Colombian Andrés Ramírez Pulido premieres his debut film ‘La jauría’ in Cannes

We spoke in Cannes with Andrés Ramírez Pulido, director of The pack, the debut film by the Colombian, world-premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, within the scarce representation this year of Ibero-American cinema, travels to the bowels of the criminal past of young criminals in isolated therapy in a reformatory in the Colombian jungle. The Universe spoke exclusively with him.

The pack It is the natural continuation of your two previous very successful shorts. How was the process of moving to the feature film, which requires a more extended language and taking greater risks?

It has been a very organic process, since the two short films are systematically very connected with this feature film. It’s about teenagers in the city where I live. In all these projects there is an anchor: the reflection on the father figure in childhood and adolescence and how we go through that abandonment or that love that is what they transmit to us. But I think the big difference between the short films and the feature film is the point of view, where I position myself with the camera in front of them, my gaze and the formal setting of the film.

Do you feel more responsibility participating in Cannes with a feature than when you came with a short?

Obviously yes, but the film is influenced by my previous shorts that were here in Cannes and in Berlin. They screened more than a thousand films to select those that participate in this section (Critics Week) and we are the only Latin American work among so many titles. Obviously there is a responsibility, but we welcomed it very well. I think that in front there is a curatorship that wants new blood, greater risks, other looks. They look for very emotional proposals, a very emotional cinema, but at the same time formal and interesting proposals.

The violence shown in your film has a lot to do with psychology. Does that make it different from other Colombian films?

Yes. In The pack there is a type of psychological, energetic and spiritual exploration. One of my intentions was not to anchor the film to a specific historical or geographical fact of the violence in Colombia, because we already have a great story per se about this tragedy. Violence is permeated everywhere, in our culture and in human nature, obviously. I wanted to get away from all this and make a fictional story. This is how I portray Colombia, through these young people in a specific city, prioritizing fiction, with certain overtones of drama and I think that this dialogues very well with the Colombian reality without naming it as such. It’s like creating a parallel world. We address issues such as forgiveness, reconciliation, guilt that now in my country are also very neuralgic issues.

Do you believe in determinism? Do a difficult childhood and adolescence in Colombia necessarily lead to crime and prison?

I consider that violence is like an entity, a spirit that takes shape in different ways and seeks to incarnate itself in us. I think there is some violence in all human beings. There are social and cultural contexts that are like a breeding ground, from which many things emerge. Something nice happened to me in this process, when I started thinking about the film. I did not meet these boys on the street, but in places similar to the one I portray in the film, where drug detoxification processes are carried out, or they pay a crime. Here there were no barriers. Rather, we became friends and I began to see his humanity and mine as a mirror where many things are reflected. I wanted to stand there, with the humanity of those boys in front of mine. In a violent context such as prison, in Colombia and in Latin America, if someone committed a crime, they go with everything to fall on him. But we do not analyze what is the root of the violence of each one of us. And the violence that I was interested in exploring in the film was precisely that inherited generational violence, from which we suffered in childhood and that marked us. As a consequence, we are like wild animals that, to protect ourselves, in turn hurt ourselves, and it’s all like a circle. The idea was to take the main character out of this circle.

I think that one of the merits of this film is that it leaves the common stereotype of the delinquent and these characters have an almost friendly relationship, with a certain tenderness…

When I wrote the film I had in mind the imagery that we all have of delinquent children. When it was the research and writing process at the same time, I started having meetings with the guys who were going to play her, and I met Eliu, the protagonist. And I saw that he relates to violence in another way. He is not the typical teenager who is attracted to violence. It is not the law of the strongest or anything like that, but violence is implicit in it. It is like a small animal that defends itself and there is a very strong drive in it. So I started to go to an unsafe place, both in the casting like in the script, and I think that’s kind of scary. I wanted to get away from the typical Latin American social film. That’s why I formally made another type of bet, but I let the boys be themselves. And although I don’t know if you feel it, it is a very oppressive prison where violence reigns in all forms.

The film focuses on two young men, which questions the roles that men play, especially in Colombian society. It’s like a question about masculinity. Do you think it is necessary to change the structures and educate them from another point of view?

It is something very complex. The first step is to analyze ourselves, reflect ourselves, and I think that art allows that. I hope movies like this lead to a dialogue. Deep down it is a personal path and the film leaves it like that in a certain way.

Hate, especially in the family, how should this issue be treated and how does this feeling permeate society?

I am from Bogota. And when I filmed in Sibaguez, a small town between my city and Cali, I began to meet boys and found their hatred of their father figure to be something common. Everyone spoke very badly to me about his father. And I don’t have a hate relationship with my father, but there is a seed there. My shorts and this film help me reflect on this. A lot of these kids had their moms tattooed with their names on their bodies and that’s one of the important elements in the shorts. It was the first equation I found: a boy who hates his dad and wants to kill him. But he mistakenly kills another and then feels the guilt and hatred towards those who persecute him. Hate is a human emotion that, depending on how we go through it, can lead us to make catastrophic decisions. That’s why I tried to make a dialogue between forgiveness and hate and how to reconcile with it.

Is it a kind of catharsis for the protagonists?

It was a good space to think about it, because we talked about it a lot. The preparation was like a therapy to open us all. We put everything on the table, so I hope this space bears fruit.

For you as a filmmaker, is emotion more important than aesthetics?

I like films that move me, but also that formally propose a trip to me and that play with cinematographic language and try to create debates. That combination can be made, because I find very interesting formal films and, due to my vocation as a cinephile, I let myself go beyond the limits.

The formal treatment he makes of nature is interesting, there is a lot of chiaroscuro, for example…

Joanna, my wife, who is an artist and is the production designer of the film, is my ally in everything. She always makes me think about the plastic, the texture, the humidity… I have always let myself go and that is why we decided to work together to make a film where nature could be felt, where we would be there as if submerged. It is something very conscious, very worked. The main hacienda was an important character for us. It was owned by a drug dealer. But everything Greek and those sculptures is a proposal from Joana and, obviously, with the photographer we began to have dialogues about how we would film it. The merit is not mine alone.

There is an abyss between the Colombian cinema that travels to festivals and the one that is successful in theaters. Do you know any formula to correct that?

I don’t know if it is a problem or not, but it is a reality that we have and not only in Colombia. Perhaps in Latin American cinema we see it more clearly, because there is no formal audiovisual education, that is why culture and education must be strengthened. When I went to film school, we analyzed other directors and admired them. And that’s fine. But in reality the look and concern should be something else: who am I? Where do I come from? I believe that these questions are felt in the work of great authors. I try as much as possible to be in this line.

Will you take new directions in your future projects?

People think that I am very interested in portraying these peripheral universes of adolescents and the truth is that I am not. I think life put me there 8, 9 years ago. I came to Sibaguez for love and I ended up sharing this with all these guys. But the following film goes in another context. It has to do with a very strong experience that my mother had and with a very modern Colombian context, and also an encounter with something else that I cannot anticipate.