Sujo (2024)

A Body Encoded by Violence and Lines of Escape: Sujo

Sujo, written and directed by Atrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, premiered at Sundance in 2024 and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize. Despite receiving 19 awards and 46 nominations, the film attracted attention largely within arthouse circles. This positioned it not among the flashy, large-scale productions of the Cannes–Venice–Berlin trio, but rather among the “quiet yet deep” hidden gems of festivals like Sundance and Tribeca.

Sujo tells the story of a young boy in Mexico struggling to escape a cycle of forced migration, violence, and fate after his father becomes a cartel hitman. The father’s life, too, was altered in childhood when he instinctively stopped a fleeing horse and handed it over to another cartel; it seems that neither geography nor this chain of crime allows for a true escape. At first glance, the film might appear to be a familiar story of a “child growing up around narco violence.” Yet Sujo does far more than the usual dramatic tensions of crime cinema: it treats violence not as a sequence of events, but as a system—almost an ecosystem. For this reason, Sujo is less interested in cartels than in children, less in guns than in gazes, less in fate than in a sense of “place.”

This is not a film that shows violence itself, but one that reveals how violence codes bodies and spaces. In Deleuze’s terms, violence here is not an exceptional event but an arrangement (agencement). The village, the city, the school—even children’s bodies—are all part of this arrangement. That is precisely why the film does not chase grand moments, explosions, or dramatic climaxes; instead, it observes how violence becomes naturalized in everyday life.

Sujo wants to read. But he is born into a becoming that has already been determined. In the village there are almost only mothers and boys. Fathers are absent—either “on duty,” far away, or dead. When the father figure disappears, what remains is not a void but, on the contrary, an overly full space: the inheritance of violence. This inheritance is not a lineage in the conventional sense Deleuze describes, but a compulsory (major) becoming (devenir). Boys are unknowingly channeled in a particular direction.

The mother’s sentence makes this coding explicit:
“I can’t stop you from making mistakes.”

This is not a statement about individual morality; it is a cold observation about how the system works. Because “mistake” already lies within the range of movement the system anticipates.

The Space Changes, the Code Does Not

When Sujo first looks at the city, the camera frames the towering buildings from below. This is not only about the space crushing him; it is about a space already constructed in a way that recognizes him. The children’s fight club under the bridge shows that violence does not belong solely to the countryside—it reorganizes itself in the city as well. As Deleuze says, lines do not break; they reconnect.

“Join us, or you’ll walk around with a scar on your face.”

The city is not presented as a line of flight (ligne de fuite). The film deliberately dismantles this illusion. The first sentence Sujo hears after migrating to the city is less an invitation than a reminder of the code.

The well-dressed urban kids we see at the party are also part of this reconnection. They may not produce violence themselves, but they circulate it. Violence thus becomes a decentered yet pervasive network.

The Ghost Body and Non-Belonging

At school, Sujo’s body almost fades away. He moves through corridors, classrooms, and doorways like a ghost. He exists, but he takes up no space. For Deleuze, such bodies are those the system cannot fully code but cannot entirely exclude either. When Sujo enters the classroom for the second time, he still does not sit down—because he does not belong. Because there is no chair that belongs to him. The ghost image in the text the teacher reads mirrors Sujo’s existence exactly.

In this scene, while the class discusses the Baroque period, the teacher asks Sujo whether he will join the lesson. The Baroque reference gains meaning here. Baroque is the aesthetic of excess and repressed tension. Sujo’s “coming from within the Baroque” implies that he already carries the historical and emotional legacy of this excessive regime of violence.

Small Escapes, Not Grand Salvations

Sujo’s relationship with his teacher is the film’s most significant micro line of escape. It is not a salvation; as Deleuze warns, lines of flight are not always liberating. A river is free, but it has a bed. Still, it marks a crack within the system—the river (becoming) is always branching.

It is precisely here that the question arises:
“Do you believe people can change their lives?”

This question does not promise a grand revolution. But Sujo leaning his head out of the car window, the body breathing for a brief moment, entering a different rhythm—that is something else. The code does not dissolve, but it loosens.

A Blurred Openness

The final corridor scene and the slow zoom show how uncertain the path opening up before Sujo really is. There is a path, but it is not clear. Because for Deleuze, freedom is not a pre-drawn destination, but the capacity to remain in a state of becoming.

For this reason, Sujo is neither hopeless nor hopeful. The film does not deny the fate drawn by violence; but it shows that even within it there can be small deviations, vibrations, and lines of escape.

Sujo does not romanticize hope. It does not aestheticize violence. But it does not present fate as an absolute closure either. What it does is take seriously a child growing up within violence who can still ask questions, who can still search for a place.

Perhaps that is why Sujo is a “hidden gem.” Because it is quiet. And precisely in that quietness, it lets the loudest form of violence be heard.

Author: Nil Birinci