--- title: "Monos" year: 2019 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/monos" fi1m_score: 82 critics_score: 76 critics_reviews: 26 published: "2026-09-16T13:01:13.505588+00:00" updated: "2026-09-16T13:01:34.099836+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Monos (2019) Directed by Alejandro Landes Echavarría · 1h 43m · MPA R · Drama, Thriller, Crime, War **Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 76 from 26 reviews *In a sentence:* Teenage group dynamics are unpleasant enough before anyone hands out the rifles > Alejandro Landes Echavarría makes a disturbing, engrossing film about teenage soldiers, with performances that keep its elaborate imagery from taking over. The vague politics limit it, but the fear and confusion get through. ## Synopsis On a mountain, teenage soldiers train and guard a captive, Doctora (Julianne Nicholson). Rambo (Sofia Buenaventura) and Patagrande (Moisés Arias) are among the young fighters trying to find their place in the unit. Their days revolve around physical drills and the rules of a small society cut off from civilian life. Doctora needs to survive in their custody, while the soldiers try to keep their group together. They have weapons and responsibilities, but their restlessness and rivalries make military obedience an uncertain business. ## Review *Monos* is a gripping war film with a frustrating reluctance to tell us what its war is about. Alejandro Landes Echavarría puts a group of teenage soldiers on a mountain and watches them train, compete and invent ways of living together. They have a captive, Doctora, played by Julianne Nicholson, but much of the early tension comes from the group’s own uncertain rules. The film is interested in what happens when young people are given power over one another before they have much control over themselves. Moisés Arias gives Patagrande a hard, challenging presence, while Sofia Buenaventura lets Rambo’s uncertainty remain visible. The young ensemble makes the shifts between playfulness and cruelty credible, without suggesting that these are neatly separable parts of their personalities. The training drills made us uneasy, because the bodies learning military discipline still have the restless energy of adolescents. We can see why belonging to this group might matter to them, which makes their willingness to hurt one another harder to dismiss. Jasper Wolf’s cinematography gives the mountain a scale that makes the soldiers look exposed. The wide compositions and the attention to light make looking at this place a pleasure, and that pleasure becomes uncomfortable once we remember who lives there. Daniela Schneider’s production design keeps the group’s shared spaces from competing with the terrain, allowing their occupation of the place to look temporary and precarious. At times the image is so insistently beautiful that the children seem at risk of becoming another feature of the scenery. Mica Levi’s percussion prevents that beauty from becoming restful. The score gives the film an irregular, agitated pulse without providing the familiar reassurance that music can offer in a thriller. Editors Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Santiago Otheguy and Ted Guard keep the action moving briskly, while allowing the drills and group rituals enough time to register as behaviour. Their work matters because the film asks us to learn these relationships largely by watching bodies in motion, and we rarely struggle to follow who has the upper hand. Julianne Nicholson gives Doctora a watchfulness that helps keep the danger concrete. With a captive among them, the teenagers’ experiments in authority have immediate consequences for somebody who cannot simply opt out. The performance avoids telling us exactly how we ought to feel about her captors, and Nicholson holds our attention without competing with the young ensemble. It also makes the screenplay’s evasions more noticeable: Alejandro Landes Echavarría and Alexis Dos Santos give us a compelling immediate predicament, but little sense of the larger conflict that has put these people together. That lack of context is the chief limitation. A war drama need not supply a history lesson, but here the missing information lets the film fall back too often on the familiar proposition that people become cruel when ordinary restraints disappear. The young cast makes individual loyalties and resentments convincing enough that we want to know more about these particular soldiers. During some of the more forceful passages, the noise and movement labour to make us feel a danger already clear in the performances. Still, at 103 minutes, *Monos* holds our attention without exhausting the uncertainty that makes it frightening. It makes being young inside an armed group feel unstable in ways that a tidier, more explanatory film might miss. We recommend it, with the caveat that anyone looking for a clear account of the conflict will have to look elsewhere. *Fi1m score 82, published 16 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics respond warmly to Monos, with praise concentrated on Jasper Wolf’s cinematography, Mica Levi’s unsettling score and the young ensemble’s credible mixture of naivety and cruelty. The reviews repeatedly describe an immersive, disorientating war drama, finding its mountain and jungle landscapes integral to the tension. Admirers also credit Alejandro Landes with capturing the teenage soldiers’ shifting loyalties and improvised rules without reducing them to a straightforward lesson about lost innocence. The spread is nevertheless wide: enthusiasm for the filmmaking does not always extend to what the film says. Reservations centre on thin characterisation, familiar ideas and an abstract setting that can leave the conflict feeling vague. The Times praises the performances but finds the message platitudinous; The New York Times sees unclear themes beneath the sophisticated technique. The Hollywood Reporter dissents more sharply, finding exploitation in the violence where supporters see a troubling examination of children trained to fight. ### Reviews we read (26) - **The Guardian**, Mark Kermode (5/5): The film is a hypnotic triumph, a dizzying fable of child soldiery that immerses viewers in a world of war and adolescence. The critic singles out the brilliant youthful ensemble cast and Mica Levi’s breathtaking score for particular praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/27/monos-review-alejandro-landes-teenage-guerrillas) - **Los Angeles Times**, Carlos Aguilar (90/100, inferred): This visceral, viscerally philosophic film is a towering achievement that examines primal instincts through a sensorial barrage transcending the screen. It singles out the thunderous stylistic panache, cinematography, and hypnotic score for praise. