In light of the global pandemic, Cinema Tropical is committed to create new and flexible initiatives to provide meaningful, relevant, and inspiring content during these adverse times. We've started a new section recommending a different film per day to stream online. Enjoy!
JUNE 2021
LOS SURES
A film by Diego Echeverría
(USA, 1984, 66 min. In English)
Now streaming on Google Play, Vudu Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube
Diego Echeverría’s film skillfully represents the challenges residents of the Southside faced: poverty, drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources. The complex portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community, showing the strength of their culture, their creativity, and their determination to overcome a desperate situation. Beautifully restored for the 30th anniversary premiere at the New York Film Festival, this documentary is an invaluable piece of New York City history.
UNDERTOW / CONTRACORRIENTE
A film by Javier Fuentes-León
(Peru/Colombia, 2009, 100 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Apple TV
In this unique ghost story set on the Peruvian seaside, a married fisherman struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover within his town’s rigid traditions. Miguel (Cristian Mercado), a handsome young fisherman, and his beautiful bride, Mariela (Tatiana Astengo), are about to welcome their first child. But Miguel harbors a scandalous secret. He’s in love with Santiago (Manolo Cardona), a painter, who is ostracized by the town because he’s gay. After a tragic accident occurs, Miguel must choose between sentencing Santiago to eternal torment or doing right by him and, in turn, revealing their relationship to Mariela—and the entire village.
THE GOLDEN BUG / EL ESCARABAJO DE ORO
A film by Alejo Moguillansky and Fia-Stina Sandlund
(Argentina/Denmark/Sweden, 2014, 102 min. In Spanish and Swedish with English and Spanish subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“Fusing elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s titular short story and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Alejo Moguillansky and Fia-Stina Sandlund’s meta-film follows an Argentine-Swedish co-production in Buenos Aires shooting a biopic of the 19th-century realist author and proto-feminist Victoria Benedictsson. After a hustling actor finds a treasure map detailing the location of ancient gold hidden near a town in the Misiones province named after the 19th-century politician Leandro N. Alem, he successfully persuades the producers to reframe the project as a portrait of the radical Alem (swapping feminist politics for anti-Eurocentric ones) and move the production there—so he can better search for the treasure. Fast-paced and hilariously self-reflexive, the film takes a playful approach to texts and history that is reminiscent of Borges.” —Film at Lincoln Center
THIS IS THE WAY I LIKE IT II / COMO ME DA LA GANA II
(Ignacio Agüero, Chile, 2016, 87 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms
“In 1985, Ignacio Agüero spontaneously visited other Chilean directors on set to ask them about making films under Pinochet’s dictatorship. (The resulting 30-minute short, Como me da la gana, was, unsurprisingly, censored.) Thirty years later, Agüero revisits the concept, but he dramatically complicates it, by both rephrasing his line of questioning and repeatedly interrupting these recorded scenes with clips from his family’s home movies and his own films, interviews with random people, and landscape shots. This complex and entertaining film, which won the International Competition Grand Prix at FIDMarseille, dramatizes an ongoing negotiation between past and present.” —Film at Lincoln Center
EL PRÍNCIPE / THE PRINCE
A film by Sebastián Muñoz
(Chile/Argentina/Belgium, 95 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Google Play, Vudu, Apple TV, and YouTube
San Bernardo, Chile, 1970. One drunken night, Jaime, a lonely and narcissistic 20 year-old, stabs his best friend in what seems to have been a fit of passion. Sentenced to prison, he will meet “The Stallion”, an older and respected man in whom Jaime will find protection, revealing a deep need for tenderness and recognition. Behind bars, Jaime will become “The Prince”, learning about love and loyalty with The Stallion in a close relationship of “black love,” as it’s called in jail, all the while facing the violent power struggle inside the prison.
MAY 2021
OUR TIME / NUESTRO TIEMPO
A film by Carlos Reygadas
(Mexico/France/Germany/Denmark/Sweden, 2018, 173 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime
“Gorgeously shot by Diego García, the latest from Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light, Post Tenebras Lux) is a bold and heartfelt exploration of marriage and intimacy. Starring the director and his wife, Natalia López, as Juan and Esther, the film portrays the life of a couple and their two children on a cattle ranch for fighting bulls. Esther is in charge of running the ranch, while Juan, a world-renowned poet, raises and selects the beasts. Yet when Esther becomes infatuated with an American horse trainer, Juan seems incapable of accepting his own limitations.” —Film at Lincoln Center
DEATH WILL COME AND SHALL HAVE YOUR EYES / VENDRÁ LA MUERTE Y TENDRÁ TUS OJOS
A film by José Luis Torres Leiva
(Chile/Germany/Argentina, 2019, 89 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
“Inspired by a line of poetry by Cesare Pavese, Chilean filmmaker José Luis Torres Leiva’s latest feature is an intensely felt tone poem about mortality and selfless love. Amparo Noguera (A Fantastic Woman) and Julieta Figueroa star as longtime lovers who must face the inevitable when one of them is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Refusing treatment, they retreat to a secluded cabin where they rediscover their love for one another. Torres Leiva’s camera locates tender and wistful beauty in every sequence, and the emotionally raw performances by Noguera and Figueroa conjure the intensity of a Bergman chamber drama.” —Film at Lincoln Center
THE LAST SUMMER OF THE BOYITA / EL ÚLTIMO VERANO DE LA BOYITA
A film by Julia Solomonoff
(Argentina/Spain/France, 2009, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi
A visually-stunning and beautifully-acted Argentine drama, The Last Summer of the Boyita is a tender portrayal of the unexpected revelations that affect two children as they begin the transition to adolescence. ‘La Boyita’, a little bubble-shaped caravan, has always been a place of refuge, games and confessions for Jorgelina and her older sister Luciana. As Luciana enters puberty she begins to seek privacy and independence from her adoring sibling. Rather than tag along after her sister at the beach, Jorgelina decides to spend her summer holidays with her father in the country. There she develops a close friendship with Mario, a local farm boy and jockey. As the children explore the sun-drenched Pampas prairies and each other, they begin to question the similarities they share, and what makes them different.
PARADISE / PARAÍSO
A film by Mariana Chenillo
(Mexico, 2013, 105 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime
“Mariana Chenillo’s sophomore feature displays a warmth and delight in life that couldn't be further from the dark humor of her acclaimed debut, Nora’s Will . This unpretentious romantic comedy about a happy overweight couple from the suburban middle-class neighborhood Satélite (the “paradise” of the title) takes refreshingly unexpected turns, as their move to Mexico City launches them both on a journey of self-discovery.” —Film at Lincoln Center
HISTORY OF FEAR / HISTORIA DEL MIEDO
A film by Benjamín Naishtat
(Argentina/Uruguay/France/Germany/Qatar, 2014, 79 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi
“How strong does a fence need to be, or how loud must an alarm blare, or how brightly should an open field be lit for us to feel safe? The impossibility of a definitive answer to these kinds of questions lies at the heart of Benjamín Naishtat’s unsettling feature debut. Set in an economically destabilized Argentina, the film weaves stories of characters from multiple social strata into an interlocking narrative of paranoia and fear. The isolation of wealth and detachment from neighbors causes insecurities to fester, feeding a ‘security consumption’ culture and all its incumbent paraphernalia. As we begin to recognize and sympathize with the situations depicted, the most troubling realization of all arrives: we are doing it to ourselves.” —New Directors/New Films
THE BLUE ROSE OF NOVALIS / A ROSA AZUL DE NOVALIS
A film by Gustavo Vinagre and Rodrigo Carneiro
(Brazil, 2019, 70 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
“Middle-aged Marcelo has a memory like no other. Monologuing between coffee and hookups, he holds court on a wide variety of topics: his lovers, his HIV status, his chronic headaches, his Catholic grandmother, his homophobic father, and his unusual sexual fantasies. At times, he takes himself for Genghis Khan, poet-philosopher Novalis, or a French courtesan; at others, he talks about Bataille or the Saint whose name he has forgotten. From Gustavo Vinagre (I Remember the Crows; Nova Dubai) and Rodrigo Carneiro, The Blue Rose of Novalis is a documentary-style portrait of a singular man that blurs the line between the “real” and the staged.” —Film at Lincoln Center
EVEN THE WIND IS AFRAID / HASTA EL VIENTO TIENE MIEDO
A film by Carlos Enrique Taboada
(Mexico, 1968, 88 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi
“An all-girl boarding school is the setting for this nerve wracking and terrifying tale remade in 2007. When a student named Claudia is being tormented by reoccurring dreams of a woman’s body hanging in one of the campus towers, she and some of the other students set out to investigate. They soon learn from a staff member a woman had committed suicide 5 years earlier and the school principle seems to be hiding a dark secret concerning the incident. After breaking campus rules, the girls are suspended and made to stay at the school during spring break. The girls now find themselves unable to escape the restless spirit, who is hell-bent on enacting her revenge.”
