Cinema
Mi socio
Paolo Agazzi · 1982
Synopsis
Vito, a Colla truck driver from the highlands, and Brillo, a young Camba shoeshine boy from the lowlands, cross paths for reasons that are not the same and set out together on a long journey, from the east to the west of Bolivia, aboard an old truck nicknamed Mi socio, my partner. Everything sets them apart, region, age, manner of speaking and of seeing the world, and the road tests the friendship that is born in spite of it all between the grown man and the kid.
Context
The film, eighty-three minutes long, is its author's first feature; it comes from an idea by Óscar Soria, written with Agazzi, Guillermo Aguirre and Raquel Romero, and it is produced by the Ukamau group, with Héctor Ríos on camera. The music by Alberto Villalpando is sung by Gerardo Arias, of Savia Andina. David Santalla plays Vito; Brillo is Gerardo Suárez, twelve years old, discovered by Agazzi and Soria at a school theatre festival in Cochabamba.
Who it is for
In Spanish, with no French version, and two regional ways of speaking that clash throughout. A road comedy that is easy to follow.
Prizes and reception
Selected at the Moscow festival, awarded the Golden Catalina for best actor at Cartagena in 1983, it remains one of the best-loved films in the country: a sequel came out in 2020.