A mother dies in a shooting accident in an ill-famed neighborhood. The two boys she raised will go in search of the killer, but what they discover will be a big surprise.
Directors Javier Molina and Moema Umann (a returning guest of our festival) team up for ‘Manito – Borther’s Sacrifice’, a film about loyalty, devotion but also about vices, anger and lack of education – as far as we see it.
The characters in ‘Manito – Brother’s Sacrifice’ struggle in the social morass of the decadent area where they live. Violence, drugs and all kinds of vices are elements that define their lives, their way of thinking, their actions. They oscillate between mourning and anger, between doing the right thing and loyalty. There is no way out for Javier and Moema’s characters. They didn’t have the chance to be guided through the elementary good and bad so they are not able to discern between the fine nuances of events, they don’t reason they are beings of instinct. But instinct makes you act first and than reflect upon your actions, so the characters in this film are in fact prisoners of their own actions and emotions.
At first we almost underrated the film, but as it went on we changed our minds: the actors – especially the main ones – have a good capacity of emphasizing with their characters and a good ability of getting in the role, cinematography and the editing are professional and the film doesn’t lack substance. On the contrary we’d say – that except for the dialogue which is partially excused out of credibility reasons by the environment, but still we think it would have supported additional work – it has the power to surprise a little and produce inner conflict to the viewer. Things that seem right in Javier Molina and Moema Umann’s film are in fact wrong, and they are the result of acting instinctually. This shows just how misleading raw feelings and emotions can be and how important education is through its power of teaching a person to fine tune his/her character, temper and personality.
A film that says it straight and shows what reality is perceived like by those who we condemn and marginalise. We ask: who’s to blame? Do you have an answer…?
TMFF RATING:
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