La ciudad y los perros

 Francisco J. Lombardi, Peru

1985 – Restored version – 2h15

Based on the debut novel "The Time of the Hero", published in 1963

by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Upon the film’s release in 1985, the director earned a well-deserved international reputation by adapting Mario Vargas Llosa’s eponymous book, which recounted his school experiences in 1950 and 1951 at a military college.

A formative experience that Francisco J. Lombardi transposed to the 1980s, a period marked by violence between the national army, the Shining Path and paramilitary groups, which forms the backdrop to the film.

The military school is a microcosm made up of Indigenous people, white people, mestizos and Black people who struggle and survive, and it still appears as a virtually unvarnished allegory of the social fabric of contemporary Peru.

The director’s choice was motivated not only by a scathing critique of the effects of subjugation, discipline and brutality, but also by the microcosm that reflects Peru’s diversity, as well as the complexity of the characters and dramatic situations.

The social commentary offered through the military institution enabled him to portray Peruvian society through its myriad forms of discrimination and injustice, as this boarding school, behind closed doors, brings together young people from different races, cultures and social classes.

The director presents a vision of a society rife with violence and repression, where masculinity is shaped by homophobia and the suppression of emotions.

At the crossroads of prison films and coming-of-age films!