy images of my memories in order to tell a story about childhood, uncertainty, migration, a family’s reintegration, the adaptation to new surroundings, and the meaning of home.

It was very important to me to draw on the stories and experiences of the migrant community in Albuquerque for the production of this film. I intended to paint a portrait by mixing both fictional and documentary elements, and compositing fictional characters atop actual locals, their surroundings, and the multiculturalism that has built a thriving migrant community.”

– Samuel Kishi Leopo, Director

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