After their latest heist, Jimbo decides to take charge of his destiny and break free from his anarchist father’s prison. It is time to hear Jimbo’s inner rebel yell
Jimbo, sixteen, quiet, and shy, has spent his life cowering in the shadow of his controlling, anarchist, father El Tigron, and his devoted yet delusional lover, Lolli. As his gypsy father roams from town to town robbing banks, the oppressed teen’s sexual desires and masculinity start taking a toll on his imprisoned lifestyle. Directed by Rodrigo Zanforlin, he wanted to return to the 80’s and access to sex education was not an easy thing, where kids often created fantasies over desires. This was before the Internet revolution !
We must go back to the 80’s so we can understand “Jimbo”.
We tried to explore the impulsive behavior that we all can have during our adolescence, much explained by the huge hormonal change in young kids. Jimbo is also a disabled boy, struggling to express himself with such oppressor violent father. We put all this ideas and concept in the film so we could create an interesting world. I was very inspired by alternative societies, people who chose to I’ve off the grid to create this family background.
Jimbo is a story that really inspires me for many reasons. I do believe sometimes our parents are the biggest oppressor of our lives, sometimes they love us so much that their dreams to us, are also our own prison. In the other hand the idea that everything we fight against in this ordinary world is what we become is a strong concept that I keep on my mind as big learning as well.
After a couple of short films working, writing, photographing and directing I found myself in a place where my voice or my expression would be something that releases feeling and excitement. I enjoy and like the idea to create a world of fantasy where I also can release my unconsciousness mind, and create a world that sometimes is only in my dreams. As writer and director, I’m deeply interested in developing images that can tell stories for itself. I just like to think that life is like a big theatre where we can create our own character, dreams, nightmares, and fantasy.
From that perspective, Jimbo is a release of my own life, my own weirdness as perceiving the strange life. The idea behind Jimbo is to tell a simple story of abuse, rejection with the excitement that freedom can bring to us, and how the relief to unleash yourself from some chains that keep holding us in the same place for long. I like to think that some people are like little rocks, even if the tide comes and goes they never move. In that case, JIMBO is a rock that decides to move and take the risk to go for an unusual journey.
Zanforlin’s work in Jimbo wonderfully embraces the art of storytelling through its shots. From the long abstract framings to the relentless zoom ins. It’s evident that every single shot in the film was carefully orchestrated which makes it a pure joy to watch. The story is curious and well driven by its characters, with a conclusion that leaves a door wide open for some more exciting things to come – or at least leaves us with intrigue and curiosity.