OLD CATS / GATOS VIEJOS
A film by Sebastián Silva and Pedro Peirano
(Chile, 2010, 90 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Google Play, Amazon Prime, and YouTube
“A hit at the Cannes and New York film festivals in 2010, Old Cats tells the story of Isadora, an octogenarian living comfortably with her husband and two cats, suddenly finds herself fighting a battle on two fronts when the onset of dementia arrives at the same time that her daughter’s attempt to scheme the landlord seems to require that Isadora sign over the lease on her Santiago apartment. Unfolding with black humor and empathy in equal measure, the film emphasizes both the confusion in Isadora’s psyche and the claustrophobia of her domestic landscape.” —The Museum of Modern Art
THE PEARL BUTTON / EL BOTÓN DE NÁCAR
A film by Patricio Guzmán
(Chile/France/Spain, 2014, 88 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Apple TV, Vudu, and OVID
“In his previous film Nostalgia for the Light, Patricio Guzmán overlaid the ongoing search for the regime's victims with a contemplation of the unfathomable mysteries of the cosmos; here, he finds an equally poetic metaphor in another vast universe considerably closer to home. Early in the film, Guzmán notes that, despite the fact that Chile has nearly 4,000 kilometres of coastline, Chileans have very little relationship with the Pacific Ocean. Yet at one time, the nomadic Kaweskar (or "Water People") paddled up and down the length of the immense Chilean coast, living in harmony with the ocean that was their life and their livelihood. Now, in the aftermath of the colonial era, there are very few survivors left to tell the story of this once-thriving people. Through interviews with some of the last remaining Kaweskar, Guzmán chronicles the terrible devastation wrought by this almost complete genocide. Not only denouncing his country's colonial past, Guzmán underlines how brutality is a recurring theme in human history, and wonders if there could ever be a reality where the Water People could exist without interference. Combining profound metaphysical speculation with an affecting, intimate approach, The Pearl Button asserts the importance of memory in a world very quick to forget.” —Toronto International Film Festival
XINGU
A film by Cao Hamburger
(Brazil, 2012, 116 min. In Portuguese and Tupi with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Cao Hamburger’s follow up to his acclaimed 2007 film The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is based on the true story of the Vilas-Bôas brothers’ journey through Xingu and their time among the indigenous people. During their exploration of central Brazil in 1943, Orlando, Claudio and Leonardo Villas-Bôas encounter the Xingu indigenous people. Passionately interested by what they discover about the customs and social systems of the cultures they discover, the brothers make a home among them. When half of a village dies of an influenza epidemic, the brothers devote their lives to protecting the Xingu peoples, preserving Xingu culture and to the creation of a Xingu National Park. By retelling the brothers’ saga, Xingu reveals the struggle to create the Indian park and consequent preservation of an array of different Indian tribes, transforming the Villas-Boas into Brazilian heroes and giving rise to dialogues revolving around chronic problems in Brazil’s history.
THE TENTH MAN / EL REY DE ONCE
A film by Daniel Burman
(Argentina, 2016, 82 min, In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Netflix
“After many years away, Ariel (Alan Sabbagh) is summoned by his distant father to his childhood home in the bustling Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires, known as El Once. Over the course of seven days, during the vibrant holiday of Purim, Ariel seeks to reconnect with his father, who runs a Jewish charity and is regarded as a big macher in the close-knit community, but was frequently absent due to his obligation to fulfill the Jewish quorum of having 10 men present at all funerals. It’s from this theological conundrum that the film derives not just its English title but also its momentum as Ariel grapples with his religious upbringing and the ways it informed his relationship with his father. Director Daniel Burman (All In, TFF 2012) returns to Tribeca with The Tenth Man, continuing to wrestle with notions of identity, home and the intricacies of the father-son relationship. This well-observed comedy is at once a heartfelt valentine to the El Once district, Burman’s own Jewish upbringing and his continuing desire to use cinema as a means of self-exploration.” —Tribeca Film Festival
PACHAMAMA
A fillm by Juan Antín
(France/Luxembourg/Canada, 2019, 79 min. Dubbed in English)
Now streaming on Netflix
“That the Latin American animation industry is becoming a force is a fact. But, more important, Latin American animation has understood—as a movement, as a revolution, as a reality—that there's no need to go face-to-face against mainstream, globally released animation from the big studios. This used to be the industry's temple of doom: trying to imitate his Goliath with fewer tools, less money, and a smaller marketing budget. Pachamama (like Uruguay's Anina and Chile's Historia De Un Oso) understands that identity is the ace under the poncho: the more personality you give your hand-crafted, years-in-the-making movie, the more distinctive it becomes. In Pachamama, the Andes are the perfect setting in which this children's adventure evokes the journey-of-the-hero archetype. And every inch of Juan Antin's movie feels personal, ready to conjure a sense of magic that comes only from that region, its culture, its sounds, and its colors—rearranged into a powerful visual tale. Antin is ready to use his icons as perfect, heartfelt, bigger than life, and powerful toys, while managing to be smart enough to show the Spanish Conquest from another point of view—and still believing, above all, in magic.” —Seattle International Film Festival
FERIADO / HOLIDAY
A film by Diego Araujo
(Ecuador/Argentina, 2013, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles
Now streaming on Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video
“Sixteen-year-old Juan Pablo travels to the remote family hacienda in the Andes, where his uncle, who is involved in a corruption scandal, has taken refuge with his wife and teenage children. It is the carnival holiday of 1999, days before the collapse of Ecuador’s banking system. There, Juan Pablo meets Juano, an enigmatic, self-assured heavy-metal fan from the nearby pueblo, who opens his eyes to an entirely new, liberating world. As his country and family is heading for the abyss, the two boys’ budding friendship develops into a fragile romance, and Juan Pablo is forced to define himself against his chaotic surroundings. Daniele Luppi, who has collaborated with Norah Jones, Jack White, Ennio Morricone, and Gnarls Barkley, composed the score.” —Film at Lincoln Center
HERMANO
A film by Marcel Rasquín
(Venezuela, 2010, 97 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Google Play, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Apple TV, and YouTube
Raised as brothers, intense teammates and competitors on the soccer field – the gregarious, swaggering Julio (Eliu Armas) and the wiry, focused Daniel/“Gato” (Fernando Moreno) have remained virtually inseparable ever since the newborn Daniel was found abandoned in a trash heap in their La Ceniza slum. The opportunity of their lives arrives when a football scout invites them to try out for the city’s top professional team, just as a tragic act of violence threatens to tear them apart and prevent them from achieving their dreams.
INVASIÓN
A film by Hugo Santiago
(Argentina, 1969, 122 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
“The city of Aquilea has fallen under siege by sinister forces. A group of middle-aged men, led by a somewhat older man, resolve to mount clandestine resistance to the invaders and defend their city. Meetings are held, maps are studied, strategies are proposed—but can the invasion really be overcome? Lost for years then rediscovered in 2004, the history of Hugo Santiago’s debut and its magical genre fluidity (is it an avant-garde crime thriller, a political sci-fi?) are the stuff of legend. Co-written by Jorge Luis Borges, who said it “may well be the first example of a new fantastic genre.” —MUBI
APRIL 2021
PANAMERICAN MACHINERY / MAQUINARIA PANAMERICANA
A film by Joaquín del Paso
(Mexico, 2016, 86 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV
“Family businesses are hard to come by these days—and so are manufacturing plants. When the head of Panamerican Machinery dies on a Friday morning, his employees discover how rare their situation is: Don Alejandro had been paying them out of his own pocket, and that any severance or retirement funds are nonexistent. Rather than face the world that’s made them obsolete, the workers decide to lock themselves inside the plant until they reach a decision about how to proceed. Over the course of the weekend, everyone’s behavior grows increasingly strange. Shot on expired film stock, the film deftly moves between socioeconomic commentary and deadpan slapstick.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
306 HOLLYWOOD
A film by Elan and Jonathan Bogarín
(USA, 2018, 82 min. In English)
Stream it for free on POV
The touching and formally audacious film 306 Hollywood directed by Venezuelan-American sister-brother artists and filmmakers Elan and Jonathan Bogarín, is a visually captivating, and magical realist documentary. When Elan and Jonathan lose their beloved grandmother Annette, they face a profound question: When a loved one dies, what do we do with the things they leave behind? Turning documentary on its head, the Bogaríns embark on a magical-realist journey to discover who their grandmother really was, transforming her cluttered New Jersey home of 71 years into a visually exquisite ruin where tchotchkes become artifacts, and the siblings become archaeologists.
TITO AND THE BIRDS / TITO E OS PÁSSAROS
A film by Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar, and André Catoto
(Brazil, 2018. 73 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Pluto TV, Tubi, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Apple TV
Tito is a shy 10-year-old boy who lives with his mother. Suddenly, an unusual epidemic starts to spread, making people sick whenever they get scared. Tito quickly discovers that the cure is somehow related to his missing father’s research on bird song. He embarks on a journey to save the world from the epidemic with his friends. Tito’s search for the antidote becomes a quest for his missing father and for his own identity.
LOS HONGOS
A film by Óscar Ruiz Navia
(Colombia/France/Argentina/Germany, 2014, 103 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
Friends Ras and Calvin criss-cross the Colombian provincial city of Cali—birthplace of filmmaker Oscar Ruiz Navia—by skateboard and BMX looking for money to buy paint, an empty wall to fill, and something greater to be part of. Coming from totally different social backgrounds, but equally alienated from their parents, they share a striking friendship. They recognize kindred spirits in a YouTube film of the Arab Spring, which inspires them to provide a contribution to a collective piece with a group of local street artists. Hongos, ‘mushrooms’, the director calls them: they thrive on rotting matter. Just as in his debut Crab Trap, Ruiz Navia mixes documentary and fiction to capture the diffuse reality of his characters. Painting is never far away: some tableaux breathe the dreamy atmosphere of primitivism, for instance in scenes that portray the almost idyllic bond between Calvin and his grandmother.
THE CLOUD FOREST / BOSQUE DE NIEBLA
A film by Mónica Álvarez Franco
(Mexico, 2016, 91 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Sometimes, ordinary people can create extraordinary positive change. In a small community in the Mexican tropics, sixteen families redesign their lives to create an entirely self-sustaining and independent society, hoping to save their sacred and fog-laden land. The Cloud Forest weaves this community's singular quest with gorgeous scenes of their endangered surroundings.
XXY
A film by Lucía Puenzo
(Argentina, 2007, In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, and Apple TV
For just about everybody, adolescence means having to confront a number of choices and life decisions, but rarely any as monumental as the one facing 15 year-old Alex (Inés Efrón,) who was born an intersex child. As Alex begins to explore her sexuality, her mother invites friends from Buenos Aires to come for a visit at their house on the gorgeous Uruguayan shore, along with their 16-year-old son Álvaro (Martin Piroyanski.) Alex is immediately attracted to the young man, which adds yet another level of complexity to her personal search for identity, and forces both families to face their worst fears.
QUEBRANTO / DISRUPTED
A film by Roberto Fiesco
(México, 2013, 95 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Pantaya
Coral Bonelli was first known as “Pinolito,” a child actor in the 1970s Mexican film industry. The son of a mariachi and an actress, he grew up poor but a natural performer and was steered by his passionate stage mother, Lilia. After working in movies, “Pinolito” performed on the demanding cabaret circuit and then announced that he would become a woman. With her devoted, aging mother by her side, Coral deals with social prejudice and struggles to piece a living together.
THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES / EL SECRETO DE SUS OJOS
A film by Juan José Campanella
(Argentina/Spain, 2009, 129 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, and Apple TV
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, the Argentine film by director Juan José Campanella tells the story of Benjamin (played by Ricardo Darin), a recently retired criminal court investigator who decides to write a novel based on a twenty-five year old unresolved rape and murder case, which still haunts him. Sharing his plans with Irene (Soledad Villamil), the beautiful judge and former colleague he has secretly been in love with for years, Benjamin’s initial involvement with the case is shown through flashbacks, as he sets out to identify the murderer. But Benjamin’s search for the truth will put him at the center of a judicial nightmare, as the mystery of the heinous crime continues to unfold in the present, testing the limits of a man seeking justice and personal fulfillment at last.
ALIAS MARÍA
A film by José Luis Rugeles
(Colombia/Argentina/France, 2015, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Apple TV
An official selection of the Cannes Film Festival and Colombia's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 89th Academy Awards, Alias María is the sophomore work from director Jose Luis Rugeles (García), which unflinchingly shines a light on Colombia's armed conflict, through the eyes of a young, pregnant soldier. The films follows Maria, a 13-year-old guerilla soldier, is given the mission to bring a commander’s newborn baby to safety in a neighboring town. But nobody knows the secret that she is pregnant with her own baby. Despite the prohibitions against it, Maria decides to keep the baby and is forced to run away.
THE POPE’S TOILET / EL BAÑO DEL PAPA
A film by Cesar Charlone and Enrique Fernández
(Uruguay/France/Brazil, 2007, 97 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi and Vimeo on Demand
It's 1988, and Melo, an Uruguayan town on the Brazilian border, awaits the visit of Pope John Paul II. 50,000 people are expected to attend, and the most humble locals believe that selling food and drink to the multitude will just about make them rich. Petty smuggler Beto thinks he has the best idea of all--he decides he will build a WC in front of his house and charge for its use. His efforts bring about unexpected consequences, and the final results will surprise everyone.
EL AMPARO
A film by Rober Calzadilla
(Colombia/Venezuela, 2016, 99 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, and Apple TV
“On October 1988, 14 men were murdered by the Venezuelan military in El Amparo, a village near the Arauca River. The victims were fishermen, but the military claimed they were guerilla fighters. This painful atrocity and its tumultuous aftermath are the subject of Rober Calzadilla’s haunting first feature. Based on a play by Calzadilla and scriptwriter Karin Valecillos, El Amparo invests much time in its characters, their relationships and way of life, while, in a masterstroke of directorial judiciousness, the massacre itself is elided, its horrors left to our imagination. This is a profound meditation on how communities contend with outrage and grief, and the troubling question of who gets to control historical truth.” —Human Rights Watch Film Festival
THE CRIME OF FATHER AMARO / EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO
A film by Carlos Carrera
(Mexico, 2002, 103 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Pluto TV, Tubi, Sling TV, Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, and Apple TV
“A recently ordained priest named Amaro arrives in the town of Los Reyes to help the local spiritual shepherd – aging Father Benito. He is idealistic and determined to serve God and his new parishioners, but he soon discovers that real life is different from how he had conceived it. He finds out that Benito has a lover, the pub owner Sanjuanera, and that he’s accepting contributions to build a hospital from a local drug boss who is thereby laundering money. Amaro too betrays his mission by falling in love with Sanjuanera’s young and devout daughter Amelia. The girl’s jealous fiancé Rubén decides to expose the corrupt priests publicly, but the bishop hushes up the threatened scandal with Amaro’s help: the latter is now more than happy to ignore the truth if it will help his ambitions. Even his passionate relationship with the now pregnant and unhappy Amelia won’t stand in the way of his career.... This modern adaptation of the classic novel by Eça de Queirós was Mexico’s most popular film of 2002 and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.” —Karlovy Vary Film Festival
ACNÉ
A film by Federico Veiroj
(Uruguay/Argentina/Spain/Mexico, 2008, 87 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling TV, Amazon Prime, and Pantaya
“Acné centers on thirteen-year-old Rafael on the eve of his bar mitzvah in contemporary Montevideo. The American coming-of-age film often centers on tragicomic attempts to lose one’s virginity, but for Rafael, that is easily accomplished by a trip to the brothel. What he finds more complicated is making his peace with a highly imperfect, even corrupt, family, and with an invisible but seemingly undeniable set of constricting expectations about gender and relations between the sexes. That Acne, Veiroj’s feature debut, is also his most conventional film is not so surprising, but it does hint at the limitations of its genre. Where Hollywood places its emphasis on the integration of the adolescent into society, Veiroj suggests a more modern question (“Is it the individual who should change, or society?”) with the lightest of humor and the gentlest of touches.” —Harvard Film Archive
THE JOURNEY OF MONALISA / EL VIAJE DE MONALISA
A film by Nicole Costa
(USA/Chile, 2019, 93 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)
Now streaming on OVID.tv
“Chilean-born performer and writer Iván Monalisa fully embraces his dual selves: scrappy, masculine Iván as well as diva, transvestite sex-worker Monalisa. A reunion with filmmaker Nicole Costa, Iván’s former college classmate, provides the opportunity for a journey through this undocumented transgender immigrant’s daily life of sex, drugs and poetry—as well as a quest for US legalization. Pragmatic and humorous, Iván Monalisa navigates the gritty underbelly of New York City with charisma and charm. “ —DOC NYC
WHILE WE ARE HERE / ENQUANTO ESTAMOS AQUI
A film by Clarissa Campolina and Luiz Pretti
(Brazil, 2019, 75 min. In Portuguese, English, French, and Arabic with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms, True Story and GuideDoc
“Charting a relationship from its origins through its aftermath, While We Are Here follows the lives of Lamis, a Lebanese woman, and a Brazilian man named Wilson, who one day meet while living in New York. In alternating voiceover, the pair reflect on their impressions of the city, their courtship, and their eventual separation, as vivid images of urban and rural life trace Lamis and Wilson’s individual paths from New York to Berlin and Brazil, respectively. Equal parts diary film, travelogue, and epistolary drama, this discreetly expanding fiction from partners Clarissa Campolina and Luiz Pretti captures the beauty and fragility of love and its memory.” —Film at Lincoln Center
SOLDIER / SOLDADO
A film by Manuel Abramovich
(Argentina, 2017, 72 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand and GuideDoc
“Your beats should convoke History. You should evoke scenes from thousand combats. Stimulate the moral.’ Drums beat out a march in steady rhythm. Under their officers' strict gaze, soldiers assemble in the barrack yard. The Argentinian flag is raised; the sound of trumpets accompanying it on its slow ascent up the mast. With clinical precision, Manuel Abramovich portrays a young recruit on his path through military training, his transformation from youth to young adult marked by doubt and conflict. In empathetic distance to its protagonist, the film reveals the tension between the rigidly defined system of the military academy and the vulnerability of the young man. Coming of age in a total institution.” —Berlin Film Festival
AFTER LUCÍA / DESPUÉS DE LUCÍA
(Michel Franco, Mexico, 2012, 102 min. In Spanish with English subtitles. New York Premiere)
“Six months after the death of his wife in a car accident, Roberto and his teenage daughter Alejandra set off from Puerto Vallarta for a fresh start in Mexico City. Alejandra finds her way more easily than Roberto but very soon, she arouses the baser instincts in her classmates. Ashamed and unable to tell her father about the escalating bullying at school, Alejandra’s silence ultimately takes a dreadful toll. An unflinching reflection of upper middle class youth in Mexico by one of the country’s most promising filmmakers, the film has been a box office success since its release. After Lucía’s intense and shocking exploration of the violent effects of bullying are essential viewing for all students. The film earned the prestigious Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was the Mexican submission for the 2013 Best Foreign-Language Academy Award.” —Pragda
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime
UNDER CONSTRUCTION (OR THE PLACE I WAS BORN NO LONGER EXISTS) / AQUÍ SE CONSTRUYE (O YA NO EXISTE EL LUGAR DONDE NACÍ)
A film by Ignacio Agüero
(Chile, 2000, 77 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms
In the Providencia barrio of Santiago, Chile, a neighbor lives through the demolition of the house next door and the construction of a building in the same place, over a two-year period. Under Construction is about the passing of time and the transformation of a space where minor and major events occur: a death and a birth; neighborhoods disappearing; buildings being demolished and built; winters and springs passing. In the end, when the building is finished, the protagonist looks up at his new neighbors, while they look down at him from their balcony: evidence of a space (and a past) that they now control.
