Writers and Directors: Astrid Rondero and Fernandez Valadez
Mexican gang drama Sujo follows the intergenerational experience of young men pursued and recruited by groups who know how to hold a grudge and never relent when an act of vengeance is required. Astrid Rondero and Fernandez Valadez’s film, screened at the BFI London Film Festival 2024, recognises that there is no protection for boys destined to follow their fathers into a dangerous career, but refusal comes with even higher penalties. Rondero and Valadez’s are also interest in how men might escape this destiny using education and a trip to the city to put them beyond temptation.
When is father is killed during a gang flair up, he leaves young son Sujo with his aunt who vows to protect him from the men who believe he too should die. Years later, Sujo pursues an alternative life in the city but with friends Jai and Jeremy still working for the gang, the impact of their actions follows him anyway.
Rondero and Valadez’s two-hour film is divided into four chapters, and for two thirds of its running time, proves a dark and gripping insight into these male dominated criminal groups in rural Mexico and the masculine expectations placed on teenagers to join up. Pleasingly (and in a rare move) the film begins with the story of the women who must care for their toddlers while the men are fighting and the very real danger it presents for them. Both Neme (Sujo’s aunt) and her friend who come to live with her are strategic and courageous in the protection of their boys, and this opener provides a solid foundation for what’s to come.
Even the sections about 15 years later when Sujo is now a teenager are interesting in their depiction of these boys drawn into the gang, a kind of forgiveness for Sujo for his dad’s crime but also initiation tests that lead to violence. The sad inevitability of this and the masculine dominance pushes the women off screen, but Rondero and Valadez paint a portrait of unrelenting and unbreakable expectation that in it glamour and to an extent its evident protect that gang offers is irresistible.
It is a shame that the writer-directors start making a second, slightly different film with Chapter IV and, having moved to Mexico City, Sujo now pursues some free literature lectures and befriends a teacher. There is a commentary here about class and the ways that people in cities view the black and white morality of the countryside but Sujo doesn’t spend quite enough time fleshing out its central character’s interest in education earlier in the film or the life he builds in the capital.
Ultimately Rondero and Valadez need to divide this into two separate thoughts – either a film about gang life with a smaller epilogue, or a film about life after the gang with a shorter introduction, and much more about the inherent behaviours and different kinds of masculinity he encounters. How and why the fate and example of Sujo’s father impacts his son is what really matters.
Sujo screened at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
The Reviews Hub Score:
Two separate thoughts
