{"id":11189,"date":"2021-05-06T06:45:02","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T06:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/?p=11189"},"modified":"2021-05-07T15:54:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T15:54:45","slug":"the-boy-from-medillin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/the-boy-from-medillin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boy from Medill\u00edn"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This is a week in the life of the Colombian \u201cPrince of Reggaeton\u201d on his home turf.\u00a0<\/span>Jose\u00a0Alvaro Osorio Balvin, better known by fans as J. Balvin and Jos\u00e9 to his friends, is an international star. He started singing in the city of Medell\u00edn (pronounced by South Americans as Meh \u2013 Deh \u2013 \u2018SZEEN). He started singing with his family as a youngster, took it to the streets, always dreaming of one day headlining a huge sold out concert back in his home town.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, City of Ghosts, A Private War<\/i>) directed this documentary which covers 8 days leading up to the biggest and the most personal concert of his life. Heineman curates archival footage of Balvin\u2019s childhood and climb to stardom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 forgets about the camera following him around and we get to see how sensitive, insecure, spiritual, and conflicted this music icon really is. He suffers from OCD, anxiety, and depression but does not do drugs or drink alcohol. He\u2019s concerned about the political and social unrest producing protests and violent confrontations that are killing the youths in his country, but doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s his place to take a stand. His fans adore him, but he also gets criticized for not speaking out or taking sides. He feels that his job is to entertain his people with music.\u00a0<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”11197″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”11198″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”11191″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]Jos\u00e9 works hard at trying to become a better person surrounded by a huge entourage of therapists, spiritual leaders and trainers, in addition to his managers, fellow musicians, crew and dancers. As mild-mannered as he is, his appearance is the opposite, loud as can be. He has a style all his own, from baggy neon tie-dyed outfits and hair, plus his body is covered with an array of colorful tattoos.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Heineman structures the documentary day by day leading up to the big concert. During that time, the protests continue protesting the killing of Dylan Cruz by police. Jos\u00e9 watches TV coverage, and on the day of the concert, Scooter Braun, who has handled everyone from Ariane Grande, Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato to Taylor Swift, has a heart-to-heart with Jos\u00e9 about his responsibility. \u201cGreat artists are the ones who speak for others. J. Balvin has a platform, he\u2019s the one who needs to speak.\u201d Will that change his mind?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We see Jos\u00e9\u2019s OCD kick in 2 hours before the concert. He meets with his spiritual adviser and meditates. His dream, 15 years in the making, is about to come true and Heineman gets great shots of the concert with fans rockin\u2019 to the music which went on for 5 hours. Jos\u00e9 didn\u2019t even realize it went on for so long.\u00a0<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”11195″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”11199″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”11200″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]But at one point, he stops the music and decides to finally speak out about the problems that are not being addressed in his country, socially and politically. He tells the crowd \u201cI have the responsibility to leave the country a better place for when I have children.\u201d Ironically, just this week, he excitedly announced that he and his girlfriend \u00a0Valentina, are expecting a son.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Director Heineman shows that Jos\u00e9 is a thinking, feeling human being, and an artist with a platform he\u2019s willing to use \u201cto speak for others.\u201d With all his insecurity, and flaws, we see this boy from Medill\u00edn grow up in just 8 days.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Amazon Prime Video \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a095 minutes \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>R<\/i><\/b>[\/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gbnQdTEaiKw” el_width=”80″ align=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This is a week in the life of the Colombian \u201cPrince of Reggaeton\u201d on his home turf.\u00a0Jose\u00a0Alvaro Osorio Balvin, better known by fans as J. Balvin and Jos\u00e9 to his friends, is an international star. He started singing in the city of Medell\u00edn (pronounced by South Americans as Meh \u2013 Deh \u2013 \u2018SZEEN). He started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11189"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11205,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11189\/revisions\/11205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}