Profile: Laura Mora

Five teenagers’ epic journey from the slums of Medellín to the rain forest of the Cauca, told in a very contemporary style yet reminiscent of Buñuel´s Los Olvidados (1950) and Hector Babenco´s Pixote (1980), won The Kings of the World and Laura Mora, its director, the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival and selection as the Colombia’s entry for the Academy Awards.

Laura Mora studied cinema in Melbourne, Australia, returning to Colombia for her first feature Antes del fuego (2015), a thriller about the taking of the Palace of Justice by a leftist guerrilla group in Bogotá, 1985. But she really found a niche for her talents in her native Medellín in a film with autobiographical touches, Killing Jesus (2018). In it, a young woman finds herself facing the dilemma between revenge and forgiveness. The spiral of violence, so dear to Hollywood cinema, has here is very skillfully developed with an original perspective: it seems the protagonist not only has to make decsions for herself and her family, but also regarding violence in the country.

Killing Jesus positioned its director as an emerging talent and increased the prestige of Proimágenes, the state/private film fund that co-finances her projects. In The Kings of the World, with its chaotic narrative — careless in appearance and punk by design — the director allows herself dreamlike moments of laughter and beauty in the midst of terror, but also the scarcest commodity in Latin America: hope.