Student Festival Report from FIN: AIFF 2019
Based on Lord of The Flies by William Golding, set in modern war-torn Columbia, Monos is an exciting thriller that lives up to its category of ‘Extreme’ movies at the FIN: Atlantic International Film Festival. Sofia Buenaventura delivers an amazing performance as a child raised into guerrilla warfare, torn between her family and her morality. The children, known as ‘monos’ (Spanish for ‘monkeys’), have been raised in this violent world and it seems to be the only thing they understand, but Buenaventura plays a character too ‘soft’ for this lifestyle. Despite the way they were raised, he starts to question whether they are doing the right thing and is incapable of committing the atrocities that seem to come so easily to some of the other characters, like Moisés Arias’ character. Monos gives a very realistic view of what happens to children in war and the psychological effects of being raised in violence. In many ways they are a family, but they are also always turning on one another. They are a team, but they are also only really out to help themselves because that is what they have been taught to do. They are cruel, but they are also just teenagers who drink and dance and laugh, and they don’t know any better.
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