19/04/2022 - Felipe Monroy continues to document the open wounds of a Colombia suffocated by a deep pain that also leaves a mark on the present

Felipe Monroy, a Colombian director trained at the HEAD in Geneva, does not shy away from anything as he films his homeland with a lucid and politically engaged gaze. His latest feature film Sons of the Wind, selected in the National Competition at this year’s Visions du Réel, actually concludes a long documentary trilogy on the victims of the armed conflict, a civil war that has lasted for half a century and has claimed at least 215,000 civilian victims. That was until the peace process started in 2016, which the director filmed himself in Los fantasmas del Caribe [+see also:
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Is it possible to make peace with the history of one's country, to reconcile and forgive despite the deep wounds of the past? Felipe Monroy rejects this optimistic vision of things, preferring to gather evidence of unacceptable violence and keeping the memory of a people who want to cry out their pain without shame. Rebuilding through the brutal collection of evidence from a past marked by suffering and injustice is what interests the director.

In the company of Sergeant Mora, the first soldier to expose the crimes of the Colombian army, and a group of mourning mothers seeking justice, Felipe Monroy deconstructs Alvaro Uribe's government dishonest argument, which caused the death of thousands of civilians, young (often very young) people killed by the Colombian militia. Sons of the Wind speaks of the falsos positivos, innocent civilians whom President Uribe’s army kidnapped, tortured and killed, making them pass for dangerous guerrilleros — all this with the morbid and perverse aim of demonstrating the effectiveness of the paramilitaries and the army in the fight against the illicit trafficking of the guerrilla. Uribe has put in place a promotion mechanism that accelerates the career of soldiers who “effectively” fight the enemy. It matters little that the enemies are fictitious and that the murdered boys are actually innocent young people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Felipe Monroy, accompanied by the mothers of the countless falsos positivos, denounces the abuses of this perverse system, giving voice to the pain of families who have lost everything due to an unscrupulous government that only thinks of saving its own grotesque facade.

Sons of the Wind is an act of resistance, a film-testimony of a cruel and brutal past that painfully imbues the present. Via testimonies that free voices which are too often suffocated, Monroy's camera (with close-up shots of a rare power on the faces of the victims' families) seems to enter directly into the hearts of the murdered boys’ mothers, extrapolating their pain in a cathartic movement that gives visibility to the invisible, and a voice to the unspeakable.

Between anger and the duty of memory, Sons of the Wind denounces the wounds of a war that is senseless (like all wars), encouraging an active form of citizenship and rebellion against injustices. In this sense, cinema becomes a weapon of active denunciation, a struggle for truth in a society that feeds on silence.

Sons of the Wind was produced by Swiss company Adok Films, French company Les Films d’Ici and Colombian company Totiante DC. Adok Films is also handling international sales.

(Translated from Spanish)