LA SALADA
A film by Juan Martín Hsu
(Argentina, 2014, 88 min. In Korean, Mandarin, Quechua, and Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand
“La Salada depicts the experience of new immigrants in Argentina told through three stories that take place in La Salada—the largest informal market in Argentina. A group of characters from different ethnic origins struggle against loneliness and uprooting. For three days each week, from the afternoon to the early hours of the morning, thousands of people flock to the outskirts of Buenos Aires to buy discounted wares at "La Salada," South America's largest informal market. Begun by Bolivian immigrants in 1991, and fuelled by Argentina's financial crisis, the market has become an entire economy unto itself. In his poignant debut, La Salada, director Juan Martin Hsu presents this unique and vibrant locale from the vantage points of new immigrants to Argentina. La Salada depicts its characters' experience as one of heart-rending limbo: they're not at home in Argentina, yet they no longer belong to the countries they were born in. It's a middle ground that the marketplace seems to embody, and in exploring its myriad stalls and spaces, Martin Hsu's gorgeous film captures the singular spirit of a fascinating reality.” —Toronto International Film Festival
MARCH 2021
THE AMAZING CATFISH / LOS INSÓLITOS PECES GATO
A film by Claudia Sainte-Luce
(Mexico/France, 2013, 89 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play
“In director Claudia Sainte-Luce’s debut feature The Amazing Catfish, the worlds of a rambunctious matriarchy and a withdrawn misfit collide and combine in a moving reflection of living and dying with courage. When solitary protagonist Claudia (Ximena Ayala) winds up in the hospital with appendicitis, she makes an unexpected connection with a fellow patient, single mother Martha (Lisa Owen). Martha’s four children, who range in age from pre-adolescent to mostly grown, create a rowdy atmosphere in and out of the hospital, starkly contrasting with Claudia’s muted existence. But as their lives become increasingly more entwined, each breaching the defenses of the other, Claudia becomes a quietly integral part of their rough-and-tumble household: part confidante, part caretaker, part cautious changeling. At the core of the film is Martha’s struggle to live each day with intention, even as her illness diminishes her physically, and this infuses her home with ferocious passion. Confidently filmed by Claire Denis’ long-time cinematographer, Agnès Godard, this spare but colorful film—set in Guadalajara and based loosely on true events from Saint-Luce’s own life—embraces the inclination to define a family as the people you choose and are chosen by, not necessarily the ones you’re born to.” —San Francisco International Film Festival
THE CLUB / EL CLUB
A film by Pablo Larraín
(Chile, 2015, 98 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube Google Play, Vudu, iTunes, and Apple TV
“Pablo Larraín (director of No and Post Mortem) continues to explore the long shadows of Chile’s recent past with this quietly scathing film about the Catholic Church’s concealment of clerical misconduct. Four aging former priests peacefully live out their days together in a dumpy seaside town, focused on training their racing greyhound rather than doing penance for their assorted crimes. Their idyll is shattered when a fifth priest arrives and, confronted by one of his victims, commits suicide. A young priest begins an investigation into the retirees’ pasts, setting off a series of events that call into question faith, piety, and complicity. Winner of the Silver Bear at the 2015 Berlinale and Chile’s Oscar submission.” —Film at Lincoln Center
LEMEBEL
A film by Joanna Reposi Garibaldi
(Chile, 2019, Chile/Colombia, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on OVID.tv and Vimeo on Demand
“A pioneering queer writer and visual artist who shook up conservative Chilean society during Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1980s, Pedro Lemebel worked on a film about his own work during the last eight years of his life. Unfortunately, he was never able to complete the film before his death from cancer in 2015. With unprecedented access and footage from that unfinished project, Joanna Reposi Garibaldi’s documentary details the risk-taking, confrontational performance art that defined this extraordinary figure, whose work advocated for human rights, and which speaks to the recent political upheaval in Chile.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
THE MAGIC GLOVES / LOS GUANTES MÁGICOS
A film by Martín Retjman
(Argentina, 2003, 90 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
“Rejtman’s comic masterpiece follows the crisscrossed fortunes of, among others, a cab driver, a rock musician, a flight attendant, and a dog walker with an alarming penchant for over-the-counter medication. The Magic Gloves came out in the wake of Argentina’s devastating financial crisis, and it’s a movie fixated on rotten investments, thin wages, and bad deals. It’s also, despite all that, one of Rejtman’s funniest films, peppered with colorful secondary characters, suffused with a terse, prickly sympathy for its heroes, and alive to the mystery and charm of the modern urban world.” —Film at Lincoln Center
MOSQUITA Y MARI
A film by Aurora Guerrero
(USA, 2012, 86min, in English)
Now streaming on Tubi, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and iTunes
An earnest coming of age story about the friendship between two 15-year-old Latinas growing up in the predominantly Mexican neighborhood of Huntington Park, Los Angeles, Mosquita y Mari, explores the growing bond between college-bound Yolanda (Finessa Pineda), and Mari (Venecia Troncoso), a street-savvy, undocumented teen who moves in across the street. Despite their contrasting realities, the girls are brought together after an incident thrusts them into a delicate dance of adolescent self-discovery and sexual awakening. Capturing intersecting issues of gender, sexuality, race, class, and migration, Mosquita y Mari has been recognized internationally for its exploration of urban queer Latina identities. A semi-autobiographical movie written and directed by Aurora Guerrero, Mosquita y Mari premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
MELAZA
A film by Carlos Lechuga
(Cuba, 2012, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video
“In the Cuban village of Melaza, named after the once flourishing sugarcane fields, time stands still. Even when all kinds of things happen, nothing ever changes. The State pretends to take care of everything, but it shuts the rum factory and makes swimming lessons impossible. There's no use complaining, think the inhabitants, that’s just how it is. Melaza is the heartwarming love story of Aldo and Monica, a photogenic couple who live in a much too small cottage with their fat daughter and grumpy grandma. They try very hard to earn some extra money. Their attempts finally get the couple into deeper and deeper trouble. But together, the lovers manage to pull through it. New talent Carlos Lechuga tells his critical story with humor and sparse dialogue, taking us on a journey to the beauties of rural Cuba. Far from the hotels and from Havana, but with a reality familiar to everyone who has ever been to Cuba - or faced a shortage of cash.” —International Film Festival Rotterdam
STILL BURN / ALGO QUEMA
A film by Mauricio Alfredo Ovando
(Bolivia, 2018, 77 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand
Alfredo Ovando Candia was a military general who served as co-president of Bolivia from 1965–66 (and again from 1969–70) after overthrowing President Víctor Paz Estenssoro. His political and military service connect him to the largest massacre of workers in the country’s history, as well as the military campaign in which Che Guevara was found and killed. Incorporating archival footage from Ovando’s de facto administration, home movies, and interviews with relatives, filmmaker-grandson Mauricio Alfredo Ovando’s debut feature studies the many profiles of his grandfather to juxtapose his family’s fond memories with the harsh official history. Winner of the Best Director and FIPRESCI awards at the 2018 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Still Burn is a courageous, perceptive documentary about how collective and personal memories are created from—and ultimately shape—a complicated legacy.
“There is arguably no single figure as important to the story of independence and democracy in the Americas as Simón Bolívar (1783-1830). The Venezuelan military and political leader played a critical role in ushering Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Peru, and Ecuador toward autonomy in the wake of Spanish domination. History has long cemented Bolívar's status as a visionary, but even during his lifetime he was commonly known by his people as "The Liberator." Libertador is the title of Alberto Arvelo's enthralling Bolívar biopic, which serves as both an epic of struggle and a cinematic history lesson. Bolívar is vividly embodied by Édgar Ramírez as a fierce, virile warrior with a heart. The Venezuelan actor already proved more than capable of playing a complex historical figure in Olivier Assayas's Carlos, and Libertador confirms his status as a rising international star. That it does so by having Ramírez play his home country's national hero makes this career triumph that much richer.” —Toronto International Film Festival
THE LIBERATOR / EL LIBERTADOR
A film by Alberto Arvelo
(Venezuela/Spain, 2014, 114 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Apple TV
WITH MY HEART IN YAMBO / CON MI CORAZÓN EN YAMBO
A film by María Fernanda Restrepo
(Ecuador, 2011, 135 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on iTunes and Amazon Prime
“‘You know when the struggles begin, but not when they end.’ When filmmaker Fernanda Restrepo Arizmendi's father said this to her, he was speaking from experience. Every Wednesday, he goes to protest on the square of Ecuador's Presidential Palace. Until her death in a car accident, Fernanda's mother wrote letter after letter to the president. In 1988, when Fernanda was just 10 years, old, her brothers Santiago (17) and Andrés (14) mysteriously disappeared. A year later, the family discovered that the police had kidnapped, severely beaten, and then murdered the two boys for no apparent reason at all. The bodies were dumped in the Yambo River, never to be found again. With My Heart in Yambo is Fernanda's heartrending contribution to the processing of a devastating family trauma. In a poetic, contemplative voice-over, she makes a brave attempt to arrange the events in an appropriate manner. In the process, the film becomes a self-investigation: how did her brothers' death determine her own life? But like her parents, the filmmaker is also looking for rehabilitation. For as long as the Ecuadorean authorities shamelessly continue to cover up the case, it will be difficult to lead a normal life - if not altogether impossible.” —International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)
THE RIVER / EL RÍO
A film Juan Pablo Richter
(Bolivia/Ecuador, 2018, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV, Amazon Prime
“Flowing with intrigue, beauty and brutality, Bolivian writer-director Juan Pablo Richter’s feature debut transports us to a seemingly placid rural locale where a teenage boy gets pulled into dangerous waters. Sebastián leaves a fraught situation in the city to live with his long-estranged father Raphael, who resides on a ranch adjacent to a jungle-lined river. Sebastián is a scrapper, and Raphael seeks to channel those unruly energies through activities like hunting. But as life in this pastoral setting begins to reveal its true nature, Sebastián finds himself struggling against a current of corruption, humiliation and violence in which women are currency. Eschewing stylistic pyrotechnics in favor of eerily mounting tensions, Richter proves himself a keen observer of toxic masculine codes and the bracing velocity with which innocence can suddenly be washed away.” —Miami Film Festival
SUSPENSION / SUSPENSIÓN
A film by Simón Uribe Martínez
(Colombia, 2020, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on OVID.tv
Deep in the misty jungle of southern Colombia, between treacherously steep mountain slopes, stands an unfinished concrete bridge as an absurd symbol of human folly. Once intended as a link in the new “bypass” that was supposed to replace the perilous old road from Pasto to Mocoa, it’s now a bizarre attraction for day trippers taking selfies and kids doing motorcycle stunts. In 1991 a devastating landslide hit the old road, known as the “springboard of death”, killing dozens of people. An engineer in his jeep describes the construction of this lethal road back in the 1940s as sheer madness. After all, Catholic missionaries had already found a better route decades earlier. Local residents view the futuristic design of the new bridge under construction on their laptops. Workers pour concrete in the midst of mud and fast-flowing waters, unaware of the impending doom. It’s as if there’s a conspiracy between nature, politicians and foolish arrogance.
ENTRANCED EARTH / TERRA EM TRANSE
A film by Glauber Rocha
(Brazil, 1967, 111 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
“A pivotal film from one of the key figures of Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement, Entranced Earth is an urgent and poetic account of political corruption, the systems that shape it, and the challenges of active citizenship in times of political upheaval. Made three years after the right-wing coup d’etat in Brazil, the film is set in the fictional country of El Dorado, in which a young intellectual attempts to chart a political path. First joining the extreme right, and then a party of the left, he ultimately finds dispiriting power dynamics in each. Told through a mesmeric style, and mixing surrealist and realist aesthetics, Entranced Earth is a resonant work of political cinema that pushes its audience to examine its own role in civil society.”
