10 · 10 · 08

Los Bastardos: A violent but human film

Doris Morales/Translated by Caroline MacKinnon

[imagen]There are many films, both fiction and documentary, that deal with the situation of undocumented Mexicans in the United States. However, Amat Escalante’s second feature film Los bastardos shows us another perspective of this reality surrounding the exploitation of workers and racism. Escalante shows us two people sick of living for the moment, without a future and rights, who decide, with gun in hand, to break into a house just to eat and see what it’s like to have a place to live. The situation spirals out of control and ends with a scene that is extremely violent and sad.

Non-professional actors, a usual feature in Escalante’s films, play the roles stupendously. The director said in a press conference that Los Bastardos is a blend of documentary and fiction. The film is competing in the Mexican Feature Films category of the festival.

Escalante said that the idea for making this film came from, in a certain way, what he has lived himself. He knows the reality of the undocumented migrants, his father being Mexican and his mother a U.S. citizen, and the situation is something he is concerned about.

Misunderstood at Cannes
In a press conference, Carlos Reygadas, who helped in the production of Escalante’s film, said that Los bastardos, which was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the last edition of the Cannes International Film Festival, ended up being misunderstood as critics from U.S. magazines such as Sight and Sound and Film Comment labeled the film as tremendously violent and full of clichés. “What struck me was that hardly anyone realized it was about human beings, people who understand one another despite not speaking the same language. It’s a film about the bad things we do in life in order to be happy,” Reygadas said.