Our Lady of the Assassins

The writer Fernando returns to Medellín after thirty years. The city has come out of the drug war; there are fifteen-year-olds working the streets as hired killers. Fernando starts living with one of them, Alexis. Alexis never puts his gun down and shoots people on buses, in the street, in church. Fernando does not object. The subject is not violence but how quickly one gets used to death. Past a certain point Fernando stops counting the killings; the film tries to bring the viewer to the same place, and the choice is uncomfortable. The form was shot in real streets on digital video. It was made when digital images were only beginning to be used for features; the light equipment made it possible to film in districts of Medellín considered dangerous, and the raw texture of the image sets the whole atmosphere. The source is Fernando Vallejo's own novel; he wrote the screenplay himself and the story is largely autobiographical. Barbet Schroeder directs, having spent part of his childhood in Colombia. Germán Jaramillo plays the writer and Anderson Ballesteros plays Alexis; the young performers were not professionals. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American cinema and uncomfortable realism. Who it is not for: anyone with no tolerance for continuous violence; the film kills somebody in nearly every scene.