Monos (2019)

Monos arrived in 2019 as one of those films that seemed to materialise from nowhere and promptly collect a shelf's worth of festival attention. A co-production spanning an unusually broad coalition of countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Denmark, Sweden and several others besides, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award. From there it travelled through the international circuit picking up further recognition, and it found its way onto enough critics' year-end lists to establish itself as a genuine talking point in arthouse circles. The premise is stripped to its bones: a small unit of adolescent guerrilla soldiers, each known only by a code name, are stationed on a remote, fog-wrapped mountain somewhere in an unnamed Latin American country. They are responsible for two charges, one a hostage (an American woman referred to as Doctora), the other a cow. Whatever organisation commands them remains offscreen and unnamed throughout. If that sounds like a deliberately alienating setup, that is very much the point. The film's tagline, "survival is a cruel game", about sums up where things are headed.

Director Alejandro Landes Echavarría, a Colombian-Ecuadorian-American filmmaker, had previously worked primarily in documentary, which may go some way to explaining the film's interest in texture and atmosphere over conventional story architecture. He co-wrote the screenplay with Alexis Dos Santos, and the production was handled by Stela Cine alongside Caracol Televisión and Bord Cadre Films. For those who enjoy films that emerge from the distinctive creative energy coming out of South America, it sits in interesting company alongside other Argentine and Colombian cinema, though it is worth noting that, much like When Evil Lurks, it carries a particular kind of dread that feels native to the region without being easily categorised. The runtime sits at 103 minutes, though it wears that runtime loosely, structured more around sensation than event.

The young cast is largely composed of relatively unknown performers, which works in the film's favour. Sofia Buenaventura, Karen Quintero and Julian Giraldo are among a group of largely non-professional or early-career actors who bring a raw, physical energy to their roles. The exception is Moisés Arias, perhaps best known to English-language audiences from his earlier work in American television and film, who plays a figure called Bigfoot with a volatile, unpredictable presence. Julianne Nicholson, the most recognisable name on the cast list, plays Doctora, the hostage, and carries much of the film's emotional and moral weight. It is a polished but unremarkable ensemble in terms of star power, and that anonymity suits the material rather well. The film around them owes an obvious visual debt to a certain strand of European arthouse cinema, the kind of thing that invites comparisons to Donnie Brasco (1997) in its studied refusal of audience comfort, or to the more meditative drama found in something like Mustang in its focus on young people operating outside the reach of ordinary society. Whether those debts are paid off in full is, of course, another matter entirely.

A-Z World Movie Tour Uruguay Monos is a haunting, visually stunning film that lingers in the mind like smoke over a jungle ridge. Beautiful to look at, unsettling to experience. Set high on a remote mountain, it follows a group of teenage soldiers (known only by code names) guarding a hostage and a cow, all under the command of some unseen revolutionary force. The cinematography is breathtaking: misty peaks, golden sunsets, surreal dream sequences lit like religious visions. And the sound design (wind, distant drums, whispered radio messages) pulls you deep into its eerie, isolated world. There’s no doubt it’s inspired, you can feel the ghost of Tarkovsky in its slow pacing, spiritual undertones, and obsession with ritual and decay. But for all its artistry, Monos left me frustrated. Too much goes unexplained. Who are these kids? What army do they serve? Why this location? Why this mission? The lack of context isn’t just mysterious, it borders on careless. Instead of feeling mysterious, it feels vague. We’re meant to focus on their descent into chaos, identity loss, and primal instinct, but without a stronger grounding, it starts to feel more like mood than meaning. It’s clearly aiming for arthouse prestige, and in terms of tone and texture, it succeeds. The young cast delivers intense, physical performances, and there are moments of real horror and beauty. But if you’re someone who likes narrative clarity or emotional payoff, this might leave you cold. Impressive as a sensory experience, bold in its ambition, but too cryptic and detached to fully connect. A film to admire… from a distance.

And that distance is really the crux of it for me. There are images in Monos I suspect I will not shake for a while, and Nicholson in particular does something genuinely affecting with very little to work with on the page. But a film can be beautiful and frustrating in equal measure, and this one earns both adjectives fairly. If anything, the ambition makes the vagueness more galling, because you can see what it wanted to be. Worth watching once, with your expectations calibrated accordingly, but probably not the kind of thing you will find yourself recommending to someone over that pint. Some smoke looks good in the distance. It does not always mean there is a fire worth finding.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2019  | Watched: 2025-09-16

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Monos (2019) on YouTube

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