Soy Nero

Nero is a regular Mexican teenager with one thing on his mind: becoming an American citizen. We first meet him as he attempts to cross the Mexican border, where he plans to travel to Los Angeles to meet his brother. A hard task, but Nero is persistent and this isn’t his first try. His best chance of becoming an American, he believes, is by enlisting in the American Army, which allows so-called “Green card” soldiers to obtain citizenship after having served their turn of duty. This quest will lead him on a long journey from one heavily guarded border to another in the far away sands of a middle-eastern no-man’s land, by way of Beverly Hills in California.

Soy Nero, which premiered in the Berlin film festival’s official competition program, is an impactful film, both visually and thematically. It includes breathtakingly beautiful scenes, full of bittersweet irony: a border crossing at night, in the light of fireworks display, a beach volley ball game on each side of a heavily guarded border, mirages flickering the desert heat.

Raffi Pitts’ movie can be seen as a filmatic contribution to a wider debate surrounding issues of exile, migration and identity, but at its core the film works just as well as the story of a boy’s coming of age and existential wandering. The young Johnny Ortiz portrays Nero with a subtle combination of cheekiness and vulnerability, as a boy who is both assertive and charming, yet constantly ill at ease with his surroundings. Despite some rather tense scenes, the film’s style is contemplative rather than moralizing or sentimental. Soy Nero is a visually and emotionally engaging drama, which intelligently addresses timely and politically significant subject matter. Chloe Faulkner

Rafi Pitts (b. 1967) is an Iranian-British director, scriptwriter and producer. He escaped the Irak-Iran war and came to Britain in 1981. In the 1990’s, Pitts worked in Paris with filmmakers such as Leos Carax and Jean-Luc Godard. Soy Nero is his third film, after It's Winter (2006) and The Hunter (2010) to be selected in the Berlinale’s official competition program.