“The Pack” by Andrés Ramírez Pulido

The pack It is one of the most promising first films on the Colombian film scene. It even managed to capture the attention of the Spanish film academy that proposed it as a nominee for best Ibero-American film. The director, Andres Ramírez Pulido, performs an impeccable acting direction exercise in a film that displays a crude and realistic generational portrait of helpless young people trying to survive in a jungle environment as oppressive as it is dreamlike.

The film follows Eliú, a teenager who is arrested along with his colleague “El Mono” for having murdered a man he mistook for his father. Both are taken to a farm in the jungle where, along with other adolescent prisoners, they are forced to reform both the plot and their helpless soul. In this environment they will have to deal between the firm hand of agent Godoy who watches over the security of the place at rifle point and the group therapies proposed by the leader responsible for the correction of minors. The strenuous work carried out by the young people on a daily basis together with the rebellious character of “El Mono” serve as a dynamiter so that the fragile rehabilitation structure that was being built in the place ends up completely collapsing.

The jargon with which adolescents communicate, their looks and concerns, bring the viewer closer to a look so natural that it captivates and captivates on an already hackneyed subject such as that of the adolescent South American gang member. Some adolescents who live unconsciously influenced by the Colombian drug subculture, dreaming of their opulence while violently rejecting the social conditions in which they have had to live. It is perhaps this rise to violence that, despite always being contained, appears somewhat abruptly in the film and threatens to destabilize it. But the achievement of several fascinating sequences (such as the one that occurs in the pool with the young people talking about their ambitions or the night scene in which they describe themselves through a form) together with the rejection of a fateful ending that normally succumb to this type of production is what extols The pack.

The pack (Andrés Ramírez Pulido, 2023) ⭐️⭐️⭐️