Spanish with English subtitles
With Sofía Buenaventura, Julián Giraldo, Karen Quintero, Laura Castrillón, Deiby Rueda, Paul Cubides, Sneider Castro, Moises Arías, Julianne Nicholson, Wilson Salazar, Jorge Román, Valeria Solomonoff.
Filmmakers may be available for a Q&A via Skype. Speaker fee: $300. Inquire at FILMCLUB@PRAGDA.COM.
A crossroad between Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Flies, and Embrace of the Serpent, Alejandro Landes’s Monos tracks a young group of soldiers and rebels who run wild in the mountains of an unspecified South American country, while keeping watch over an American hostage, Doctora.
The teenage commandos perform military training exercises by day and indulge in youthful hedonism by night, an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force known 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. Order descends into chaos and, within Monos, the strong begin to prey on the weak in this vivid, cautionary fever-dream.
In his awe-inspiring third feature, Landes examines the chaos and absurdity of war from the unique perspective of adolescence in a way that feels wholly original, thrusting his diverse young cast into an unforgiving, irrational, and often surreal environment where anything can happen — even peace. The film’s sense of surreal menace is amplified by Mica Levi’s discordant soundscape and Jasper Wolf’s cinematography.
Press
“Mesmerizing. Alejandro Landes is a powerful new voice in cinema.” – Guillermo del Toro
“Alejandro Landes' tale of a squad of ruthless youth soldiers in Colombia is not just the most visually arresting feature of the year, but a thought-provoking commentary on the country's guerrilla warfare-plagued history.” – Marlow Stern, The Daily Beast
“Unique, mesmerizing film.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety
“A monumentally cinematic experience.” – Rogerebert.com
“Stunning. At the scale of Apocalypse Now.” – Polygon
“Monos is inspired by the volatile situation in Colombia (which Landes calls “a ticking time bomb”), but pointedly plays out in unnamed locales, devoid of any geographical reference points. Indeed, the entire film is characterized by a remarkable absence of boundaries, a fluidity of age, gender and geography mirroring the deliberate lack of political or historical specificity. This is a quasi-mythical tale, rooted in brutal reality perhaps, but rendered in a poetic manner that seems timeless and universal.” – Mark Kermode, The Guardian
“[Landes] achieved a universal film, it has a very powerful cinematographic language and is a very earthy, very sensory film. I think you sweat, feel it, smell it; it is a very exciting film...the actors did a wonderful job. I think visually, I repeat, the language, the visual grammar of the movie is brutal.” – Alejandro González Iñárritu
“Monos is gorgeous, but it is also lucid as hell. And it all happens at lightning speed.” – David Sexton, London Evening Standard
“This overpoweringly tense and deeply mad thriller from Colombian filmmaker Alejandro Landes is the best thing I have seen at Berlin this year.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“Monos looks stunning, with remarkable images of extraordinary locations, and all of the performances are strident (but that is what is called for). A raw and uncomfortable film that nonetheless leaves a lasting impression, this is recommended.” – Frank Swietek , Video Librarian
