Pepe

Pepito
Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias
Dominican Republic, Namibia, Germany, France, 2024, 123'
Producers: Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias, Tanya Valette, Pablo Lozano
Co-producers: Andrea Queralt, Mani Mortazavi, Christoph Friedel, Claudia Steffen, Joel Haikali, Sophie Haikali
Co-production: 4A4 Productions, Pandora Film, Joe's Vision

World Premiere: Berlinale - Berlin International Film Festival 2024 - Germany

Awards and Festivals (selection):
Silver Bear Winner for Best Director - Berlinale Berlin Film Festival 2024 - Germany
TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival 2024 - Canada
NYFF - New York International Film Festival 2024 - USA
NYFF - Festival Internacional de Cinema de Nova Iorque 2024 - EUA
FIDMarseille - Marseille International Film Festival 2024 - France

A young hippopotamus is killed in the jungle of Colombia, but returns in the form of a ghost. A voice that claims to belong to a hippopotamus. A voice that does not understand the perception of time. A voice that tells of a historical event as if in a trance. “Am I making that sound that comes out of my mouth? And what is a mouth anyway?” The only thing the animal knows for sure is that it is dead. The first and only hippopotamus ever killed in the Americas. The Colombian press called him Pepe. Between encounters and misunderstandings, epiphanies and sadness, we enter a world full of stories replete with even more stories. In a serious and playful way, both authentic and deceptive, images and sounds narrate the overwhelming orality of places full of beings who, like Pepe, died without ever knowing where they really were.