"The film was based on this story that Camilo Restrepo, an artist, told me about one of Escobar's hippos. If a young male hippo fights with the alpha of his bloat and loses, he is expelled from the group; if he's lucky he finds another group. However, since this hippo [Pepe] was moved to Colombia, there were no others like him, [so] he wandered in exile all alone. This was devastating to me - the image of the hippo alone, especially with the knowledge [of what came] after."
"Pepe is structured around a monologue delivered by this solitary creature in Spanish, Afrikaans and Mbukushu, a voice that shifts linguistically along his own journey of exile. At first, he is only able to utter sounds - 'He He He ... Ah ... Ee ... Oiii' - before learning language and gaining a new form of consciousness, questioning his own identity and belonging: 'How do I know these words? How do I know what a word is?'"
"The monologue is the spine of the film. It became a philosophical statement, a political statement that was embedded in every shot that I took. It was very clear to me from the genesis to tell this film through the perspective of this hippo's unique exile, reflecting not just on his struggle but broader themes of displacement and identity in a post-colonial context."
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