In 1996, Mariana Rondon (Venezuela) and Marity Ogas (Peru) Founded Sodaka Filmsan independent production company in which the two directors alternate the roles of directing, screenwriting and producing. Together they have signed several globally recognized feature films, including with Golden Shell … of the San Sebastian Festival – and maintain an insight into the continent’s social fissures. If the Sudacas have to enter the forest – or photograph it – they do so openly. His new film, “Dhafari,” is the latest evidence of this. The film premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival and was directed by Mariana Rondon, and is now arriving in Spanish theaters.
The story begins with an unusual picture: the hippopotamus Dhofari is transported to the zoo next to a large residential complex. A group of citizens, Natalia (Samantha Castillo) and Ali (Ali Rondon), must take care of him and feed him. From the window of the building next door – once a luxury building and now a symbol of a declining middle class – a family consisting of Ana (Daniela Ramírez), Edgar (Francisco Denis) and their son Bruno (Varric La Rosa) watch the arrival of the hippopotamus while the city sinks into shortages of water, food and electricity. Anna walks through empty apartments collecting junk, her husband is paralyzed by the chaos, and Bruno sinks into a strange passivity.
Mariana Rondon and Marity Ogas, Sudaca Films
In a world that is becoming increasingly wild, the only one that is still plentiful is the hippopotamus. Both Mariana Rondon and Marity Ojas are aware of this fact: the starting point of the film was a true story: the newspaper report of the appearance of a dismembered hippopotamus in Venezuela. The metaphor, they say, “came through reality itself.” From there, they began an investigation into hunger, and how often — and in how many places — social breakdown has forced humans to confront their extreme limits. This initial observation was the impetus behind producing a film that aims not to depict misery, but rather to expose the fragility of the system.
For the director, Dhafari embodies obscene abundance amidst scarcity, a symbol of power and its excesses. “This hippopotamus pose, in all its vitality, is an act of strength,” he explains. Although the film avoids naming a specific country or characters, it crudely shows the consequences of their decisions. In this sense, the animal – innocent but deadly – becomes the embodiment of power itself, a power that feeds without limits while everything around it deteriorates.
Group photo
Dhafari’s arrival at the apartment complex dismantles the fragile social harmony. Rondon points out that the animal “violates norms, hierarchies and complicity” among the population. Each personality reveals its own limitations. Fear, guilt, and the survival instinct combine until they erase any boundaries between victim and perpetrator. As in other Sudaka films, childhood once again emerges as a political terrain. Rondon interprets the novel’s child protagonist as a “revolutionary figure,” an atrophied “new man,” a degraded version of that Marxist ideal that once promised salvation. Bruno, the son, does not represent the future, but the loss of all possible futures. His silence and interruption are symptoms of a time in which necessity ate hope.
Dhafari began writing the screenplay in 2015. Marity Ojas explains that the first inspiration for the film was cannibalism. “We studied the subject in different cultures, but realized it would be unlikely to be depicted literally on film,” he recalls. That initial idea, finally discarded, left its mark on the atmosphere: the characters don’t devour each other with their teeth, but they do so symbolically. Violence is transferred to gesture, to silence, to indifference. What began as an allegory gradually turned into an honest description of the social and moral decline experienced by many societies in Latin America, and more specifically in Venezuela.
Rondon insists that interpreting Dhafari in Venezuelan key only understates its scope. “To interpret the film in an exclusively Venezuelan key is to limit it,” he reiterates. “For me, it was important to speak clearly to Venezuelans, but hunger and social dislocation are global issues.” He believes that the crisis depicted in the film transcends state borders and becomes a global warning. “I think the whole world is becoming more and more similar to what we live in Venezuela,” he concludes. The result is a dystopian and deeply human tale, in which hunger becomes a metaphor for power and survival in a form of corruption.
The filmmakers, experienced in a cinematic genre with a clear social and political perspective, showed their acumen and talent. Sudaca Films’ most representative films paint a critical and poetic look at Latin America. In “Postcards from Leningrad” (2007), Mariana Rondón depicts the Venezuelan fighter from children’s imagination; The Boy Who Lies (2011) by Marity Ogas follows the journey of a teenager searching for his missing mother after a disaster; “Pelo Malo” (2013), also directed by Rondon, subtly addresses identity, prejudice and intolerance through a boy obsessed with straightening his hair, just as Ogas’s “Contactado” (2020) explores spiritual manipulation and disillusionment. To the question of whether these are good times for political cinema, there is no doubt when answered. “Yes, but the audience is not much. The public fears that reality is getting too close. However, this is how German Expressionist cinema was born: the announcement of the coming monster.