126 mins |
Rated
Not Rated
Directed by Fernanda Valadez, Astrid Rondero
Starring Juan Jesús Varela, Karla Garrido, Yadira Pérez, Alexis Varela, Sandra Lorenzano, Jairo Hernandez, Kevin Aguilar
Mexico - Official Submission - International Feature - 97th Academy Awards
Winner - World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic - 2024 Sundance Film Festival
After a cartel gunman from a small Mexican town is murdered, Sujo, his beloved four-year-old son, is left an orphan and in danger. Sujo narrowly escapes death with the help of his aunt who raises him in the isolated countryside amidst hardship, poverty, and the constant peril associated with his identity. When he enters his teens a rebelliousness awakens in him, and like a rite of passage, he joins the local cartel. As a young man, Sujo attempts to make his life anew, away from the violence of his hometown. however, when his father’s legacy catches up with him, he will come face-to-face with what seems to be his destiny.
DIRECTORS’ NOTE
We are Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez and we are writers, directors, and producers from
Mexico. Sujo is our second feature as directors and our third creative collaboration on a feature
film. We believe the strength of our films comes from us being part of a minority and that we
are committed to telling the stories of our time. And what a time it is in Mexico. Thousands of
kids have become orphans due to the violence of the drug cartels. some of them are children of
the victims, “the collateral damage” of the drug war. But others are the sons and daughters of
the people who actively participated as perpetrators. This is a story about these “others.” We wondered - what is the inheritance of these kids, what awaits them? and then came the
question that shaped this story - what would it take for a young man to challenge what appears
to be his destiny?
Sujo became the tale of two origins: that of a name and that of a man. In the tale of a cartel
gunman naming his son after a horse, we aim to talk about transcendence, about hidden
inheritances, about the dreams we fulfill without us knowing: dreams in the minds of our
mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers before them. A flow of human experience
that connects us all and is not oblivious to the hopes of previous generations.
Formally, Sujo is a coming-of-age story told through the many characters that meant something in Sujo’s life: the people who loved him, taught him, and left behind as he grew up. it is an episodic film. and that’s one of the aspects that excited us the most as directors: our goal in this film was to explore narratively, formally, and visually. Sujo has a visual narrative that changes
as the episodes change as if every secondary character were a season in Sujo’s life. We wanted
each episode to have its atmosphere. And as we were exploring texture, light, and mood, we
decided to shoot each episode with a different set of lenses that were key in that exploration.
The film has different levels of reality. Not in a flashy or stylized way, because we were looking
for something more ancient and primal. Like beliefs and imagery that come from the first
women and men, elements as magical as they are mysterious and real, like the fire, like a starry
night, like death. So we want the episodes to be like the faces of a prism, each one adding a
piece and a layer of a more complex object. In the end, the whole film is a portrait of this young
man, Sujo. A portrait but also a promise of the man he deserves to be.
When we were working on our previous film Identifying Features, we came across a particular book of chronicles called Levantones (the taken) written by the great Mexican journalist Javier Valdez, himself later a victim of violence. it wasn’t a special story that caught our attention but more an atmosphere that he managed to share with deep humanity and utmost respect: real accounts of both victims and perpetrators, women, men and children, all caught for one reason or the other in the drug cartel violence that runs rampant in Mexico.
Deep within, there is also the inspiration of Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy, which is one of
Astrid’s most beloved books. the stories of orphans in turbulent times are a way to see ourselves
finding understanding under the most hopeful light. The name Sujo comes from a Mongolian
legend that Fernanda read as a child, a story of friendship between a boy and a horse. So as is usual with us, the project was born of an encounter of ideas, memories, and things we love.
All of it lead us to Sujo, a story of an orphan growing up in a Mexico stricken by drug violence,
poverty, and high hopes, a tale of a young man fighting against repetition and finding his real self.
Read more...
Mexico - Official Submission - International Feature - 97th Academy Awards
Winner - World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic - 2024 Sundance Film Festival
After a cartel gunman from a small Mexican town is murdered, Sujo, his beloved four-year-old son, is left an orphan and in danger. Sujo narrowly escapes death with the help of his aunt who raises him in the isolated countryside amidst hardship, poverty, and the constant peril associated with his identity. When he enters his teens a rebelliousness awakens in him, and like a rite of passage, he joins the local cartel. As a young man, Sujo attempts to make his life anew, away from the violence of his hometown. however, when his father’s legacy catches up with him, he will come face-to-face with what seems to be his destiny.
DIRECTORS’ NOTE
We are Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez and we are writers, directors, and producers from
Mexico. Sujo is our second feature as directors and our third creative collaboration on a feature
film. We believe the strength of our films comes from us being part of a minority and that we
are committed to telling the stories of our time. And what a time it is in Mexico. Thousands of
kids have become orphans due to the violence of the drug cartels. some of them are children of
the victims, “the collateral damage” of the drug war. But others are the sons and daughters of
the people who actively participated as perpetrators. This is a story about these “others.” We wondered - what is the inheritance of these kids, what awaits them? and then came the
question that shaped this story - what would it take for a young man to challenge what appears
to be his destiny?
Sujo became the tale of two origins: that of a name and that of a man. In the tale of a cartel
gunman naming his son after a horse, we aim to talk about transcendence, about hidden
inheritances, about the dreams we fulfill without us knowing: dreams in the minds of our
mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers before them. A flow of human experience
that connects us all and is not oblivious to the hopes of previous generations.
Formally, Sujo is a coming-of-age story told through the many characters that meant something in Sujo’s life: the people who loved him, taught him, and left behind as he grew up. it is an episodic film. and that’s one of the aspects that excited us the most as directors: our goal in this film was to explore narratively, formally, and visually. Sujo has a visual narrative that changes
as the episodes change as if every secondary character were a season in Sujo’s life. We wanted
each episode to have its atmosphere. And as we were exploring texture, light, and mood, we
decided to shoot each episode with a different set of lenses that were key in that exploration.
The film has different levels of reality. Not in a flashy or stylized way, because we were looking
for something more ancient and primal. Like beliefs and imagery that come from the first
women and men, elements as magical as they are mysterious and real, like the fire, like a starry
night, like death. So we want the episodes to be like the faces of a prism, each one adding a
piece and a layer of a more complex object. In the end, the whole film is a portrait of this young
man, Sujo. A portrait but also a promise of the man he deserves to be.
When we were working on our previous film Identifying Features, we came across a particular book of chronicles called Levantones (the taken) written by the great Mexican journalist Javier Valdez, himself later a victim of violence. it wasn’t a special story that caught our attention but more an atmosphere that he managed to share with deep humanity and utmost respect: real accounts of both victims and perpetrators, women, men and children, all caught for one reason or the other in the drug cartel violence that runs rampant in Mexico.
Deep within, there is also the inspiration of Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy, which is one of
Astrid’s most beloved books. the stories of orphans in turbulent times are a way to see ourselves
finding understanding under the most hopeful light. The name Sujo comes from a Mongolian
legend that Fernanda read as a child, a story of friendship between a boy and a horse. So as is usual with us, the project was born of an encounter of ideas, memories, and things we love.
All of it lead us to Sujo, a story of an orphan growing up in a Mexico stricken by drug violence,
poverty, and high hopes, a tale of a young man fighting against repetition and finding his real self.
