‘Kings of the World’
Address: laura purple
artists: Carlos Andrés Castañeda, Davison Florez and Brahian Acevedo
Year: 2022
Premiere: 17 March 2023
★★★★
There is something very interesting and revealing about the need for some directors to voluntarily step away from the calligraphy with which certain stories are usually approached. It recently happened with ‘The Sacred Spider’ (2022), where Ali Abbasi chose the purest codes of ‘suspense’ (narrative and visual) to tell a true story, without sacrificing his playful nature. context and settings suggested a more restrained and realistic treatment. Although the two are very different films, laura purple does something similar ‘Kings of the World’ winner of the Golden Shell award san sebastian festival.
With the land struggle in Colombia at its center, ‘Los reyes del mundo’ chronicles the grueling adventure of a group of children from the streets of Medellín (incarnated by non-professional actors) in search of their land. inherited from them. In order to place ourselves in a real scenario and situation, the director of ‘Matar a Jesús’ (2017) connects some scenes with a realistic social cinema. But he is not afraid to escape from the everyday space and take more abstract and stimulating paths. Meticulously filmed, these children’s adventures (with all its political burden and always rising from children’s emotions) transform from the driest realism to the most powerful action and even the hallucinatory journey (there’s even a certain suspension of reality). ). In doing so, his testimony of an immense reality gains strength, power, emotion, and effectiveness.