This Thursday, the film “The Kings of the World”, by director Laura Mora, was premiered in Colombia, starring natural actors Andrés Castañeda, Cristian Camilo Mora (also known as Tom), Davison Flores, Brahian Steven Acevedo and Cristian Campaña.
It is the story behind the protagonists of the film, selected to represent Colombia at the Oscars, after winning the highest awards at the international festivals of San Sebastián (Concha de Oro), Biarritz (El Abrazo) and Zurich (Ojo Dorado). .
For the characters: Rá, Culebro, Sere, Winny and Nano, the street is the place they recognize, until they decide to undertake a trip through Bajo Cauca Antioquia to reclaim a land that was taken from the grandmother of one of them. They are the leading characters in the new film by director Laura Mora, which opens in cinemas this Thursday, October 13.
In her previous film, Laura Mora had come into contact with kids who practice gravity biking in Medellín. A sport that is popularly known as whipping and that consists of riding at high speed on the road, on bicycles armed by themselves. Since then, he knew that there was something special in that group of young people. A very particular relationship with risk, with adrenaline and with life itself.
When he began to write “The Kings of the World”, he knew that the energy he was looking for for the film had a lot to do with the spirit of those boys; that freedom, that rebelliousness that she had found in the young people who ‘scourged’ on the roads surrounding Medellín. That’s how some of them got into the movie.
Brahian Acevedo, who puts himself in Winny’s shoes, says that practicing whipping or traveling in the trailer of a tractor trailer is what “moves his heart”, because he is a lover of adrenaline, danger, travel and the company of the ‘partners’.
This 15-year-old boy is infuriated by being called a child because all his life he has had to ‘war on her’. “I like to earn my own and collaborate with my mother in whatever way possible,” he emphasizes. Brahian and the character of Winny coincided in many things: vitality, charisma, recursiveness to resolve, tenderness and sadness typical of the feeling of helplessness.
Davison Flores represents Sere, the group’s mystical character. He met Laura Mora several years ago through a mutual friend. Davison had had a serious accident in gravity, which reduced the mobility of his right arm, which did not prevent him from graduating from high school and learning to write with his left hand.. Her sensitivity, her spirituality, her deep ideas about life and death, coincided with everything that Laura was looking for for that character, that’s why, once the castingThey did not hesitate to look for it.
Cristian Camilo Mora was interviewed in a very casual way at the stadium’s skatepark, where many of the kids who practice gravity in Medellin meet. However, a couple of weeks after that meeting, the first covid quarantine arrived. All the processes that were being carried out to possibly start the film in 2020 were stopped and only a year later they were reactivated.
Teamwork
The work with the five consisted of daily rehearsal sessions under the guidance of Karel Solei, with different collaborators and consultants in the training of natural actors, such as Carlos Fagua (“The Earth and the Shadow”), Andrés Barrientos (“The Embrace of the serpent” and “Pájaros de verano”) and the professor of dramatic art at the University of Antioquia Duván Echavarría (“Killing Jesus”).
Although the script was never shared with the young people, the situations were rehearsed and the different emotions that each one was going to experience during the film were approached. Each rehearsal, each encounter, surprised the management team more. The talent, the capacity for imagination, improvisation, concentration and commitment of these guys were impressive.
Everyone agrees that the hardest part of the film was finishing it, the separation that meant the end of filming. In Tom’s words, “The hardest part was getting used to it during the shoot and then having to get used to it.” For Andrés, the most beautiful part of the experience was feeling “that everything was done from the heart” and the illusion that “being able to see the film together very soon” entails.
“The kings of the world” arrived at the cinemas of the country