When Alejandro Landes took 25 youngsters on a bootcamp high in the Andes to make a psychedelic drama about child soldiers, reality almost outpaced his movie
Monos is set in a South
American paradise but comes off like Lord of the Flies in hell. Following an eight-strong group of teen soldiers and their adult prisoner of war, it is sensual, and gorgeous and intensely, continuously disturbing. The kids – Dog, Lady, Bigfoot, Boom-Boom, Rambo, Swede, Wolf, Smurf – are left to their own devices except for the occasional visit from “the Messenger”, who works for whatever organisation has recruited them. So they scrap and kiss and
fire their AK-47s into the sky.
They met a man with dwarfism who became a child soldier at 11. 'He was an amazing destroyer of things'