Manos Sucias

Description

Estranged brothers Jacobo (Jarlin Martinez) and Delio (Cristian Advincula) have little in common but a shared desire to escape Buenaventura, the violent epicenter of Colombia’s drug trade. When they’re reunited to transport a massive load of cocaine up the country’s perilous coastal waters to Panama, Jacobo’s disappointment in his younger brother’s choices is palpable, but to wide-eyed Delio, an aspiring rapper and newly minted father, the rules seem simple enough: no stopping, no whoring and especially no talking about their cargo. Along the dense jungle coastline, simple is anything but safe, and a sudden, brutal act of violence finds the brothers adrift and alone, left to renew their allegiance over half-remembered Afro-Colombian songs and a mutual love of Brazilian soccer god Pelé. In his debut feature, director Joseph Kubota Wladyka evinces a realism like that found in the early films of his mentor, the film’s executive producer Spike Lee. Working with a non-professional cast in the local Buenaventuran dialect, oblique to even Spanish speakers, Wladyka captures the menacing beauty of Colombia’s coast, its waters as murky as the moral truth the brothers navigate: When life’s value is so little, everyone is fair game. –Jackson Scarlett

Trailer

Film Details