Berlin International Film Festival 2024, Toronto International Film Festival 2024
Winner: Silver Bear for Best Director, Berlin International Festival 2024
A voice that claims to belong to a hippopotamus. A voice that does not understand the perception of time. A voice that tells of a historical event as if in a trance. “Am I making that sound that comes out of my mouth? And what is a mouth anyway?” The only thing the animal knows for sure is that it is dead. The first and only hippopotamus ever killed in the Americas. The Colombian press called him Pepe. Between encounters and misunderstandings, epiphanies and sadness, we enter a world full of stories replete with even more stories. In a serious and playful way, both authentic and deceptive, images and sounds narrate the overwhelming orality of places full of beings who, like Pepe, died without ever knowing where they really were.
Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias studied cinematography in Buenos Aires and at Edinburgh College of Art. He then received his MFA in Film and Video from CalArts. His thesis, the feature-length essay film Santa Teresa & Other Stories (2015) had its world premiere at FIDMarseille. The film won the Prix Georges de Beauregard, after which it was selected at many other film festivals. De Los Santos Arias’ feature film Cocote (2017) was crowned Best Film in the Signs of Life section of the Locarno International Film Festival.
