Film Alert: 'Sujo' - Sundance Film Festival 2024 Review
The Aftershocks of Violence & Crime in the Youth
Fernanda Valdez and Astrid Rondero are two fascinating directors who have decided to work together and present cold, grounded stories about the Mexican people and their struggles. They demonstrated the power of their collaboration with one of 2020’s best films, Identifying Features (Sin Señas Particulares). Since then, everybody has had an eye on them, being on the lookout for their next project. And now, four years later, the directing duo has returned to Park City to present their latest picture, Sujo – screening in the World Dramatic Competition of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. While it may still have the hefty impact of Fernanda Valdez and Astrid Rondero’s powerful, hushed filmmaking approach, their latest work is hindered by its weak structure and characterization in the latter half.
Here’s an excerpt from my review:
Sujo chronicles the life of the titular character in the Mexican countryside. He was left an orphan after the cartel killed his father and his mother dying during birth. We see his life as young as the age of four to a full-grown adult, basking in an inescapable destiny filled with crime and violence passed down to him by his antecedent. Divided by chapters (Josue "El Ocho", Nemesia, Jai & Jeremy, Susan), each stage of his life is surrounded by a shadow of malfeasance, growing stronger and stronger as the years go by. This story begins with a young Sujo living with his aunt Nemesia (Yadira Pérez) as she tries to distance him by every means possible from the brutality that transpires in the city from the Cartel.
This first chapter keeps the audience, as well as Sujo, in the dark, slowly building a tone of paranoia and despondency due to the harshness of the characters’ surroundings. Sujo hears bits and pieces of conversations, kept hidden from the people searching for him – relying on voices rather than faces to recognize those who might have killed his father possibly. Knowing what happened to his father, Nemesia wants Sujo to be able to live life, unlike his father, who was trapped in that world at a young age. However, things begin to change once his cousins, Jai (Alexis Varela) and Jeremy (Jairo Hernández), bring him back into a life that he didn’t want to be a part of in the first place.
That’s just one half of the story; the rest relies on Sujo avoiding following in his father’s footsteps during his adult life. When things begin to work out for him, the shadows of violence come back again to haunt him – trying to devour the essence of a man who has moved on. Like their previous feature, Identifying Features, the Mexican directing duo of Fernanda Valdez and Astrid Rondero opt for a colder and quieter approach to tell this story, where each scene becomes more demanding and devastating. They do so by not embracing the scenes of violence and torture in their totality. Ximena Amann’s camera looks away when something treacherous is happening. Of course, there are glimpses of the incidents. But it isn’t the film’s focus.
Read my full Sundance Film Festival review for The Movie Buff HERE.
Sujo screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section.