Monos (15)
Directed by Alejandro Landes

THIS visceral and haunting thriller was voted Best Film at this year’s London Film Festival and deservedly so.

Inspired by the Colombian civil war, the youth in Monos serve as a metaphor for a young nation still searching for its identity and dreaming of peace according to director Alejandro Landes, who co-wrote the script with Alexis Dos Santos. But it’s a film transcending borders and existing as a world in its own right.

It opens with eight teenage commandos — Wolf, Bigfoot, Lady, Rambo, Swede, Boom Boom, Smurf and Dog — undergoing military training exercises on a high mountain top among the clouds somewhere in Latin America. The impression is that they are at the summit of the world, living in their own wild reality.