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A hippopotamus is a semi-aquatic animal native to sub-Saharan Africa. However, in the early 1990s, hippos and other wild animals ran amok in South America, thanks to drug lord Pablo Escobar and the exotic menagerie at his Hacienda Nápoles estate.
After his death, the animals were left to their own devices. Some were sent to zoos, others facing an uncertain future — but not Pepe, he chose to carve his own path. At the center of Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias’ Berlin Premiere film, Pepe is titular nickname of the rogue hippo who escaped into the wilderness and left a trail of destruction in his wake.
Pepe meets a tragic end, but not before pondering life’s profoundest questions. Voiced by a chorus of actors including Jhon Narváez, Harmony Ahalwa, Fareed Matjila, and Shifafure Faustinus, the hippo waxes poetic about his own death and the circumstances leading up to it.
After his death, the animals were left to their own devices. Some were sent to zoos, others facing an uncertain future — but not Pepe, he chose to carve his own path. At the center of Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias’ Berlin Premiere film, Pepe is titular nickname of the rogue hippo who escaped into the wilderness and left a trail of destruction in his wake.
Pepe meets a tragic end, but not before pondering life’s profoundest questions. Voiced by a chorus of actors including Jhon Narváez, Harmony Ahalwa, Fareed Matjila, and Shifafure Faustinus, the hippo waxes poetic about his own death and the circumstances leading up to it.
- 2/22/2024
- by Valerie Complex
- Deadline Film + TV
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As with so much, you can blame Pablo Escobar. Following the druglord’s 1993 death, the exotic animals that populated the menagerie at his sprawling Hacienda Nápoles estate faced an uncertain future. Many were sent to zoos, but the hippos remained – although not indigenous to the Americas, they were thriving in Colombia. But then a rogue male nicknamed Pepe escaped into the wilds of the Magdalena river, and even before the hippo-critical hunt-to-kill order came down, became a local legend. This is the wonderfully bizarre story that Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’ “Pepe” refuses to tell in anything except the most glancing, freeform, frustratingly obscurantist manner.
Instead, de los Santos Arias sends us on an uncategorizably odd journey down the river of his noodling, needling imagination in a rickety canoe that keeps on capsizing, upended by another sideswiping reference, another jarring change of scene and timeframe or yet...
Instead, de los Santos Arias sends us on an uncategorizably odd journey down the river of his noodling, needling imagination in a rickety canoe that keeps on capsizing, upended by another sideswiping reference, another jarring change of scene and timeframe or yet...
- 2/20/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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