LA SIRGA
A film by William Vega
(Colombia/France/Mexico, 2012, 89 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Apple TV+, and FilmMovement Plus
“Alicia is a vulnerable 19-year-old who has lost her family in a conflict that has destroyed her village. She tracks down the only relative she knows to be alive, her reclusive, middle-aged uncle Oscar, whose home is a remote, dilapidated lakeside inn in the High Andes. Oscar reluctantly takes in his niece on condition that she helps with renovating the hostel and making it attractive to the tourists who never visit. Her sleepwalking episodes and the unwanted attention she gets from local men make Alicia’s life all the more fraught, and the unexpected arrival of Oscar’s furtive, long-absent son Fredy only adds to the tension. William Vega’s debut feature is an intense, elliptical drama that develops in a wildly evocative setting, a daring and rewarding film that is as nuanced as it is enthralling.” —London BFI Film Festival
UNDERDOGS / METEGOL
A film by Juan José Campanella
(Argentina, 2013, 107 min. In English)
Now streaming on Netflix, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon Prime
Directed by Academy Award-winner Juan José Campanella, Underdogs is an animated comedy with a little bit of magic and a whole lot of heart. Jake is a shy, but talented, foosball player. His passion for the game is rivaled only by his love for free-spirited Laura. With her encouragement, he beats the town bully, Ace, in a foosball game. But everything changes when Ace becomes the world's best soccer player and returns years later to turn their village into a new sports stadium. He starts to destroy everything and kidnaps Laura in the process. Just when it looks like all hope is lost, the toy figures from Jake's foosball table come to life. He and the players embark on a wild adventure to save Laura and reclaim their village. With the help of his team, his town, and a little bit of magic, Jake will try to save the day.
LA SIRGA
A film by William Vega
(Colombia/France/Mexico, 2012, 89 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Apple TV+, and FilmMovement Plus
“Alicia is a vulnerable 19-year-old who has lost her family in a conflict that has destroyed her village. She tracks down the only relative she knows to be alive, her reclusive, middle-aged uncle Oscar, whose home is a remote, dilapidated lakeside inn in the High Andes. Oscar reluctantly takes in his niece on condition that she helps with renovating the hostel and making it attractive to the tourists who never visit. Her sleepwalking episodes and the unwanted attention she gets from local men make Alicia’s life all the more fraught, and the unexpected arrival of Oscar’s furtive, long-absent son Fredy only adds to the tension. William Vega’s debut feature is an intense, elliptical drama that develops in a wildly evocative setting, a daring and rewarding film that is as nuanced as it is enthralling.” —London BFI Film Festival
ARAYA
A film by Margor Benaceraf
(Venezuela, 1959, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand
The peninsula of Araya in northeastern Venezuela, is one of the most arid places on earth. For five hundred years, since its discovery by the Spanish, the region’s salt has been exploited manually. A 17th-century fortress built to protect against pirate raids stands as a reminder of the days when salt was worth almost as much as gold and great fortunes were made. Benacerraf captures the life of the salineros and their back-breaking work in breathtaking images. The Peredas family works at night in the salt marshes, the Ortiz are fishermen and the Salaz collect salt. The three stories underline the harsh life of this region — all of which vanished with the arrival of industrial exploitation. Araya was originally compared to Flaherty’s Man of Aran, Visconti’s La Terra Trema (1947) and Rossellini’s India (1957). Margot Benacerraf has described the film as “a cinematic narration based on script writing rather than a spontaneous action, a feature documentary, the opposite of Italian neorealism.” A film of such lasting beauty that Jean Renoir told Benacerraf after seeing the film: “Above all … don’t cut a single image!”
LIGHTNING FALLS BEHIND / ATRÁS HAY RELÁMPAGOS
A film by Julio Hernández Cordón
(Costa Rica/Mexico, 2017, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Pluto TV and Tubi
“The sixth film by Mexican-Guatemalan filmmaker Julio Hernández Cordón (I Promise You Anarchy), and his first shot in Costa Rica, is a rakish slacker movie that follows rebellious girls Sole (Adriana Alvarez) and Ana (Natalia Arias). While biking around San José, and planning to create a vintage cab company, they find something inside the trunk of a car that they’d rather immediately forget. Lightning Falls Behind, featuring playful and fluid camerawork, is a prime example of the kind of recent Central American cinema that has delighted viewers on the international film circuit.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
CINEMA, ASPIRINS AND VULTURES / CINEMA, ASPIRINAS E URUBUS
A film by Marcelo Gomes
(Brazil, 2005, 99 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
A dry, arid, barren landscape. A small village deep inside north-eastern Brazil. Vultures circle above. It is the year 1942 and aspirin is as new to the local inhabitants as the film screenings the young German Johann uses to sell the product. As Johann drives from one village to another, the war in Europe seems far away. On the road he gives a lift to the local villager Ranulpho. You could hardly find two people more different. But Ranulpho soon becomes Johann’s assistant and the story of an unusual friendship starts to unfold. However, this exotic road movie with its convincing atmosphere soon becomes a powerful drama: Brazil enters the war with Germany and Johann suddenly finds himself the enemy.
ALANIS
A film by Anahí Berneri
(Argentina, 2017, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, YouTube, Google Play
“Winner of the Best Director and Best Actress awards at the San Sebastian Film Festival, the fifth feature by Argentinian filmmaker Anahí Berneri is a poignant and compelling drama that portrays three days in the life of a young Buenos Aires mother and sex worker struggling to survive. Featuring a potent performance by Sofía Gala Castiglione in the title role (alongside her real-life son Dante), the film offers an unsentimental and non-moralizing take on a self-determined woman trying to live her unapologetic life while facing contradictory prostitution laws that are intended to protect her but often do the opposite.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT / MEMORIAS DEL SUBDESARROLLO
A film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
(Cuba, 1968, 97 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Apple TV+ and The Criterion Channel
“This film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is the most renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bourgeois intellectual Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) passes his days wandering Havana in idle reflection, his amorous entanglements and political ambivalence gradually giving way to a mounting sense of alienation. With this adaptation of an innovative novel by Edmundo Desnoes, Gutiérrez Alea developed a cinematic style as radical as the times he was chronicling, creating a collage of vivid impressions through the use of experimental editing techniques, archival material, and spontaneously shot street scenes. Intimate and densely layered, Memories of Underdevelopment provides an indictment of its protagonist’s disengagement and an extraordinary glimpse of life in postrevolutionary Cuba.” —The Criterion Collection
CRISTO REY
A film by Leticia Tonos
(Dominican Republic, 2013, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“More than one million Haitians live next door to their homeland in the Dominican Republic. They are the country's biggest minority, and face widespread discrimination despite the fact that as many as half were born there. Taking up the story of these migrants, many of them undocumented, Cristo Rey finds focus in Janvier, a kind-hearted teenager of mixed Haitian/ Dominican descent. We meet Janvier in the chaotic streets of Cristo Rey, a crime-ridden barrio of Santo Domingo where the cops play by their own rules and turn a blind eye to the activities of those who pay them off. Proud of his Haitian heritage, Janvier shuns his lighter-skinned father and rebellious half-brother as he tries to carve out an honest existence. But he longs for a better life, free from police harassment, and enough money to reunite with his mother back in Haiti. When he gets the chance to make some extra cash playing bodyguard to Jocelyn, the beautiful younger sister of the local drug kingpin, Janvier finds it hard to refuse. But as the two develop an intense connection, Janvier is forced to make a difficult choice. Director Leticia Tonos Paniagua brings together a talented cast of newcomers for this unique, Caribbean retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Her leads are attractive and charismatic, but more importantly they feel genuinely plucked from the neighborhood. With its percussive opening music, its sense of place and its depiction of a dangerous and urgent romance, Paniagua gives Cristo Rey the pulse of a hot city.” —Toronto International Film Festival
ANINA
A film by Alfredo Soderguit
(Uruguay/Colombia, 2013, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime
“The palindromically named Anina Yatay Salas lives in Montevideo and attends elementary school, where her classmates make fun of her because of her name. She has a best friend, but also a girl with whom she doesn’t get along at all: Yisel. One day she fights with Yisel, and so her problems begin: the school principal gives them both an intriguing punishment, a suspended detention. Anina spends her days in that suspension, a period of time with particular tension and questions, and her voiceover guides us as she comments on life with her nice parents, meals, the eyes of gossipy neighbors, homework, and childhood feelings, joys, and fears. Featuring particularly beautiful animation that perfectly integrates the movement of the characters with background settings that are worthy of illustrated children’s books (AninA is based on the 2003 book Anina Yatay Salas), this moving animated film has the homemade flavor of a warm and happy afternoon tea on a rainy day. “ —Film at Lincoln Center
REY
A film by Niles Atallah
(Chile/France/Netherlands/Germany/Italy/Qatar, 2017, 90 min. In Spanish and Mapuche with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand
“Recipient of the Special Jury Prize at Rotterdam, Rey tells the curious story of Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, a French lawyer who attempted to create an independent state for the indigenous peoples of Araucanía (part of present-day Chile) and Patagonia (Argentina) in 1860 and claimed he was its king. Honoring the ambiguous nature of Tounens’s life—it’s unclear if he was a spy, a huckster, an above-average colonial exploiter, or actually summoned by a Mapuche deity—Rey uses a variety of formal techniques and visual styles, including papier-mâché masks, battered 16mm stock, and educational film aesthetics.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
FEBRUARY 2021
LIGHT YEARS / AÑOS LUZ
A film by Manuel Abramovich
(Argentina/Brazil/Spain, 2018, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Ovid.tv, Amazon Prime and Tubi
“Neither passive nor overly styled, Manuel Abramovich’s latest documentary observes Martel during the making of her fourth feature, Zama. In the spirit of his previous nonfiction features (Soldier and Solar), the Argentine cinematographer-turned-director demonstrates his clever ability to convey the playful, mysterious, frustrated, and delirious stages of filmmaking alongside his complex artistic collaboration with his subject. Far more than a behind-the-scenes film, Light Years is as much an intimate portrait of an artist at work as it is an attempt to evoke the oblique, transcendental tendencies that pervade Martel’s films.” —Film at Lincoln Center
HUNTING SEASON / TEMPORADA DE CAZA
A film by Natalia Garagiola
(Argentina/USA/France/Germany/Qatar, 2017, 105 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
Winner of the Venice Critics' Week Prize, the debut feature by Natalia Garagiola is a father-son drama starring Lautaro Bettoni, German Palacios, and Rita Pauls, that centers on Nahuel, who is finishing high-school in Buenos Aires and has recently lost his mother. No one from his closest environment can take charge of him so he is put under his father’s custody for three months until he turns 18. Nahuel has an innate violent impulse that he has been gradually learning to control. His father Ernesto is a tough and silent hunter in San Martin de los Andes, a small village near the mountains in southern Argentina, where he has settled with his new family. They barely remember each other after 10 years of distance. As the journey begins, the wilderness becomes Nahuel’s new environment. There is no “Mother Nature” to welcome him with open arms. Instead, he crashes into a cruel and hostile scenery where the survival of the fittest rules.
