{"id":123465,"date":"2019-09-02T15:34:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T13:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iffr.com\/en\/?p=123465"},"modified":"2024-08-07T16:01:56","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T14:01:56","slug":"blog-alejandro-landes-over-monos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iffr.com\/en\/blog-alejandro-landes-over-monos","title":{"rendered":"Alejandro Landes on Monos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Brazilian-Dutch co-production Monos by Alejandro Landes follows a group of Colombian child soldiers across epic landscapes. From a mountain plateau above the clouds, this band of rebels descend into complete chaos in the canyons. It\u2019s war in the jungle mixed with booze, shrooms, a hostage and a conscripted dairy cow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Film Still: Los Monos<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ordered around by their snappy commander Mensajero, the Monos<\/strong> are given one mission only: to keep alive American hostage Doctora \u2013 played by Julianne Nicholson \u2013 and a dairy cow on loan from \u2018The Organisation\u2019. When the eight kids \u2013 including Disney actor Moises Arias and Sofia Buenaventura \u2013 find themselves ambushed, they are forced down into the morass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monos<\/strong> is both allegorical and philosophical, with Colombia’s civil war as the backdrop for adolescents who are creating their own way of life. Mica Levi scored the film\u2019s mesmerising soundtrack. Ahead of our Summer Nights pre-premiere screening, on 4 September, Alejandro Landes talked to us about Monos<\/strong> and its \u2018beast\u2019 of a production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monos is about war and conflict on the surface, but also about the inner conflicts of child soldiers. Why children at war? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a way, Monos<\/strong> is based on something real, which is the capturing of hostages and kidnapping amidst conflict. Oftentimes, the highest in command are the ones that negotiate these strategies, but it\u2019s the lowest-ranked soldiers that take care of guarding these prisoners of war. You\u2019ll often find that lowest rank in any army are kids. I read texts from people who were kidnapped or held hostage and whose guards were adolescents. I also thought it was important was that the protagonists between of the age between being a child and an adult. This borderline spoke to me. It\u2019s the time where you often go through a very big conflict. I also wanted to talk about the future, so the film asks questions for these young protagonists who have their life ahead of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us about the guerrilla wars and backline rebels in Colombia that inspired you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a Colombian, these wars were my biggest source of inspiration. Colombia has gone through a civil war with many fronts and the lines aren\u2019t clear. Here it\u2019s a situation where you have guerillas, paramilitary, narco, foreign intervention, and the state. Even between the guerillas you have different factions. Same thing with the paramilitary. The lines of battle are very divided and there\u2019s certainly a fog of war. I think it\u2019s similar to conflicts we\u2019ve seen in our generation which are more irregular and in which people don\u2019t really know where they or their country stands. You could ask someone about the Syrian civil conflict where the lines and dynamics shift so quickly. You also see that throughout the Middle East, or even in Crimea. We took inspiration for the production design from all sorts of irregular conflicts throughout the world and from the past. So, if you\u2019re Colombian, you\u2019re going to see Monos<\/strong> in a very particular light, but the film can also exist outside of this. At the heart of the film is human nature and war is a window into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the heart of the film is human nature and war is a window into it.<\/p>\nAlejandro Landes on his inspiration for Monos<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How does the film consider gender and sexuality? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomething that is key to film is the idea of rejecting binary concepts of the world. Good or evil, adult or child, left or right, victim or victimiser, paradise or hell. We have the character Rambo who is gender fluid, you don\u2019t know if they are a man or a woman. We have these scenarios in the film which reject classification. It\u2019s the same as the armies in Colombia, you never know if they\u2019re fighting for the right or the left, and in the end I don\u2019t think it really matters. While casting we looked at more than 800 kids throughout Colombia. I think that by looking at so many people I became blind to certain things, blind to gender. There was this one kid named Matt that was interesting to me. In a video I watched him in a basketball game with his friends. Matt ended up being Sofia Buenaventura, but a lot of her friends call her Matt. She kind of became an inspiration for the character Rambo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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