Start the week with a film: ‘Pepe’ is the (possibly apocryphal) story of Pablo Escobar’s hippo

Among Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s notorious acts was his move to import four hippos from Africa. Brought to Escobar’s private zoo in the 1970s, the massive mammals became a headache after his death in 1993. They broke out of his estate and multiplied so profusely, they were classified as an invasive species.

One of them, named Pepe by the local media, was shot dead in 2009. A pushback from environmentalists prevented further culling. Colombia continues to grapple with the “cocaine hippo” vexation. An inventive film from the Dominican Republic provides an alternative way of approaching the problem.

Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias’s debut feature Pepe is a shapeshifting chronicle, traversing several genres at once. Pepe combines documentary, staged sequences, magic realism and a serious examination of the consequences of unchecked human ambition.

The MUBI release is an imagined biography of Pepe, who muses about his predicament in a droll baritone from beyond the grave. Pepe’s ghost sadly observes that the ship that is transporting him to Colombia is “sailing towards an eternity” where no ancestors will ever visit him.

Violently pulled out of his habitat and forcibly transplanted to an alien land for amusement, Pepe struggles to make sense of his fate. A “two-legged” villager embarks on a Quixotic…

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