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2019-09-12/monos-review-julianne-nicholson) - **Sight and Sound**, Maria Delgado (90/100, inferred): Alejandro Landes's surrealist portrait of child soldiers living in chaos is an anarchic and unpredictable experience right until the end. Monos is one of the year’s most extraordinary films, with feverish visuals creating a disarming, almost surrealist universe where anarchy takes hold. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/monos-review-fever-dream-children-war) - **The AV Club**, A.A. Dowd (A-): The critic praises the superb war drama as a gripping fever dream that builds a compelling social ecosystem among the teenage soldiers and shifts into a primal jungle odyssey. It balances mythic imagery, a haunting Mica Levi score, and a troubling moral dimension about children as weapons. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/it-s-apocalypse-now-for-the-teenage-soldiers-of-the-sup-1837942742) - **Empire**, Ian Freer (85/100, inferred): The critic finds Monos a singular, original work of heavy atmosphere and thrilling set-pieces that blurs morality in a nihilistic world. They single out the memorable images, exciting action, dream-like logic and Mica Levi’s percussive score for particular praise. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/monos/) - **Variety**, Jessica Kiang (85/100, inferred): Alejandro Landes’ astonishing film is a sublimely crafted saga of child soldiers evolving their own mini-society, presenting ugly reality in profoundly paradoxical, surreal terms. It singles out the fever-dream art, DP Jasper Wolf’s imagery, and Mica Levi’s score for praise. [Read](https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/monos-review-1203351417/) - **Evening Standard**, Charlotte O'Sullivan (80/100, inferred): The critic calls Monos the most sensitising film of the year, praising its lucid, fast-paced storytelling and subversive elements despite the grisly content. They highlight the economical and innovative direction, superb acting and immersive stunts. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/monos-review-grisly-subversive-but-sensitising-a4270576.html) - **Film Comment**, Devika Girish (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film an inspired, stylish portrait of teenage paramilitaries whose hyper-stylized antics and Mica Levi score create an intensely watchable, sensually rhythmic experience. She highlights the crisp widescreen compositions and the way the film evokes both abstract inquiry and the shadow of Colombia’s civil conflict. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/the-big-screen-monos/) - **Little White Lies**, Josh Slater-Williams (4/4/4): The blistering third feature by Colombian-Ecuadorian filmmaker Alejandro Landes starts with training rituals that recall the physicality of Claire Denis’ Beau Travail. It amounts to much more than straightforward moralising over youth and innocence lost to war, with hallucinatory detours enhancing the fever dream quality. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/monos) - **Radio Times**, David Parkinson (4/5): Imagine a juddering collision between William Golding's Lord of the Flies and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and you get the gist of Alejandro Landes's exceptional study of a group of young soldiers. The juvenile ensemble is uniformly impressive, as Landes captures their naivety and cruelty in a soul-crushing saga that shifts between wrenching realism, terrifying lyricism and disarming surrealism with edgy control and uncompromising potency. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-c72ql8/monos/) - **The Telegraph** (4/5): Monos is a surreal and mesmerising Latin American take on Lord of the Flies, visceral and disquieting with bursts of colour and chaos. The critic praises its conjuration of a surreal experience from tactile reality but notes its festival context. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/monos-review-surreal-mesmerising-latin-american-take-lord-flies/) - **Time Out**, Joshua Rothkopf (4/5): ‘Monos’ is the strangest, most unsettling piece of survival warfare you’ll see all year – yes, including ‘Love Island’ – but it’s also one of the most mesmerising. There’s no moralising here: these are dead-eyed survivors in a gorgeously atmospheric film that infiltrates a place inside you – an anxiety about our future that lingers. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/monos-2019) - **RogerEbert.com**, Sheila O'Malley (75/100, inferred): The film is fascinating but sometimes frustrating, with a story of child soldiers that lacks depth compared to other works on the subject. It is elevated into epic territory by the superb cinematography capturing powerful landscapes and light. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/monos-movie-review-2019) - **IndieWire**, Eric Kohn (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a thrilling, fast-paced survivalist saga that distills guerrilla warfare into sheer anarchy, akin to a Lord of the Flies scenario with added guerrilla elements. Landes captures the anarchic energy of the young soldiers' world effectively at Sundance. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/monos-review-alejandro-landes-sundance-1202038495/) - **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (70/100, inferred): The film revises the premise of Lord of the Flies with child soldiers in an abstract setting, delivering striking images and an extraordinary score while shifting focus in its second half. It is most compelling when verging on abstraction but some magic evaporates at jungle level. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/23/ad-astra-will-leave-you-awed-confused-and-sad) - **The Times**, Kevin Maher (3/5): Lord of the Flies meets Apocalypse Now in this riveting drama about teenage revolutionaries succumbing to violent power struggles. The vivid and credible performances from the young cast are praised, but the message is deemed too familiar and platitudinous. