Alejandro Landes is representing Colombia…
The 39-year-old Brazil-born Colombian-Ecuadorian film director’s latest project, the Spanish-language survival thriller Monos, has been selected as Colombia’s selection for the International Feature Film race at the 92nd Academy Awards.
The film centers on a young group of soldiers and rebels training on a remote mountain in Latin America with an American hostage (Julianne Nicholson).
Moisés Arias, Sofia Buenaventura, Deiby Rueda, Karen Quintero and Laura Castrillón star in the film, which Landes co-wrote with Alexis Dos Santos.
The film won a World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Awardat this year’s Sundance Film Festivalin Park City, Utah.
The news comes as Neon and co-distributor Participant Media prepare to release the film theatrically in the U.S. on September 13.
Colombia has only seen one film nominated in what was formerly known as the Best Foreign Language Film category. That was Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent in 2015, the year Hungary’s Son of Saulwon the Oscar.