Colombia / France,
2000, 98 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
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Barbet Schroeder
- prod
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Jaime Osorio Gómez, Barbet Schroeder, Margaret Menegoz
- scr
-
Fernando Vallejo
- cam
-
Rodrigo Lalinde
- editor
-
Elsa Vásquez
- mus
-
Jorge Arriagada
- cast
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Germán Jaramillo, Anderson Ballesteros, Juan David Restrepo, Manuel Busquets
- source
-
US: Paramount Classics, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90038-3197. FAX: 323-862-1103. WORLD: Les films du Losange, 22, Avenue Pierre ler du Serbie, 75016 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-49-52-06-40
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COMMENTS
Barbet Schroeder in person.
OTHER
Directed by Academy Award nominee Barbet Schroeder, Our Lady of the Assassins tells a powerful story of a city in ruins and one man’s desperate journey to make sense of his life. The semiautobiographical tale by Fernando Vallejo centers on a writer (Gérman Jaramillo) returning to his birthplace of Medellín, Colombia, which has become the drug capital of the world. Fernando begins a relationship with Alexis (Anderson Ballesteros), a violent young man caught in the continuous gang warfare that touches every life in Medellín. Though they could not be more different, Fernando and Alexis learn from the other’s experience as they negotiate the violent streets, discovering through the horror the essential richness of life itself. Like Fernando, director Barbet Schroeder also returns to his past, after making films for 15 years in the United States. Having grown up in Colombia, Schroeder knows too well the struggle to make a film under dangerous conditions, yet authenticity was essential for this film. What is most striking about Our Lady of the Assassins is the absence of shock value. The violence, the homosexuality and the difference in age between the two lovers are all portrayed naturally and without judgment. Schroeder cast actors from the region; Jaramillo is a consummate stage actor, and Ballesteros was recruited from the streets, where he sold incense. The chemistry between them is mesmerizing.
—John Cooper, Sundance Film Festival
FACTOID #343
Director Sally Potter was the first person to be honored with the Festival’s Satyajit Ray Award. In 1993 she was interviewed onstage and her new film Orlando was screened. In 2005, she turned the tables by interviewing Peter J. Owens Award recipient Joan Allen.
