Pepe

The deep voice guiding the latest film by inventive Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias (Santa Teresa and Other Stories, TIFF ’15 and Cocote, TIFF ’17) claims to belong to a hippopotamus — or rather, the ghost of one. That this hippo may have belonged to notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, whose lavish displays of opulence included plans for a private zoo of exotic species, opens onto wider, yet concomitant themes of identity, migration, and troubling legacies.

The first and last hippopotamus killed in the Americas, the beautiful beast nicknamed Pepe by the media was controversially shot by authorities in Colombia after it was deemed an invasive and dangerous threat to the community. Elliptical and exploratory (and not a little gonzo!) — executed with the filmmaker’s signature mix of styles incorporating 16mm, digital, black and white, colour, archival invocations, and more — Pepe traces the creature’s destabilizing journey. Moving from Southern Africa to South America, with multiple asides and diversions, the film’s migratory movements and observations are interwoven with several oral histories — many imbued with resistance to violence.

Exhuming facts, mythologies, lore, even hippo consciousness, Pepe is cinema of the imagination, while at the same time evoking questions of forced movement — both historic and contemporary — the ramifications of colonialism, disrupted ecosystems, and the interconnectedness of human and animal worlds. Its wraithlike musings seem unaware of time’s constructs, yet its story is utterly remarkable. Deserved winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, de los Santos Arias continues to probe the possibilities of cinematic language.

ANDRÉA PICARD