Critics’ Week, the independent section of the Venice Film Festival, unveiled today its lineup comprised of nine international first films—eight of them making the world premieres—and featuring the Colombian film The Nobodies / Los nadie by Juan Sebastián Meza as the only Latin American entry.
Shot in seven days with a reported budget of $2,000, the film is a black-and-white tale of fraternal love, and hate and broken promises, between five friends who are street artists. Camilo, Mechas, Manu, Ana and Pipa are five friends going through that blended trance of intense unrest, astonishment, contained tenderness and manifested rage that is typical of the end of adolescence. They survive at the edges of a city, Medellin, that simultaneously attracts and excludes them, that lure them with promises but rejects them with hostility.
Nevertheless, they want to embrace the city and fight against its logics of fear. Music, street art and friendship are their weapons of resistance, hoping for a rite of passage that could transform them into someone else. The film had its world premiere as the opening night of the Cartagena Film Festival last spring.
