Rosa Diaz
Barcelona (EFE).- A topical issue in Colombia, land restitution, is the origin of “The Kings of the World”, a film that narrates “a trip to the promised land” starring displaced persons, who “could also be Immigrants in Spain”, where it premieres this week, because “everywhere there are people looking for a place to be safe”.
In an interview with EFE in Barcelona, the Colombian director (Medellín, 1981) Laura Mora explained that the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Festival, which she won last September, has been the trigger for “a dialogue very exciting”, both in Colombia and in other countries, because the film “parts from Colombia” but speaks to the world.
“In Colombia we don’t see much of our own cinema -he pointed out-, but the award made people interested and the debate was opened in many areas, but especially in those that are now at the center of political discussion, such as that of land restitution”.
The different views of the European and Colombian spectator
However, in the many festivals that the film has visited, its director has been able to appreciate that the gaze of the European spectator is “very different and, in some way, freer, because, although certain readings linked to Colombian reality may be lost , he lets himself be carried away by the trip and its symbolic load”.
“We are all looking for a safe place to live, although some have to go through more difficult situations than others to achieve it,” he said.
“Los reyes del mundo” tells the story of five boys who live on the streets in Medellín and begin a hard journey to the town where one of them is from, because the lands that were forcibly taken from him have been restored. his family.
Political news has put Laura Mora’s film at the center of the debate
When Laura Mora began working on this film, in 2016, she could not have imagined, as she has said, that the subsequent social revolt would take place and that a progressive government would come to power in her country with the issue of land restitution in his programme.
This fact has put the film at the center of the political debate, and the feature film has been received “in a very different way by the different sectors of Colombia, which is a highly polarized society.”
“Some have been very upset because the protagonists are what they call ‘five lazy people’, but there have also been interesting debates about the many themes that the film addresses, such as racism, the displaced, the excluded, social cleansing or masculinity. ”.
A reading about the film that the director especially liked is the one that has been made from the University of Los Andes, where in an essay she has described the film as ‘queer’ “because it celebrates dissidence” and shows “five boys who we tend to only see them as violent men from another register, that of tenderness”.
Bullying and painful episodes
There have also been unpleasant episodes, such as the threats that the director has recently suffered from a group that has intimidated her with the support of one of the non-professional actors who star in the feature film.
“By winning the Concha de Oro, some thought we were earning a lot of money and very painful things happened,” the director recounted.
Despite the many difficulties that Mora and her team have gone through, who had a very hard filming in Bajo Cauca, the director feels proud of “The Kings of the World” because she believes that her objective has been achieved, that “it it is to solve problems, but to raise them”.
“It is a political film, because all good art is political -he has sentenced-, but it is not made from militancy or from the manifesto. Hopefully art can put us before a deeper understanding of the world we inhabit”.