Junior wants straight hair for his school photograph. In the San Sebastián synopsis of Pelo malo, the nine-year-old hopes to resemble a popular singer. His mother, Marta, increasingly rejects him. The image he wants to make is small enough to fit in a school record, but the disagreement over it concerns something larger: who is allowed to decide what his appearance means?
Mariana Rondón wrote and directed the 2013 film, a Venezuela–Peru–Germany coproduction that won that year’s Golden Shell at San Sebastián. This retrospective examines the festival record alongside Rondón’s account of making the film. It does not claim a new viewing or assess particular shots or performances.
The two festival accounts supply different levels of context. San Sebastián describes the school-photo wish and the conflict with Marta. In Frameline’s 2014 program note, Leah LoSchiavo explicitly connects Marta’s treatment of Junior to homophobia and suspicion about his femininity. That is the festival writer’s reading, and it gives the discussion a firmer basis than guessing that Marta is primarily trying to protect him.
There is no need to assign Junior a settled sexual identity to take that conflict seriously. A child’s hairstyle cannot establish one. The pressure described in these materials lies in an adult treating a wish about appearance as something to suppress. The distinction matters because an argument about acceptance can reproduce the mother’s scrutiny if it insists on classifying him first.
Rondón’s March 2014 interview with SensaCine broadens the frame. She describes an intention to explore respect for difference and explains that she wanted viewers to bring their own experiences to the film. She also recalls a specific production decision: a sequence in which children look across neighboring terraces was filmed at dusk repeatedly over a month. She later developed material from that sequence into an installation called Superbloque, placing exhibition visitors in a position analogous to the children’s.
That account gives the question of looking a material dimension. The school photograph concerns being seen; the terrace sequence, as Rondón describes it, concerns children looking outward. One proposed image is subject to a parent’s judgment, while the other lets children occupy the position of observers. This is a connection between the documented premise and the filmmaker’s description, not a claim to have examined the sequence. It suggests why Junior need not be reduced to an object of adult interpretation.
The school photograph offers a precise frame for this question. It asks a child to present a version of himself that others will see. Junior’s wish to participate in making that version deserves attention on its own terms. The festival premise points toward a family struggle over that ordinary freedom, before any critic supplies a larger explanation for who he will become.