Winner of a Special Jury Award at Sundance, MONOS is a visionary tale about a group of young militants holding an American hostage.

On a remote isolated hilltop, a group of teenagers known as Monos (Spanish for monkeys) are training for a mission as part of “The Organization”. They are only identified by their nicknames such as Rambo, Smurf, Wolf, Bigfoot (Moises Arias, THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT) and given their strict training by Messenger. Their job is to look after the American hostage simply known as Doctora (Julianne Nicholson, I, TONYA) and also to ensure no harm comes to Shakira, the milk cow. However, their mission changes course drastically after an attack forces them to leave their base and head into the jungle where the group’s structure disintegrates into chaos.

Director Alejandro Landes’ and co-writer Alexis Dos Santos have smartly stripped specific location markers from the film thereby creating an imaginary world that is timeless and could take place in any nation on the brink of collapse. As a result, the film is a mesmerizing take on war and survival films and echoes LORD OF THE FLIES, APOCALYPSE NOW and AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD. MONOS is further powered by Jasper Wolf’s imaginary visuals and Mica Levi’s (UNDER THE SKIN) haunting score.

MONOS co-writer Alexis Dos Santos is an alumni of the CIFF’s 2009 Mavericks competition. He attended the 2009 festival with his second feature UNMADE BEDS which competed alongside Damien Chazelle’s GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH and Maren Ade’s EVERYONE ELSE.

Written by Sachin Gandhi