For Rá, Culebro, Sere, Winny and Nano, the street is the place they recognize, until they decide to embark on a journey through Bajo Cauca in Antioquia to reclaim land that was taken from the grandmother of one of them. They are the leading characters in The Kings of the World, the new film by director Laura Mora, which opens in theaters 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, she 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 started writing Los reyes del mundo, he knew that the energy he was looking for in the film had a lot to do with the spirit of those guys; 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 ‘partners’
The first time that Laura saw Brahian, it was precisely in a meeting of gravitos. He was still very young, she took a picture of him from a distance, to have him as a reference for the character of Winny. She found him again almost a year and a half later, when the police prevented the young man from continuing to sell sweets in the Laureles sector of Medellín. Finally, the director was able to talk to him, take his information and invite him to participate in the casting of Los reyes del mundo.
This 15-year-old boy is infuriated by being called a child because he has had to ´war against her´ all his life. “I like to earn what is mine and help my mother in whatever way I can”, he stresses. Brahian and the character of Winny agreed on many things. The vitality, the charisma, the resourcefulness to solve, the tenderness and the 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. His sensitivity, his spirituality, his deep ideas about life and death, coincided with everything that Laura was looking for for that character, that’s why, once the casting started, they did not hesitate to look for him.
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 reactivated a year later.
Cristian was one of the first guys that the casting team wanted to contact again after the reactivation of the project. Tom, as he is popularly known, knows very well the vicissitudes of the street and the conflicts between combos. There is an energy in him that infected Culebro with life, a character who seems condemned by himself, but whom he filled with humanity.
For Tom, humility is a fundamental value and no matter what happens he says, “I will never forget those who were with me, I will not look down on them”. It is that, the contempt, the attitude that hurts and bothers these boys the most.
In this, Cristian Campaña agrees, who gives life to the character of Nano. Cristian had that shyness, that mystery and that pride that match the character. Laura and the casting director, Karel Solei, saw him from a distance on a court at the San José institution, a place where minors who have committed some type of misdemeanor are usually found.
Cristian arrived at the casting not very convinced, but he brought with him all the beauty of the character of Nano; the one who in the film proclaims “I would like to be invisible, like a shadow”. Finally, he agreed to participate. Little by little, during the filming, his shyness faded and his good humor, his kind and loving character and his total commitment to the film appeared.
But perhaps the most particular and exciting story of this process is that of how Andrés Castañeda came to the film. He was the last to appear in the casting, just a couple of weeks before filming began, after the resignation of who had initially been considered for this character.
Andrés lives in Yarumal, the Antioquia municipality where the casting was extended, since there were several boys who practiced gravity in that area. The casting director saw him for the first time being searched by the police and approached him. She did a short interview with him, and sent a message to Laura telling her: “the sun appeared, Rá appeared”.
After several interviews in Medellín and several meetings with the rest of the characters, where there was an immediate connection, he accepted the challenge of joining a group that had already been consolidated for a few weeks. The rest of the boys welcomed him lovingly and his natural leadership stood out.
Andrés endowed the character with some very special features, he brought with him a certain tenderness, a paternal and loving attitude that contrasts with his strength. He has lived through all the harshness of the violence in the territory, but that has not overshadowed the nobility of his heart, that same heart that someone who embarks on a journey with his friends in search of a promised land should have.
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 Birds summer) and the professor of dramatic art at the University of Antioquia, Duvan Echavarria (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 was impressive.
Very early in the process, the five also understood that both they and the production team would constitute a kind of itinerant family, where respect, love and trust would prevail.
Alejandra Restrepo, a social worker who accompanied the young people’s process, recognizes that the triumph of the work was based on the fact that both the production team and the children understood the value and power of building horizontal and respectful relationships. She also highlights that giving them the confidence to assume responsibilities, recognition, activity and affection, allowed them to achieve an absolutely harmonious job.
“It is essential to enable them to transform their world. They, after this experience, already have illusions, because they had the comparison of what they are and what they can become, and that is something that they themselves can provide”.
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 thing was what we got used to 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.
“Despite the harshness of life, the temperance that their contexts and realities demand, Andrés, Davinson, Brahian, Tom and Cristian, are five extraordinary boys who imprinted their own truth on history, their sometimes chaotic energy, their rebellion and their love for a world that they recognize as hostile, but in which they want to remain. Their place of resistance is also their joy and disobedience, even if the future seems uncertain”, says director Laura Mora.
It was that overwhelming energy, those loving and honest gestures, that marked and carried through the eight-week filming adventure.
The kings of the world, is produced by Ciudad Lunar Producciones and La Selva Cine; in co-production with Iris Productions (Luxembourg), Tu Vas Voir (France), Mer Films (Norway), Talipot Studio (Mexico), in association with Caracol Televisión, Dago García, Exile Content. Distribution in Colombia is done by Cinecolor and international sales are handled by Film Factory.
Characters
Ra: Leader of this clan, heir to the land, head of the plan. Stubborn and caring, with the noblest heart, although he can become violent and reckless. The only link that remains with his family are those old titles of a land inherited by his grandmother. In some way, the representation of that land means returning to that place of affection. He maintains a kind of interior monologue, inhabited by his desires and his dreams. He does not want his existence to be in vain, he wants to conquer something of his own, to tell that cruel world that it is he who has defeated it, as a form of vindication and revenge.
winny: The disciple, the child not yet detached from all his naivety, but always ready to attack or defend. Winny has grown up on the street and it has made him tougher, but you can still recognize his crack and his vulnerability. He is the character who most accounts for helplessness, his search is for the mother and the country. He fights to be a child, but reality constantly wants to take that privilege away from him. In revenge he can be a child and a devil.
I will be: The mystic, the unconditional, the one who gives a deeper meaning to friendship, the one who needs to believe to give a higher meaning to his existence. On the street he has learned to trust a mystical company that protects him. In the adventure, he will recognize God in nature and will want to join her forever. Sere has the spirit of a martyr. He thinks and dreams of heaven, because for him the earth is becoming an unlivable place.
Elder brother: He is the one who observes and is uncomfortable with his presence and his gaze. Everything that society despises lives in it. Nano, he always seems to be an absent witness, a boy who perhaps sees beyond what is happening and in that look he challenges those around him. Nano’s dream would be to be invisible, he seems to have an ancient weariness, almost as if he were heir to the hatred suffered by his race and his generation.
snake: Envious, ambitious and impatient. A character who has no redemption is self-doomed. He is interested in power, gold. His ambitions are more earthly than the rest. He is not an unconditional boy, this is his clan today, tomorrow is unknown. However, at times he reveals a tenderness and unawareness typical of the underdog. His energy and his masculinity almost always lead to physical violence and a constant underestimation of the other.