Birds of Passage

A brilliantly made crime saga about the clash between old-world tradition and new-world corruption

I am not against telling stories, but I am against glorifying criminals and showing drug trafficking as glamorous. This confuses youths. I receive tonnes of messages from youths asking for help to be like my dad. They want to be that criminal, they send me photos dressed up like him, with his moustache, his hairstyle. Series about narcos have turned my father into a hero and given young people the idea that it is cool to be a drug trafficker.

• Sebastián Marroquín (born Juan Pablo Escobar), speaking about the TV show Narcos' depiction of his father, drug lord Pablo Escobar; "Pablo Escobar's son slams TV series for 'glorifying' criminals"; Agence France-Presse (March 6, 2017)

Tourists come to Colombia with shirts of Escobar, and it's like an insult to us. It's like glorifying a dictator or Hitler. We were not satisfied with the representation given to drug trafficking in Colombia.

• Cristina Gallego; "Director Cristina Gallego on making a Godfather-style crime story that honours the Wayúu" (Steve Macfarlane); Remezcla.com (October 10, 2018)

We feel that there has been a glorification of criminals, which has been really painful for our country. It's very hard to see Pablo Escobar become a hero to a generation, because his process was really a process of destruction - the moral destruction of our whole country.

• Ciro Guerra; "Birds of Passage directors say they found the real story of narco trafficking from the women, not the men" (Matt Donnelly); The Wrap (November 16, 2018)

Unlike any gangster/drug movie you've ever seen, Pájaros de verano [Birds of Passage] is from the same team that made the astonishing El abrazo de la serpiente [Embrace of the Serpent] (2015), and presents a thematically similar narrative, looking at the disintegration of an ancient indigenous culture over a period of years. However, whereas...

‘Birds of Passage’ feels like a gangster epic anchored by a people seeing their world view slowly slipping from their sight. It manages to make a narco narrative feel new and visually stunning on a broad dreamlike canvas, taking a creaky old Hollywood genre and moulding it into something altogether more entrancing.

• Jake Watt

Read Jake's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-birds-of-passage-a-visually-stunning-narcotised-gangster-epic