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Secuestro Express: New Film Opens Dialogue on Kidnappings in Latin AmericaA curious cast from the Latin music world, including Ruben Blades, interprets this promising directorial debut by Jonathan Jakubowicz
Every sixty minutes someone in Latin America is abducted. Seventy percent of these kidnapping victims don’t survive. A frightening situation, realistically portrayed in Secuestro Express, a fast-paced urban suspense thriller that recounts the story of the kidnapping of Carla (Mia Maestro) and Martin (Jean Paul Leroux), a young and wealthy couple from Caracas who get snatched in a matter of seconds by three ghetto thugs after a night of partying. Filmmaker Jonathan Jakubowicz
Aug. 14, 2005 - Secuestro Express is the directing debut for Jonathan Jakubowicz, a young Venezuelan filmmaker fed up with the social inequities in his country. The film was shot in 2002 in the dangerous streets of Caracas, a booming city, where over 80 percent of the population lives in miserable conditions, while a few privileged ones live in gated communities and cruise around in flashy bulletproof SUV’s with bodyguards, a very intense setting that got even worst, when they began shooting in the midst of one of the countries hardest political and social crisis in their history, which brought more tension to an already afraid and confused crew. Keeping the story real was one of the most important things for Jakubowicz, so when it came time for casting, Mia Maestro was an easy choice, since she was born into a prosperous family from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who lived under the constant threat of such kidnappings. But reality was portrayed in its full extent by the three kidnappers: (Trece) Carlos Julio Molina, one of the most renowned hip hop DJ’s and producers in Latin America, and by two of the best known rappers in Venezuela: Pedro PÈrez (Budu) and Carlos Madera (Niga) from the rap duo “Vagos y Maleantes” a group brought up in Cotiza, one of the toughest ghettos in Caracas. The roll of Sergio –Carla’s wealthy father– is played by the Panamanian musician and social activist Ruben Blades, who was thrilled to join the project because, he said, “It speaks from the heart and soul of the streets where I was born, where violence is your daily bread, and the people in power are deaf. I believe in youth, and this film is the youth of South America talking to the world.” Giving a voice to the victims on both sides of the problem was one of the main goals for Jonathan Jakubowicz. He thinks that it’s urgent for people from all social classes to begin a massive public dialogue “where people from the upper classes admit that many mistakes have been committed, and the people from the lower classes begin explaining to them what their main needs are.” In this complex social scenario it’s hard to tell the good from the bad, so for the young writer/director it was very important to avoid any one viewpoint. To prevent that from happening, he spoke with people who had committed these crimes. “When I met with the kidnappers,” he said, “I discovered that they were human beings too, and that there were real and comprehensive reasons why they did these things. They seemed to be fairly normal people who had been forced into truly extreme situations. When you grow up in a ghetto, it doesn’t always matter if you are a good person or not – you simply do what you have to do to survive.” Jakubowicz says that movie directors have a very important social responsibility, but he doesn’t consider himself a social filmmaker; he only wants to make intelligent movies. “I believe that this is a social problem that has to be solved by ourselves by communicating. That’s why I think that the two positive characters in the movie are the ones that communicate, and I believe that is the secret for our societies.”
Secuestro Express opened Friday, August 12.
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