NICOTINA
A film by Hugo Rodríguez
(Mexico, 2003, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Vudu, Amazon Prime
“Lolo, a hacker with no sex appeal who spies on his neighbor Andrea with webcams and manipulates her life, joins and the criminals Tomson and El Nene, in a search for the 20 diamonds that the suspicious Russian Sbóvoda must give to El Nene in exchange for a CD made by Lolo with the secret passwords of a Swiss bank. The unexpected arrival of Andrea’s love interest who comes from Spain to take her away, along with the inability of Lolo to live outside his virtual world, further complicate matters. Lolo mistakes the CD for another and the nighttime meeting with the Russian ends in a shoot-out from which El Nene and Sbóvoda —who flees with the diamonds— escape with injuries. While Lolo gets away and tries to deal with the disaster and regain control over Andrea’s life, the criminals and Sbóvoda take refuge in a pharmacy and a barber shop in the neighborhood. In less than two hours, fate and the diamonds change the lives of everyone.” —Morelia Film Festival
Central Airport THF / ZENTRALFLUGHAFEN THF
A film by Karim Aïnouz
(Germany/France/Brazil, 2018, 100 min. In English, Arabic, German, Russian)
Streaming for free through Tuesday, March 2 as part of the German Documentary Showcase
“This impeccably photographed documentary chronicles a year in the lives of asylum seekers in Berlin’s historic Tempelhof, a former airport expanded by the Nazi government as a symbol of Hitler’s Germania. The irony of the situation is not lost on Aïnouz or his subjects. Ibrahim, an 18-year-old from Syria, is studying German and waiting for his status to change from the uncertain ‘protected’ category to the more secure ‘refugee.’ Qutaiba, a 35-year-old physiotherapist from Iraq who was forced to flee before completing medical school, is volunteering at the clinic as a translator. The airport has become a city within a city, with box homes, spaces for the provision of healthcare, a barbershop, table tennis, and even a modest Christmas market. The men and women who work in the shelter try to accord some dignity to the thousands of people in limbo there. Central Airport THF is a moving portrait of displaced people in transition, and its focus on the positive implies that Germany might be one of the few European countries generous enough to welcome them to a new home.” —Anthology Film Archives
“Sex worker Dana (Noëlle Schönwald), drawn into prostitution after becoming addicted to pharmaceutical drugs, is exploited by her boss and caught in a cycle of paying off debts to him and caring for her ill daughter. She has only the smallest hint of happiness with one client. This tough and non-judgemental film from writer-director Gabriela Calvache is striking and shrewd. A tense and violent climax pulls various strands together, as Dana plans her escape from her abusive gang boss.” —Edinburgh Film Festiv val
Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Apple TV+
INVASION / INVASIÓN
A film by Abner Benaim
(Panama/Argentina, 2014, 93 mins. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video
“Using reenactments and interviews, filmmaker Abner Benaim documents the collective memory—as well as the selective amnesia—of his fellow Panamanians around the 1989 U.S. invasion to overthrow General Manuel Noriega. The lives of the people of the Central American nation were deeply shaken by the American military incursion. Invasion—Panama’s first film to be submitted for the Best Foreign Language Oscar—is a witty and engaging documentary that talks about the perils of sovereignty, democracy, and endangered virtues of today’s ultra-capitalist world. Winner of the Cinema Tropical for Best Documentary, the film not only explores the mechanisms in which memory is turned into history, but holds a mirror to the present to show how the recent past shapes Panama today.” —Museum of the Moving Image
GENTE DE BIEN
A film by Franco Lolli
(Colombia/France, 2014, 86 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play
“Ten-year-old Eric is unhappy to be packed off by his mother, along with his dog Lupe, to stay with his father, Gabriel, whom he has seen little of in recent years. Living in a noisy boarding house in a rough and ready quarter of Bogotá, Gabriel struggles to make ends meet. However, Eric sees a different side to the city when he is taken to the home of one of Gabriel’s wealthier clients, a middle-class university teacher who is keen to help the pair out. Unfortunately, her altruism tests the father-son relationship in a series of unforeseen ways. With a memorable central performance by newcomer Brayan Santamaria as the angry, disorientated but hilariously funny Eric, Franco Lolli’s impressive debut demonstrates an assured grasp of storytelling, employing the power of suggestion, along with a great soundtrack, to present a beautifully observed social drama that explores notions of class in contemporary society.” —London BFI Film Festival
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE / SOMOS LO QUE HAY
A film by Jorge Michel Grau
(Mexico, 2010, 90 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+
“In We Are What We Are, first time Mexican helmer Jorge Michel Grau creates a deeply unsettling portrait of contemporary Mexican urban life which steady grows into many things all at once: a sincere family drama, an earnest exploration of the moral implications of cannibalism and a ribald satire of the seemingly intractable political and economic corruption that is haunting present day Mexico. All moody nighttime vistas and grim, claustrophobic interiors, Grau’s film manages both social commentary and grisly, bone-chilling terror the old-fashioned way, but it still manages to have a depth of human feeling that isn’t the stock and trade of this type of genre fare.” —Filmmaker Magazine
THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE / LA PRINCESA DE FRANCIA
A film by Matías Piñeiro
(Argentina, 2014, 70 min. In Spanish and Italian with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, iTunes, Apple TV+
“As in his critical hit Viola (2013), Matías Piñeiro doesn’t transplant Shakespeare to the present day so much as summon the spirit of his polymorphous comedies. Víctor (Julián Larquier Tellarini) returns to Buenos Aires after his father’s death and a spell in Mexico to prepare a radio production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Reuniting with his repertory, he finds himself sorting out complicated entanglements with girlfriend Paula (Agustina Muñoz), sometime lover Ana (María Villar), and departed actress Natalia (Romina Paula), as well as his muddled relations with the constellation of friends involved with the project. As the film tracks the group’s criss-crossing movements and interactions, their lives become increasingly enmeshed with the fiction they’re reworking, potential outcomes multiply, and reality itself seems subject to transformation. An intimate, modestly scaled work that takes characters and viewers alike into dizzying realms of possibility, The Princess of France is the most ambitious film yet from one of world cinema’s brightest young talents, a cumulatively thrilling experience.” —New York Film Festival
REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES
A film by Patricia Cardoso
(USA, 2002, In English and some Spanish)
Now streaming on HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu
“Curves on a blossoming young woman can be sexy, but not if you are told you have too many of them. Real Women Have Curves is a humorous and warm hearted look at a Mexican American teenage girl coming of age in a boiling cauldron of cultural expectations, class constrictions, family duty, and her own personal aspirations. In this auspicious debut, Patricia Cardoso gives us a cast of characters we very rarely see—working class Latina women—with refreshing human complexity.
Ana, a first generation Mexican American teenager living in East Los Angeles, has just graduated from high school. Because she is a talented writer, a caring teacher urges her to apply to college. Ana secretly is excited about the possibility, but her overbearing and hyper-critical mother, Carmen, insists that it is time for her to help provide for the family by working in her sister's sewing factory. It seems as if Ana's fate is unhappily sealed, but her indomitable will to reach beyond a sweatshop life eventually leads her to burst, defiant and resplendent, through every restriction on her life.
America Ferrera and Lupe Ontiveros are wonderful as Ana and her mom as they deal with all of the unexpected curves life throws at them. Based on the play by Josephina Lopez, which is rooted in her own experience, Real Women Have Curves gives a fresh new voice to the yearnings of Chicana women struggling against insecurities to love themselves and find respect in the world.” —Sundance Film Festival
BLACK ORPHEUS / ORFEU NEGRO
A film by Marcel Camus
(France/Brazil, 1959, 107 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on HBO Max, Vudu, iTunes, Amazon Prime
“Winner of both the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus (Orfeu negro) brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was an international cultural event, and it kicked off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning.” –The Criterion Collection
THE LIFEGUARD / EL SALVAVIDAS
A film by Maite Alberdi
(Chile, 2011, 64 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms Americas
“A new day dawns at the beach. Lifeguard Mauricio starts his daily routine: setting up his observation tower, checking the weather forecast and the tides, and updating his logbook. With his deep tan and dreadlocks, Mauricio looks like a chilled-out surfer dude, but in reality, this serious young man is anything but. Rules are rules, and he strictly enforces the ban on alcohol, unleashed dogs and barbecues on his beach. Also, prevention is better than cure: he keeps a watchful eye on the bathers, reprimanding them when necessary with a shrill blast on his whistle. But the vacationers really don't appreciate being ordered around. Neither is Mauricio popular among his fellow lifeguards. Mauricio painstakingly reports every instance of absence by his competitor Jean Pierre, who in turn dismisses Mauricio as a ‘fake lifeguard.’ Mauricio is, he concedes, well-suited to finding lost children, but is no use at all in a real emergency: ‘He blows the whistle and everything, but he doesn't go in the water.’ How will Mauricio cope when his preventive measures are no use any more, and some boys are at risk of drowning? The Chilean filmmaker followed Mauricio for several days, without providing any commentary, revealing the position of his protagonist among both the beachgoers and his colleagues in just a few, highly telling scenes.” —International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)
REACHING FOR THE MOON / FLORES RARAS
A film by Bruno Barreto
(Brazil, 2013, 118 min. In Portuguese and English with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Amazon Prime Video, and iTunes
This sumptuous English-language ‘50s period piece recounts the mid-life years of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (played by Miranda Otto, Lord of the Rings) when she left America to live and write in Rio de Janeiro—where she would also fall in love with well-off architect Lota de Macedo Soares (butched up to the hilt by beautifully handsome Brazilian TV star Gloria Pires). Initial hostilities between the pair make way for a complicated yet long-lasting love affair that dramatically alters Bishop’s relationship to the world around her. From renowned Brazilian director Bruno Barreto (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands), Reaching for the Moon is an intimate snapshot of the search for inspiration, wherever and however you find it.
