Being very interested in seeing this title since hearing the high praise it has gotten,I was happy to recently stumble upon it on Netflix UK, leading to me heading towards the mountaintop.
View on the film:
Filmed at the Chingaza National Park and up the river Samana, (locations never before captured on film before) co-writer (with Alexis Dos Santos)/ director Alejandro Landes & cinematographer Jasper Wolf (backed by a superb blowing into glass bottles score by Mica Levi) balance the brutality of human instinct, with the stark beauty of nature.
Whipping up a dream-logic atmosphere from deep textured coloured strains of natural light being cast across the children, ( played by a great largely non-professional child cast) as the bright shine of the sky fades, to brutal short sharp outbursts of violence between the kids,held in unflinching close-ups by Landes.
Nodding to William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies with a pigs head rolling into view as the eight kids pick up guns, the screenplay by Santos and Landes explore the horror of the decades long Colombian conflict in a hypnotic, misty ambient manner,where the child soldiers brutality unleashed as the bond between the kids cracks,is matched by a intense melancholy of the loss of innocence experienced by the nation/ young people on the mountaintop.
View on the film:
Filmed at the Chingaza National Park and up the river Samana, (locations never before captured on film before) co-writer (with Alexis Dos Santos)/ director Alejandro Landes & cinematographer Jasper Wolf (backed by a superb blowing into glass bottles score by Mica Levi) balance the brutality of human instinct, with the stark beauty of nature.
Whipping up a dream-logic atmosphere from deep textured coloured strains of natural light being cast across the children, ( played by a great largely non-professional child cast) as the bright shine of the sky fades, to brutal short sharp outbursts of violence between the kids,held in unflinching close-ups by Landes.
Nodding to William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies with a pigs head rolling into view as the eight kids pick up guns, the screenplay by Santos and Landes explore the horror of the decades long Colombian conflict in a hypnotic, misty ambient manner,where the child soldiers brutality unleashed as the bond between the kids cracks,is matched by a intense melancholy of the loss of innocence experienced by the nation/ young people on the mountaintop.