The Colombian film Monos, the third feature film by director Alejandro Landes, has won the top awards at the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey and Newport Beach Film Festival in California.
Landes’ film was the winner of four awards in the California film festival, for best film, best director, best actress, and best cinematography, while receiving the Fiction Feature Prize in the East Coast festival.
Starring Sophia Buenaventura, the film is set on a faraway Colombian mountaintop, what at first glance looks like a hedonistic summer camp, is actually the setting of a mission: child soldiers with war names must make sure that Doctor, a kidnapped American woman, stays alive. But when a battle approaches and a borrowed milk cow is killed by accident, playtime is over.
The film had its world premiere last January in the official competition at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award. The film has been picked up for U.S. distribution by indie company Neon with a planned fall theatrical release.