FAMILY LIFE / VIDA DE FAMILIA
A film by Alicia Scherson and Cristian Jiménez
(Chile, 2017, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI, iTunes, and Vimeo on Demand
“A young family temporarily relocates for the father’s professorship, and an estranged cousin is recruited to house-sit. Martin, the cousin, is a peculiar, brooding, scruffy man. Eager to go, the family dismisses any doubts they have and leave the house in Martin’s care. Left to his own devices, Martin listlessly chain-smokes and goes through Bruno’s personal things. When Martin wanders out, he encounters an attractive single mother. He brings her to the house where he poses as a divorcee who doesn’t get to see his daughter. They get hot and heavy, and soon Martin starts to play father figure to her son, turning their casual fling into domestic bliss, all while seemingly oblivious to the family’s imminent return. Family Life intrepidly weaves together the perspectives of a couple nobly navigating their family doldrums, and Martin, a drifter seizing a short-term lease on family life. Chile’s most original filmmakers, director Alicia Scherson and co-director Cristián Jiménez, team up to knock out an unconventional and profound study of living vicariously in this aloof, melancholy comedy.” —Sundance Film Festival
I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT / DE ESO NO SE HABLA
A film by María Luis Bemberg
(Argentina/Italy, 1994, 105 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon
“The title of María Luisa Bemberg's subtle, touching film refers to the determination expressed by the proud widow Leonor (Brando) regarding the condition of her daughter Charlotte (Podestá). Quite simply, Leonor will not accept the fact that the girl is a dwarf. Instead, she showers her beloved progeny with kindness and encourages her interest in the arts - an interest which forms the basis of a friendship between the teenager and Don Ludovico D'Andrea (Mastroianni), an elderly bachelor of mysterious origins who falls profoundly in love with the girl. Set in a small Argentinian town in the '40s, Bemberg's poignant fable succeeds largely through understatement and the principals' superb performances. Mercifully, while there are a few faintly surreal touches, the magic here derives from the cool, unsentimental, down-to-earth appraisal of the trio's tangled emotions. It's a tender movie, but never needlessly romanticized, and not without its quiet cruelties.”
THE 4th COMPANY / LA 4a COMPAÑÍA
A film by Amir Galván Cervera and Mitzi Vanessa Arreola
(Mexico/Spain, 2016, 109 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
Based on a true story and winner of ten Ariel Awards, including for Best Picture and Best Actor, The 4th Company / La 4a Compañía is a crime movie set in the late seventies. The film, written and directed by Amir Galván Cervera and Mitzi Vanessa Arreola, follows Zambrano, a young criminal nicknamed “Easy Rider” (because he was convicted for car theft) who is sent to a violent prison in the outskirts of Mexico City. His passion for American football lands him a spot on the football team called the Dogs, that doubles as an enforcer squad for a corrupt administration. This team will go far beyond the walls of the prison where they’re also known as "The 4th Company", a group of inmates who serve as the prison administration’s enforcers. They’ll be Zambrano’s company – serving as his protectors but also posing a threat to him as he loses his innocence and risks also losing his life.
ENDLESS POETRY / POESÍA SIN FIN
A film by Alejandro Jodorowsky
(Chile/France, 2016, 128 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
Through renowned father of the midnight movies Alejandro Jodorowsky’s intensely personal lens, Endless Poetry tells the story of his years spent as an aspiring poet in Chile in the 1940’s. Against the wishes of his authoritarian father, the 20 year old Jodorowsky leaves home to pursue his dream of becoming a poet, and is introduced into the bohemian and artistic inner circle of Santiago where he meets Enrique Lihn, Stella Diaz Varín, Nicanor Parra, all unknown at the time, but who would later become driving forces of twentieth century Hispanic literature. Living with these inspirational artists, Jodorowsky’s exploration of his inner feelings takes him on a journey of sensual experimentation leading him to realize his innermost desires and passions. Continuing the autobiographical story he began in The Dance of Reality, Endless Poetry is an ode to the quest for beauty and inner truth, as a universal force capable of changing one’s life forever, written by a man who has dedicated his existence to creating spiritual and artistic awareness, told through Jodorowsky’s unique surreal and psychedelic visual language.
THE VIOLIN / EL VIOLÍN
A film by Francisco Vargas
(Mexico, 2005, 98 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi and Vimeo on Demand
Somewhere in Latin America a family of musicians and modest farmers join a fearless guerilla movement attempting to overthrow the brutal and sadistic government. When the military seizes their village, they flee to the sierra hills, forced to leave behind their stock of ammunition. While the guerillas organize a counter-attack, old Plutarco plays up his appearance as a harmless violin player in order to get into the village and recover the ammunition hidden in his corn fields. His violin playing charms the army captain, who orders Plutarco to come back daily. With tension escalating sky-high, guns and music take on a near holy significance with hundreds of lives hanging in the balance.
THE RETURN / EL REGRESO
A film by Hernán Jiménez
(Costa Rica, 2012, 95 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling TV, Amazon Prime, Pantaya, and Kanopy
“The Return is the story of a delightful and life-changing journey back to Costa Rica. After living 10 years in New York, 30 year-old Antonio returns to San José where he is forced to deal with the realities he ran away from. He is welcomed by his intense sister, Amanda-whose husband recently abandoned her-and their young son Inti-who is apprehensive about Antonio’s presence. When things take an unexpected turn, Antonio is forced to remain home far longer than he had anticipated. Add in the comedy of Antonio finding out that his best friend is the lead singer of a death metal rock band and sprinkle in the rekindling of a childhood romance and you have the ingredients of a superb film.
Actor and director Hernán Jiménez not only wrote, directed, and stared in this, his second full-length film, but also financed it with the proceeds from his first feature, his stand up comedy act, and the most successful Kickstarter campaign in Latin America to date. Far from the image of Costa Rica promoted by the country’s Department of Tourism, The Return became the highest grossing Costa Rican film ever and the first to earn international recognition.” —Pragda
THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF CELESTE GARCIA / EL VIAJE EXTRAORDINARIO DE CELESTE GARCÍA
A film by Arturo Infante
(Cuba/Germany, 2019, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime
Celeste is a widow living a tranquil, unadventurous existence in Havana, fulfilling her daily shifts as a tour guide at the local planetarium. One day when several “Cubans” mysteriously vanish into thin air, the government announces that aliens have been living in Cuban society disguised as humans, and that these foreign guests are now returning the favor by inviting humans to visit their far-away world. It all makes perfect sense to Celeste – she had always thought that her “Russian” neighbor Pauline was eccentric, but now learns she was truly from another planet! Celeste discovers that Pauline has left her a personal invitation to join her and joins the government preparation program to journey to the far unknown. Cuban director Arturo Infante’s film mixes absurd humor and wry political commentary as it follows a kindly planetarium worker who accepts to leave everything and everyone she knows to embark on an adventure that will change her life forever.
JANUARY 2021
MATEO
A film by María Gamboa
(Colombia/France, 2014, 86 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Google Play Movies & TV
Mateo, 16, collects extortion money on behalf of his uncle and uses his pay to help out his mother, who grudgingly accepts the ill-gotten money out of need. They live by themselves in the poor, violent neighborhoods alongside the Magdalena River valley in Colombia. To prove his worth, Mateo agrees to infiltrate a local theatre group in order to uncover its members’ political activities. As he becomes enthralled with the free-flowing creative lifestyle of the troupe, his uncle escalates demands on him to produce incriminating information on the actors. Under pressure, Mateo must make difficult choices.
TIME TO DIE / TIEMPO DE MORIR
A film by Arturo Ripstein
(Mexico, 1966, 89 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Film Movement Plus, Tubi, Pluto TV, and Amazon Prime
Fresh from serving eighteen years in jail for shooting a man in self-defense, Juan Sayago (Jorge Martinez de Hoyos, The Magnificent Seven) comes back to his hometown to start life anew and reunite with old flame Mariana (Marga Lopez, Buñuel's Nazarín). But the two sons of the man he killed, consumed by an overwhelming thirst for revenge, have been anxiously awaiting his return. From an original story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), and featuring dialogue by Mexican novelist/essayist Carlos Fuentes (The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo), this stunning directorial debut by a then-21-year-old Arturo Ripstein provides insight into the genius who would go on to create Deep Crimson and Hell Without Limits.
