News

Colombian cinema has shown a ferocious loyalty to the country’s dispossessed: to the generation that lost its lands to exploitation and its moral moorings to the drug trade, to the kids who grew up parentless on the streets or found some kind of refuge in the militias that terrorized the country. It has also proved to be a hotbed of vibrant artistic experiment. Films such as Monos (2019) and La Jauria (2022), in which myth, magic and documentary observation collide and mingle, are notable for their untethered energy and complete disregard for prescribed categories. Stories are not so much told as imaginatively experienced. Perhaps, in a country with so few visible rules, anything is possible.

Which brings us to Laura Mora’s The Kings of the World, about a volatile street hustler from Medellin who sets out to reclaim his grandmother’s stolen farm. It is a glorious film, pulsing with life.

The dreamy surreal and harshest of realities rub shoulders in Laura Mora Ortega’s San Sebastián Golden Shell-winning drama, which also suggests the past and the present have a closer interplay than you might first think. Her tale of five street kids hoping to claim a patch of ancestral land often has the tone of a fable, emphasised by its opening near-post-apocalypic opening of a city street, empty of everything except a white horse, in which a voiceover notes: “One day all the men fell asleep and all the fences of the Earth burst into flames.”

This world of foreboding calm is quickly replaced by the tumble of life for a group of homeless teens - Cuebro (Cristian David), Sere (Davison Florez), Nano (Brahian Acevedo) and Winny (Cristian Campaña) - led by the streetwise Rá (Carlos Andrés Castañeda). A brighter future than the streets of Medellin is held out in tantalising prospect.

Laura Mora’s “The Kings of the World” has no shortage of beautiful shots. The Colombia-set road trip follows a group of four teenagers as they set out to start a life anew away from the violence and poverty they’ve long grown up with. As the film moves away from the bustling streets of Medellin and into the foggy Andean landscapes, Mora captures a vision of this country in transition that is as stunning as it is eye-opening. Every frame begs to be dissected for the way it conjures the promise of futures and freedoms while also stressing the perils and dangers of such possibilities.

One early such shot is that of Rá (Carlos Andrés Castañeda), shirtless and fearless, atop a white horse in the middle of an empty urban street. It’s our first introduction to this young man. By himself atop this wild horse, he looks equally regal and boyish,...