Victor Gaviria  

Colombia 
 
 

It's a poetic title, from a director who has published three books of poetry in Colombia. But there is little Tom Waits-like sentimental celebration of life on the underbelly in Victor Gaviria's work. His first feature, 1990's Rodrigo D. (No Future) was a brutal, in-your-face look at the lives/non-lives of teenage Medellin street-gangs. 

The film is based around the character of Monica (the fabulously named Lady Tabares), a 13-year-old 'gamine' who lives in the streets and sells roses while doing her best to hold onto the little she has: her friendships, her dignity and her pride. Part of the film comes in the form of Monica's hallucinations. "The film takes the brutality of Rodrigo D.," Gaviria says, "but it adds poetry. It shows the lives of the children as less empty, and it touches the heart more." 

Latin American cinema is not all about sumptuous magical realism. Young film-makers (Gaviria himself is now 43, but made his first short at 24) are now prepared to confront burning social issues in films often shot under appalling conditions, with Beto Gomez's crude, powerful The Hole – a defiant, comic piece about the injustice of Mexican justice – being one recent example. 

Director Ana Diez took Spanish actress Silvia Munt to the outskirts of Bogota to shoot 1996's Everything is Dark, a cruelly neglected film which faced up to the plight of the city's street kids excitingly – though that film had a soft centre which Gaviria's work shuns. "I know and respect Ana Diez," Gaviria says, "but her film is not based on solid research." Preparation for La vendedora de rosas was centred on getting a group of non-professional actors – the same children who fight to survive on the Medellin streets – to act. "I think you can see the difference in the way these kids talk, the way they breathe," Gaviria says. "They're rebellious off-screen and on it, but you have to see their rebellion as a kind of heroism, a fight against the system that keeps them impoverished. If you try to turn them into senstive human beings, then you'll lose truth." 

However, Gaviria's choice of subject matter gives him a particularly heavy moral burden to carry. After shooting finishes, the actors have no option but to return to the streets – and nine of the young cast of Rodrigo D. are now dead. How does Gaviria deal with this? 

"At the beginning, we set it up as a kind of friendship," he says. "A new experience. We learn from them, and they learn from us. But after Rodrigo D., the kids returned to their normal lives, their gangs, their vendettas. This is the reality for a lot of Medellin kids. Their lives don't represent a cultural attitude, but a tragedy." 

Regular visitors to Cannes will remember Gaviria's name from the 1990 festival when Rodrigo D. made its super-realist impact on jaded festival consciousnesses. The first Colombian film to feature at Cannes – it later took first prize at New York's Latino film festival – the film was, in the words of the Washington Post, "the movie equivalent of garage rock". Recounting three days in the life of a teenage street gang, the film pointed up their sad dreams – to set up a punk-rock band – and counterpointed it to the cruel reality in which they live. The film was praised for its commitment and vitality, but criticised for its fragmentary nature and lack of sense of character. Such aesthetic niggles, however, seem out of place in cinema which actually has something to say and which burns to say it. 

For 17-year-old first-time actress Lady Tabares, who has a winsome giggle, the Rose shoot was "easy. I think Victor chose me because I'm natural in front of the cameras," she says. "And I'm very calm. I had a really good time." Her trip to Cannes is her first ever journey abroad "I'm very happy," she says, "a normal kid, who has been given the chance, for a short while at least, to live in a totally different world." Jonathan Holland