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PEPE

By Nelson Carlo DE LOS SANTOS ARIAS

BEIJING HUGOEAST MEDIA CO., LTD. - as BUYER REP

Drama - Completed 2023

In the jungle of Colombia, Pepe, a young Hippo was killed. Between sounds and bellows, his ghost narrates his story. Another story to add to the imaginary of these towns, full of macho fights, dictatorships and beings that have died without ever knowing where they really were.

Festivals
& Awards

Visions du Réel 2020

Pitching du Réel

Ventana Sur 2023

Copia Final

Berlinale - EFM 2024

Silver Berlin Bear - Best Director

Hong Kong International Film Festival 2024

Special Mention - Young Cinema

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- Drama, Experimental, Social issues
- Countries
- DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
- Languages
- AFRIKAANS, GERMAN, SPANISH
- Budget
- 0.6 - 1 M$
- Duration
- 122 mn
- Director(s)
- Nelson Carlo DE LOS SANTOS ARIAS
- Writer(s)
- Nelson Carlo DE LOS SANTOS ARIAS
- Producer(s)
- Pablo LOZANO (Monte y Culebra SRL), Tanya VALETTE (Monte y Culebra SRL), Christoph FRIEDEL (PANDORA FILM PRODUKTION GMBH), Andrea QUERALT (4A4 Productions), Mani MORTAZAVI (4A4 Productions), Joe HAIKALI (Joe Vision)
- Synopsis
- A voice from beyond that does not understand the structural perception of time. A voice that from trance, goes across the languages of a historical event. A German who conquers the lands of South-East Africa; an Afrikaans who constituted the apartheid of the citizens of Namibia; the Mbukushu, old language of Katima Mulilo, where the ancestors of our protagonist were kidnapped and finally, the language inherited from the colonizer of the lands of America: Castilian, in this case, with a Paisa accent.
  This is how Pepe speaks, not being able to understand which of all those languages belongs to him, or worse: what is that sound that comes out of his mouth? Or specifically, what is a mouth? The only thing he knows for sure is that he is dead. The first and last hippopotamus killed on American soil.
  Pepe, the name that the Colombian press gives to the first exiled hippopotamus from the Hacienda Nápoles, Pablo Escobar's old house. The first male who has to comply with the rules of his species: whoever wants to mate with the alpha females will have to face death or exile if he loses. Pepe confronts his brother, a 500-ton beast, and loses the battle. In the invisibility of the night, he leaves with his partner, turning into a shadow, into a trunk that scares the men and women of the Magdalena River.
  Between encounters and misunderstandings, epiphanies and sadness, we arrive to a world full of stories replete of more stories; images and sounds that narrate, in a serious, playful, authentic and false way, the overwhelming orality of these towns that, like Pepe, were made up of beings who died without ever knowing where they really were.

PEPE

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards