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San Sebastian: “Los reyes del mundo” by Laura Mora (Colombia), festival grand prize

Los Reyes del mundo, the film by Colombian Laura Mora won the Concha de oro at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, September 24, 2022. The director (C) with her two Colombian producers and the 5 teenagers, the "kings of the world" of the film.

© San Sebastián Festival

Text by: Isabelle Le Gonidec

4 mins

Children looking for a corner of their own in a country, Colombia, which turns its back on them, this is the story told by director Laura Mora.

His film,

(The Kings of the World), won the Concha de oro, the grand prize at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

An “epic-punk” road movie, according to Laura Mora.

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From our special correspondent,

Laura Mora is a regular in San Sebastian where she had already presented her first feature film, 

, then hailed with a prize.

Filmed in his city of Medellin, deeply marked by the violence of the Colombian conflict - with many facets -, he told the story of revenge: that of a teenager determined to kill the sicario who had murdered her father.

The clash of two worlds, of two Colombias, the bourgeois and that of the poor neighborhoods.

The director says that, during the shooting of this first film, she had met many young people from the streets and that everyone told her that what they dreamed of was to have a place of their own.

A safe place and theirs.

This dream, the young Rá, its main character, will perhaps realize it.

The teenager learns that the legal action attempted by his grandmother to have his property titles recognized has been validated.

He has the precious papers.

Like many Colombian peasants, the grandmother was driven from her land by paramilitaries in the pay of private interests or large landowners.

Rá and his friends, his family, the four lost boys, leave Medellin in search of this promised land.

Finally a piece of something of their own, a house, a roof.

Rá dreams in front of the old faded photo of the family home.

They will be the kings of the world there.

The film recounts their journey strewn with pitfalls, the malevolent encounters - most often men, like the racist henchmen who abduct the boys - and benevolent - like the old women of this country brothel or this couple of little old ghosts in their ruined house.

Los reyes del mundo, Colombian film by Laura Mora, won first prize at the 2022 San Sebastian film festival. © San Sebastian Film Festival

A road movie, beautifully filmed, like this sequence shot which plunges the viewer on the verge of nausea when the teenagers descend, on their bikes, a very long slope with tight turns, followed by the camera.

The Bajo Cauca or northern Antioquia, a rich and harsh region deeply marked by war.

The men, whites in ponchos and hats screwed on their heads, are hostile.

The children have been warned: never say why you are there.

" 

", explains an old hermit.

Teenagers who are not silhouettes of street children but real characters, each with their own temperament around Rá, who fights for the rights given to him by these pieces of paper to be recognized, following this white horse, a poetic figure which symbolizes the house, as in the poems of

, says Laura Mora. 

Millions of displaced people driven from their land

Films featuring lost children from Colombian cities are legion.

The San Sebastian festival had two other feature films in its selection,

de Andrès by Ramirez Pulido and

by Fabian Hernandez, presented in the Horizontes latinos section, two Franco-Colombian co-productions.

by Laura Mora highlights an important aspect of the social reality of Colombia: the tragedy of these peasants driven from their land by war, who have come to populate the slums of the metropolises.

Colombia is the country with the most displaced people in the world.

More than six million people have been

.

In 2011, then-president Juan Manuel Santos created a unit dedicated to returning land to peasants.

Tens of thousands of complaint files had been filed and, in the end, few cases were processed.

Above all, if a favorable court decision has been rendered, the restitution process is not complete because, often, the

by interests larger than these small farmers: agribusiness, mines, etc.

Doing justice to all these displaced persons is one of the major issues awaiting the new Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

These teenagers on the barricade, a poignant scene of the film, have not finished claiming a roof, even simply the right to live.

►

: 

Winners of the 70th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival:

Concha de oro:

by Laura Mora (Colombia)

Concha de plata:  

by Genki Kawamura (Japan)

Special Jury Prize:

by Marian Mathias (Germany) 

Best Screenplay: Dong Yun Zhou and Wang Chao for 

 (China)

Joint Best Leading Roles: Carla Quílez in

 by Pilar Palomero (Spain) and Paul Kircher in 

 by Christophe Honoré (France)

Horizontes Latinos Prize:

by Valentina Maurel (Costa-Rica-France)

►All the winners can be found here

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