Amparo, Simón Mesa Soto's first feature film, was presented in competition in 2021 at the 60th Semaine de la Critique where it received the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for Sandra Melissa Torres. The film was selected at the Busan International Film Festival, the San Sebastián International Film Festival and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Amparo is produced by Ocultimo and Momento Film and is released in Colombia the 28th of April distributed by Docco.
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Colombia 1998, Amparo, a single mother, struggles to free her teenage son after he is drafted by the army and assigned to a war zone. She is thrown into a race against time in a society ruled by men, corruption and violence
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Discover the trailer
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« When I started working on Amparo, I realised that my mother was an important figure in my writing. I was a teenager; my mother and I paid a visit to a manager to buy my freedom from the Colombian army. It was very common in the 90s; if you didn’t fulfil your military duties, you could be kidnapped by the army at any time. It was very scary to walk the streets. At the time, Medellín was one of the most violent cities in the world: drug trafficking had destroyed institutional order in the country..»
Interview with director Simón Mesa Soto by Miquel Escudero Diéguez
« A work whose style and tone seem deeply indebted to the Dardenne brothers, Simón Mesa Soto’s Amparo also echoes one of the Belgian auteurs’ most insistent existential concerns: at which point can adolescents be held accountable for their behaviour and choices, as if they were responsible, self-sufficient adults?. »
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Interview with Simón Mesa Soto