Fair and enthusiastic Golden Shell for the prodigy ‘The kings of the world’

The volcanic and violent lyrics of the Colombian Laura Mora prevails in a San Sebastian Festival with a decent, brilliant level, which is not excellent

‘The Kings of the world’, by Laura Mora, it’s not so much a film, obviously also, as an exhalation. She runs around the screen so convinced of herself, so enthusiastic, so beautiful and so sad, all at the same time, that her ideology is not to win viewers but believers. It is if you want an act of faith. It is fair, therefore, that for her it was the Gold shell. After all, and amid so much confusion of screens, platforms and distracted viewers who can find neither place nor place to watch, it is good that a film is presented with the conviction of a resistance exercise, like a cataclysm that calls for exaltation as well as rage, jubilation and silence.

Let’s say the jury ‘in absentia’ of Glenn Close, who stepped down as president at the last minute, complied decorously despite obvious gaps. And she did it both when it came to avoiding controversy and launching not-so-veiled messages: all possible children were awarded to perhaps make the silence about the, on the other hand, magnificent film by the Austrian Ulrich Seidl on which weighs an accusation of abuse of minor actors and that never had to be programmed. Let’s say that, in this possible reading, part of the list of winners was directed against the festival’s decision not to replicate the positions of the Toronto and New York contests that took the Austrian film off the grill while waiting for the issue of the awards to be clarified. mistreatment denounced by the German magazine Der Spiegel.

It was not, yes, the court was successful in everything that perhaps it should with regrettable oversights. But in what matters, in the jackpot, the court remained dignified and happy in his responsible anonymity, let’s call him that. Let’s not forget that tradition tells us that the headlines are raging around these dates every year in honor of the last occurrence of the enlightened president of the day at Zinemaldia.

The kings of the world the winner, tells the story of R, Culebro, Sere, Winny and Nano, street kids from Medellín with names like stones. Or machetes, would be more appropriate. They flee the city and go into the jungle. The inheritance that one of them receives from his grandmother with the government’s land restitution program is the excuse to travel. And as in any worthwhile trip, there are no more rules than those that burn. what follows is a story of millenary breath and fever that turns its protagonists into five hard-working Argonauts with dirty hands and mud-smeared faces. They seek what Jason or the 30 Persian birds (as Borges would say) have always sought: the fleece, the face of the god Simurgh or the possibility of a livable life, always so close to a dignified death.

Laura Mora manages to transcend the tense ways exhibited in her pride ‘Kill Jess’. Now, the form, before just style, is voice; one of the voices, suddenly, more identifiable and characteristic of Ibero-American cinema. The screen is flooded with the delirium typical of dreams with the same anger that is stained by the dust of reality. It is subversive and voracious cinema thought to resist, to offer itself in a desperate gesture as a plank of salvation. It sounds awesome and it is. If a festival is good for anything, it is to take care of, pamper and show films like this one, films that force us to look at the right side.

The Special Jury Prize, the second in importance, ended up in one of those silent and minimal sensations that are so coherent in their statement of reasons and clear in their gaze as perhaps slightly limited. ‘runner‘, from the American newcomer Marian Mathias, is (like Mora’s work to a great extent) a film created in the heat of the festival circuit. Having been selected among other forums for the Cinfondation residency in Cannes is a good account of her pedigree. This time, the story of two young people who meet and flee serves the same purpose as all escapes: to enlarge landscapes, to cleanse the eyes, to identify demons from the past. Without a doubt, a film as painful as it is beautiful, as slow and transparent as it is hopeful.

That the address went to the Japanese Genki Kawamura for his work in ‘A hundred flowers’ delved into the determination of the court to point to the new. Producer of some of the anime masterpieces by Mamoru Hosoda, this is her first feature. It is a film about the memory that disappears and the guilt that remains built on a complex structure and a rare virtuosity that brings the loops of oblivion to the surface of the screen. Let’s say the director wanted to impress and the jury was impressed. Undoubtedly excessive award. Those.

What follows from the palmars is already simply erratic. Even crazy. And it is so because of the absence of films as notable as –and to quote the obvious– ‘The Rite of Spring’ of Fernando Franco; ‘the wonder’, by Sebastian Lelio, or walk up, of Hong Sangsoo, as by the decisions themselves and even for themselves. That the mention to the interpretation be ‘ex aequo’ for the girl Carla Qulez for ‘La maternal’, by Pilar Palomero, and for Paul Kircher by ‘Le Lycen‘, by Christophe Honor, is only justifiable as a confused act of protest against the Seidl tape, as we said. And the same goes for the mention of the cast performance intended for the minimal appearance of Renata Lermann in ‘Alternate’, by Diego Lermann. It seems doubtful that Glenn Close, an actress herself, would have been carried away by this type of decision that is still an act of contempt, no matter how tender and vindictive it may be, to the profession. For the rest, neither the extremely conventional script of the Chinese production ‘a woman’, of Wang Chao, nor the photograph of Manuel Abramovich in ‘pornmelancholy‘ seem to have more justification than the error or the overabundance of Argentines as Argentine as the president of the Argentine jury. But that is another matter.

Be that as it may, what remains is a Irrefutable and brilliant gold shell that returns to the film festival (this and all) the virtue of its necessity. Whether you want to see it or not, generate or not generate ‘clicks’. Zinemaldia exists to make it clear that Laura Mora exists. And in what a rapturous way.