The Triptych of Mondongo review – one part art documentary, two parts directorial megalomania

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What begins as a portrait of Argentinian art collective Mondongo snowballs into Mariano Llinás’s infuriatingly brilliant farrago of colour, conflict and existential crisis About as inside-baseball for visual arts as you can get, Mariano Llinás’s three-part portrait of Argentinian art collective Mondongo is knackering, infuriating and, infuriatingly, often brilliant – especially in its more sincere second instalment. The film nominally tries to document Mondongo’s 2021 Baptistery of Colours project , in which the artists catalogued the chromatic spectrum with plasticine blocks inside a dodecahedron chapel. But it quickly snowballs into Llinás’s own scattershot inquiry into colour and portraiture, a tone poem that ceaselessly interrogates its own tones, a crisis of faith about representation, and – as he falls out with artists Juliana Laffitte and Manuel Mendanha – a droll depiction of a director’s nervous breakdown. As Laffitte lets fly at him at one point, Llinás can never resist the...
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Pongo Calling review – Roma lorry driver turns viral activist after political persecution

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Film-maker Tomáš Kratochvíl follows the story of Czech-Mancunian trucker turned activist Štefan Pongo

Centring on an ordinary man with extraordinary determination, Tomáš Kratochvíl’s documentary shows how one simple video can ignite a revolutionary movement. After emigrating to the UK nearly 15 years ago, Czech Roma lorry driver Štefan Pongo built a new life for himself and his family in Manchester. At the same time, the persecution faced by his community never strayed far from Pongo’s mind. After hearing a speech in which Miloš Zeman, then the president of the Czech Republic, claimed that 90% of the Roma people were “socially unadaptable” and resistant to work, Pongo started a viral appeal online where he and countless other Roma compatriots posted selfies of themselves at their workplaces.

The appeal was straightforward, yet hugely impactful. Its aim was to battle harmful stereotypes thrust upon Roma people, which Pongo himself had experienced first-hand from a young age. In one particularly painful anecdote, he mentioned his primary school teacher rubbing his arms in front of the whole class to demonstrate how “dirty” the Roma are. As Pongo took a leadership role in the fight for Romani rights, his activism also translated into real-world actions, organising protest rallies in Brussels, and travelling to rural Slovenia to deliver aid to the most vulnerable in the community.

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