La Vida Loca

Christian Poveda | 2009 | Francia/El Salvador | 90’ | Fuori concorso

Suburbs of San Salvador. Two gangs fight with each other. They call them the ‘Maras’. Thousands of tattooed young men and women that call themselves soldiers. On one side the ‘Mara Salvatrucha’, on the other the ‘Mara 18’. The documentary by Christian Poveda is made to the hearth of the 18. The movie reports the story of a band, of a brotherhood which is sometimes brutal, but at the same time fragile. The story of an absolute loneliness, of boys and girls who abuse of alcohol, drugs and tears. They kill and get killed. We see them survive and then pass away one after the other. Prayers of revenge, cries of women, children that watch their mothers in a coffin. No comments to the image, no mise-en-scene, just the certainty of opening closed doors, of going into places in which nobody can go. 

“5 years of preparation, 16 months of shooting and in the end, on a wrong street, 2 bullets of P38 in the head”. (Carole Solive, producer of ‘La Vida Loca’).