A Cop Movie (Una película de policías)

Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution

Fiction and reality playfully scuffle in an evenly-matched fashion in director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ oddball hybrid documentary, A Cop Movie. It’s a likeable approach to the subject matter, even though any sense of a deeper meaning or purpose remains evasive.

Teresa and Montoya are cops in Mexico City’s municipal police force. In a documentary format, they relate their original aspirations for becoming police officers, along with the particular affliction of being honourable in law enforcement when there’s practically a standard bureaucratic process for taking bribes. But surely this can’t be an actual documentary? The footage is too precise, too graceful – and sure enough – the actors playing Teresa and Montoya (Mónica Del Carmen and Raúl Briones) are introduced, who then in turn describe their experiences training for their roles at the city’s police academy. So it’s fiction? Not quite. The actual Teresa and Montoya are also presented, although given the disinformation that has preceded them, viewers can only take the filmmaker’s word that these are actual real-life figures.

This multifaceted tactic could easily have become a showy distraction, but the director handles his material with a surety that combines the various narrative methods into something coherent that manages to be, at times, fascinating. The only question is why. What sort of meaning can be applied to the work is debatable, although the different threads of this feature certainly add body and balance to each other.

The most intuitive statement depicted in the film (and it’s a mystery as to whether or not this was scripted) addresses the similarities between police officers and actors: cops pretend within reality, whereas actors pretend within fantasy. The role-play element and general duality of these disparate professions is clearly what Ruizpalacios is playing with, even though it doesn’t add up to as much insight as one would have liked. It’s not always successful in its execution, but as an entertainingly abstract portrait of an institution and those who are drawn to it, A Cop Movie ticks enough boxes.

Oliver Johnston

A Cop Movie (Una película de policías) does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Berlin Film Festival 2021 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Berlin Film Festival website here.