Rodrigo D. No Future

Medellín. Rodrigo is nineteen and wants to be a punk drummer. He has no drums. He walks the city, tries to find a kit, hangs about with his friends. The friends sell drugs, steal motorbikes and take contract work. Rodrigo is not in it and not outside it either; since his mother died he cannot hold on to anything. The city keeps working around him. Víctor Gaviria directs. The cast is not made up of professionals. Gaviria chose them from the outer neighbourhoods of Medellín; all of them play their own lives and most of the dialogue came out of how they actually speak. That choice had a heavy consequence. Most of the young people in the film were killed within a few years of its release. It is cited as direct proof that what the film describes was not fiction. It screened in competition at the Cannes film festival in 1990 and was a turning point in the international recognition of Colombian cinema. The narrative builds no plot; pieces of daily life are set side by side and violence appears not as a climax but as an ordinary event. Punk stands inside the film as a possible way out, and Rodrigo's search for a drum kit is the one directed line in the narrative. Who it is for: viewers who follow Latin American realism and city films with amateur casts. Who it is not for: the structure is scattered, the sound and image are rough, there is no hope, and the ending is abrupt.