The Kings of the World, Directed by Colombian Laura Mora
The Kings of the World is the latest film by Laura Mora, a Colombian film director, and screenwriter from Medellín who has conquered international audiences. She completed her higher studies in directing and film production at the RMIT school in Melbourne, Australia, and completed a master's degree in scriptwriting and directing at the AFTRS, Melbourne headquarters, and returned to Colombia in 2008 context in which she focused her films.
The Woman Post | Nibeth Adriana Duarte Camacho
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Laura is a victim of violence, her father a well-known lawyer in the city, was the victim of a hitman and this is what Matar a Jesús is about, critically acclaimed. Killing Jesus is Mora's debut feature. It was released in 2017 in movie theaters in Colombia. The film won a large number of national and international awards, including the EGEDA award at the Cartagena Film Festival, the jury award for the best first film, and the Casa de las Américas award at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, the Eroski Youth Award at the San Sebastian Festival45 and the Roger Ebert Award at the Chicago Film Festival
In Colombia, his name has been included in most of the country's newspapers. Last year, he was surprised for having won the Golden Shell2 at the 70th edition of the San Sebastián International Film Festival, with the kings of the world. One of the most important recognitions in the cinematographic world
Just as good ideas are born, The Kings of the World were born. Just with the landscape of Yarumal, Colombia in his head he wrote down in his notebook: boys looking for a place in the world. boys doing damage, claiming their own, traversing the landscape. And a notice that said: we are the kings of the world.
And that is what this film is finally about, another portrait of violence, this time from the eyes, heart, and spirit of a 19-year-old boy displaced by violence and turned into a Nobody, as described by Eduardo Galeano:
Fleas dream of buying a dog and nobodies dream of getting out of poverty, that some magical day it suddenly rains
good luck, let it rain good luck; but the
good luck it does not rain yesterday, nor today, nor tomorrow, nor ever, good luck does not even fall from the sky in a drizzle, no matter how much the nobodies call it and even if their left hand itches, or they get up on the right foot, or start the year changing broom.
The nobodies: the children of nobody, the owners of nothing”. Said this journalist and poet.
Only this time, uprooting a home, family, or job makes him and his friends the kings of the world. Living in the capital of Antioquia, and surviving as they can, Rá, Culebro, Sere, Winny, and Nano spend it until Rá receives an expected answer: The land that her grandmother left her, where they took her displaced from, belongs to him.
This work then becomes a road movie where everything happens to these young people who are reclaiming their lands, with subliminal, magical landscapes and with characters that embody Colombia itself, wounded by this violence. Friends are considered crazy, those who are always willing to help whoever needs it, or prostitutes with the vocation of mothers who welcome them, feed them and give them a hug, which they have also been stripped of just by being born.
This movie is written by Laura and Maria Camila Arias and Laura Mora Ortega, three women who make a portrait of violence where men are the protagonists, in the words of the director: violence is a very masculine heritage. In such a violent country, many of the victims, of the dead, have been young and humble men. As a woman I am very interested in looking at the fragility of men, and how they related to the absence of women. This film allowed me to explore it with five men." Said, Laura in an interview with the newspaper El País
Men are asked to be violent but Laura strips naked in front of the camera and makes them what they are human, vulnerable young people in whom neither chance nor justice has been on their side.