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/monos-review-engaging-but-message-feels-too-familiar-dh2x3qvbm) - **Slant Magazine** (40/100, inferred): The critic views the film as a superficial, hedonistic riff on Lord of the Flies that depicts amorality with minimal curiosity and relies on numbing stylistic verve rather than deeper insight. Conflict remains purely aesthetic, with meaning largely derived from Mica Levi's score. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review-monos-is-a-superficial-hedonistic-riff-on-lord-of-the-flies/) - **The New York Times**, Glenn Kenny (40/100, inferred): This sophisticated-looking allegory is cagey about what it allegorizes and ultimately frustrating in its muddled half-ideas. The critic singles out the use of a sophisticated cinematic apparatus in service of unclear themes for complaint. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/movies/monos-review.html) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Keith Uhlich (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a bleak and ghastly jungle thriller about child soldiers descending into depravity and violence, comparing it unfavorably to a version of Kids or Lord of the Flies. Landes's attempt at an abstract fever dream is undermined by exploitative elements and a shameless final shot. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/monos-review-1179460/) - **Den of Geek**, Lou Thomas (5/5): The review calls Monos an extraordinary, singular piece of world cinema and one of 2019’s most distinctive films. It singles out the hallucinatory splendour of its mountain-and-jungle setting and the way it stands alone as a wild, surprising ride. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/monos-review-an-extraordinary-piece-of-world-cinema/) - **/Film**, Kalyn Corrigan (9/10): The critic finds the film unsettling and authentic, calling it one of the best of 2019 and an experience that demands to be seen. They single out its intimate portrayal of the group's dynamics and its bold, experimental approach to the war drama genre. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/569070/monos-review/) - **The Playlist**, Joe Blessing (A-): The critic sees the film as a philosophical exploration of group dynamics and freedom from civilization's constraints. They single out its powerful images and feelings that examine timeless ideas through the teens' attempts to create their own rules. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/monos-guerillas-sundance-review-20190127/) - **Polygon**, Andy Crump (80/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a ferocious action drama that blends Lord of the Flies with Apocalypse Now, praising its unsettling commentary on civilization through the story of child soldiers. Cinematography and the film's experiential portrayal of the harsh environment and shifting group dynamics are singled out as strengths. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/13/20861894/monos-review-moises-arias-alejandro-landes/) - **The Skinny**, Jamie Dunn (4/5): The critic describes Monos as a thrilling, dreamy and impressionistic survivalist movie whose surreal beauty and humanity shine through even its most brutal moments. It singles out the distinct cinematic style and Mica Levi’s bewitching score for particular praise. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/new-releases/berlinale-2019-monos) - **Eye for Film**, Amber Wilkinson (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as having a queasy, uneasy nightmare feel from the start. They single out its focus on drilling the chaotic emotions of the kids and captive deep into the viewer. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/monos-2019-film-review-by-amber-wilkinson) - **The Wrap** (65/100, inferred): The film is a fascinating but sometimes vague coming-of-age story, one the critic has grown to admire more than enjoy. The critic singles out the stunning imagery from Landes and cinematographer Jasper Wolf for praise. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/monos-film-review-alejandro-landes-julianne-nicholson/) ## Details - **Director:** Alejandro Landes Echavarría - **Director:** Alejandro Landes Echavarría - **Screenplay:** Alejandro Landes Echavarría, Alexis Dos Santos - **Story:** Alejandro Landes Echavarría - **Cinematography:** Jasper Wolf - **Editor:** Ted Guard, Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Santiago Otheguy - **Music:** Mica Levi - **Production design:** Daniela Schneider - **Costume design:** Johanna Buendía Páramo, Daniela Schneider - **Producer:** Santiago A. Zapata, Fernando Epstein, Cristina Landes - **Cast:** Moisés Arias as Patagrande; Julianne Nicholson as Doctora; Sofia Buenaventura as Rambo; Karen Quintero as Leidi; Julian Giraldo as Lobo; Laura Castrillón as Sueca; Deibi Rueda as Pitufo; Paul Cubides as Perro - **Runtime:** 1h 43m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 13 September 2019 - **Genres:** Drama, Thriller, Crime, War - **Budget:** $2 million - **Box office:** $2 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSpuQB2E7NQ ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AT, AU, BE, CA, CH, DE, ES, FR, GB, IE, IT, JP, NL, NZ, SE, SG, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - International Submission to the Academy Awards 2020: International Submission to the Academy Awards (nominated) - Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award 2019: Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award (won) ## If you liked this - *Beau travail* (1999): Military drills and repressed feeling, with bodies telling what dialogue leaves unsaid. - *The Ascent* (1977): A wartime ordeal that gives its moral questions painful, specific human consequences. - *War Witch* (2012): Another child soldier story, with more room for private memory and tenderness. - *The White Ribbon* (2009), Fi1m 86: Children, punishment and adult authority, observed with a chill that steadily deepens. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-white-ribbon.md) - *Walkabout* (1971), Fi1m 85: Young people in an immense landscape, where beauty offers little protection. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/walkabout.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/monos