LOVE FOR SALE / O CÉU DE SUELY
A film by Karim Aïnouz
(Brazil/France/Germany, 2006, 90 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“In this follow-up to his internationally successful debut feature Madame Satã, Karim Aïnouz creates a very different portrait of an indomitable survivor. Returning to her hometown 7 in poor northeastern Brazil, Hermila (Hermila Guedes) awaits the arrival of her boyfriend, though her spunk and zest for life take on an increasingly desperate edge when it becomes clear that he will not be coming. Guedes’ major achievement is making Hermila likeable even in her most desperately miscalculated actions of despair. Breathtaking camerawork by veteran cinematographer Walter Carvalho captures not only the soulful decency of the townspeople but makes the empty landscape and rich colors an integral part of their characterization.” —New Directors/New Films
JAUJA
A film by Lisandro Alonso
(Argentina/Denmark/France/Mexico/USA/Germany/Brazil, 2014, 108 min. In Spanish and Danish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, and iTunes
“A work of tremendous beauty and a source of continual surprise, Alonso’s first film since 2008’s Liverpool is also his first period piece (set during the Argentinian army’s Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s), his first film with international stars (led by Viggo Mortensen), and his first screenplay with a co-writer (poet and novelist Fabián Casas). But the emphasis, as in all his work, is on bodies in landscapes. Danish military engineer Gunnar Dinesen (Mortensen, in a Technicolor-bright cavalry uniform) traverses a visually stunning variety of Patagonian shrub, rock, grass, and desert on horseback and on foot in search of his teenage daughter (Viilbjørk Agger Malling), who has eloped with a new love. Alonso’s style reaches new heights of sensory attentiveness and physicality, driving the action toward a thrilling conclusion that transcends the limits of cinematic time and space.” — Film at Lincoln Center
MAMACHAS DEL RING
A film by Betty M. Park
(USA/Bolivia, 2009, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Set in the heights of the Bolivian Andes, Mamachas del Ring is the story of Carmen Rosa the Champion, a cholita and wrestler who struggles to make it on her own in the male-dominated world of Bolivian professional wrestling. In 2004, Carmen Rosa was at the forefront of a cholita wrestler revolution. Never before had Bolivia seen an indigenous woman take her petticoats and bowler hat into the ring, and the crowds couldn't get enough. Along with three other cholitas, Carmen became an international star, and all four were anointed the Mamachas of the Ring.
DRY MARTINA
A film by Che Sandoval
(Chile/Argentina, 2018, 95 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
“One-time pop star Martina has hit rock bottom: no career, no relationship, no sex drive, and, most of all, no direction forward. But then, persistent fangirl Francisca pressures her way into Martina’s apartment, revealing that she believes herself to be Martina’s long-lost sister—and, at the same time, Francisca’s boyfriend César catches Martina’s eye, stirring her previously dormant desire. In a flash, the Argentine singer is flying to Chile to pursue this promising young lover and, while she’s at it, a better sense of self. Writer-director Che Sandoval deftly mingles the passions, obsessions, and heartbreaks of his characters in this fresh, comic take on the road movie, one predicated on Martina’s search for inspiration, both in the bedroom and out. Antonella Costa, marvelous in the title role, captures Martina’s overconfidence with humor and sensitivity. As her unease in this new land evaporates, she starts to warm to the idea of a new family, and she comes to terms with a lesson from Francisca’s search for a sibling, audiences are treated to the blooming of a new type of Martina—funny, sexy, and in control of her destiny.” —Tribeca Film Festival
MR. KAPLAN
A film by Álvaro Brechner
(Uruguay, Spain, Germany, 2014, 98 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Vudu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes
Jacob Kaplan lives an ordinary life in Uruguay. Like many of his other Jewish friends, Jacob fled Europe for South America because of World War II. But now turning 76, he’s become rather grumpy, fed up with his community and his family’s lack of interest in its own heritage. One beach bar may, however, provide him with an unexpected opportunity to achieve greatness and recover his family’s respect in the community : its owner, a quiet, elderly German, raises Mr. Kaplan suspicion of being a runaway Nazi. Ignoring his family’s concerns about his health, Jacob secretly recruits Contreras, a more loyal than honest former police officer, to help him investigate. Together, they will try to repeat the historic capture of Adolf Eichmann : by unmasking and kidnapping the German and secretly taking him to Israel.
CLOUDY TIMES / EL TIEMPO NUBLADO
A film by Arami Ullón
(Paraguay/Switzerland, 2014, 91 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms Americas
For as long as Arami can remember, her mother suffers from epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. As the only child of an absent father, Arami had to be responsible for herself and her mother at a very young age, a situation which proved to be a very demanding. Then, ten years ago, she could somehow cut the cord, as she found her own happiness in Switzerland, where she is living with her partner Patrick. Her mother is still living in Paraguay and Julia, an untrained helper, cares for her around the clock for a modest salary. However, her mother’s health is increasingly deteriorating. Julia can no longer cope with the situation and wants to quit her job. Since no one can expect Julia to look after Arami’s mother, Arami has to return to Paraguay. Will she be able to find a solution for her mother in a country, where the caretaking of the elderly is mainly up to their relatives? And if so, should she give up her happiness in Europe and go back to her mother?
Cloudy Times is a supremely personal film about an universal issue, we all have to face: What are we going to do with our parents, once they are old and ill?
SOUTHERN DISTRICT / ZONA SUR
A film by Juan Carlos Valdivia
(Bolivia, 2009, 110 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi and Kanopy
“Nestled in the lush valley of La Paz, Bolivia, the upper-class suburb of Zona Sur has sheltered the country’s wealthy elite for many years. Here, in an adobe-tile-roofed castle, a statuesque matriarch reigns over her spoiled progeny and her Indigenous Aymaran butler. But all is not what it seems. As the mother fights with her oversexed son and clashes with her petulant daughter, her six-year-old son rambles the rooftops unnoticed. Decline hangs in the air, and the threat of aristocratic privileges changing hands signifies a new chapter of a prickly and ill-fated class war. Juan Carlos Valdivia’s revolving camera poetically articulates the devolving drama while exposing the bubble of decadence in which the bourgeoisie exist. With the recent reelection of Bolivia’s first Aymaran president, the long-suppressed Indigenous people are rising up to reclaim their homeland, and Valdivia returns to Sundance (Jonah and the Pink Whale) with a crystal vision of the change taking place in his native country.” —Sundance Film Festival
BURNT MONEY / PLATA QUEMADA
A film by Marcelo Piñeyro
(Argentina/Spain/Uruguay,, 2000, 125 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“Love and betrayal complicate a robbery gone wrong in this offbeat crime thriller shot in Argentina. Angel (Eduardo Noriega) and El Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia) are a pair of small-time criminals hired to take part in the robbery of an armored truck organized by mobsters Nando (Carlos Roffe) and Fontana (Ricardo Bartis), who working in cahoots with the driver, El Cuervo (Pablo Echarri). Angel and El Nene are also lovers, and when the robbery goes sour and Angel is shot by the police, El Nene is enraged and opens fire on the officers, turning the heist into a bloodbath. Angel and El Nene somehow escape and go into hiding, with El Nene attempting to nurse Angel back to health. As the couple tries to avoid detection in Uruguay, El Cuervo's moll, Vivi (Dolores Fonzi), tells the police of their whereabouts under threat of torture. Meanwhile, beginning to crack under cabin fever, Angel and El Nene slip into town to visit a carnival, where El Nene's head is unexpectedly turned by Giselle (Leticia Bredice), sparking murderous jealousy in Angel. Burnt Money was adapted from a novel by Ricardo Piglia, which was inspired by a true story.” —All Movie Guide
MATRIA
A film by Fernando Llanos
(Mexico, 2014, 62 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Winner of the Best Documentary Film at the Morelia Film Festival, the debut feature by Fernando Llanos, tells the story of Antolín Jiménez, who was one of Mexico’s most distinguished charros or horsemen. He fought alongside Pancho Villa, represented the state of Oaxaca in Congress, and was the president of the National Charro Association. In 1942, as rumors spread of a Nazi invasion of Mexico, Jiménez formed and trained a group of 100,000 fighters to repel the attack. Seventy years later, Jimenez’s grandson Llanos brings us the film Matria, tracing the director’s quest to understand more about his mysterious grandfather and the culture of charros in the mid-20th century. Deeply rooted family secrets are unearthed in the process, and what begins as a character profile becomes an entangled story of family lore and a window into the history of modern Mexico.
THE GASOLINE THIEVES / HUACHICOLEROS
A film by Egdar Nito
(Mexico/Spain/UK/USA, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Hulu, Sling TV, fuboTV, Amazon Prime, and Showtime
“Living with his mother and working as a farmhand in his hometown, fourteen-year-old Lalo (Eduardo Banda) sees buying a smartphone for his high-school crush the only surefire way into her heart. When his mother is forced to use his savings in order to pay for medical bills, Lalo decides to approach the local huachicoleros for help, who quickly enlist his aid in their business of illegally siphoning gas in order to take advantage of the country’s shortage and re-sell on the black market. As Lalo naively becomes more involved with the huachicoleros’ work, an uneasy air of violence begins to overtake the world around him, while investigators narrow their search for those responsible. Depicted in beautifully sun-drenched imagery and grounded in Banda's remarkable first on-screen performance, director Edgar Nito crafts an intensely resonant and engrossing story of the tightening grip facing both his protagonist and his country with this feature debut.” Tribeca Film Festival
THE COLORS OF THE MOUNTAIN / LOS COLORES DE LA MONTAÑA
A film by Carlos César Arbeláez
(Colombia/Panama, 2010, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Film Movement Plus, and Tubi
Young Manuel lives with his hard-working farmer parents in the remote, mountainous region of the Colombian countryside. While the adults in their lives try to avoid both the armed military and the guerrilla rebels fighting each other in the area, Manuel and his friend Julián are obsessed with playing soccer any chance they get. Shortly after his birthday, the new ball Manuel received as a gift gets kicked off to a minefield, and he, Julián and their albino friend Poca Luz will do everything in their power to recover their prized belonging—an essential part of their everyday lives and dreams.
CASA GRANDE
A film by Fellipe Barbosa
(Brazil, 2014, 114 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime and iTunes
“Set in Rio, Fellipe Barbosa’s long-awaited fiction debut is a clear-eyed, empathetic portrait of a teenager who strives to transcend the limitations of his upper-middle-class family life. Seventeen-year-old Jean (an outstanding Thales Cavalcanti) contends with pressure from parental expectations, university entrance exams, and the surprising discovery of a family financial crisis in this tender, beautifully written coming-of-age story that deftly explores class differences and racism in Brazil today.” —Film at Lincoln Center
LAS CRUCES
A film by Teresa Arredondo and Carlos Vásquez Méndez
(Chile, 2018, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms Americas
Just days after the Military Coup of 1973, 19 workers were arrested and carried to the Laja Police Station. After being detained 5 days, they disappeared. The Police told to their relatives that they were transferred to a military regiment in the city of Los Angeles, but they didn’t find them there. They looked for 6 years until their remains appeared in the Yumbel cemetery. There was no explanation about how they got there.
Almost 40 years after the massacre, one of the police officers involved, broke the silence pact they had made the night of the massacre and the case was reopened. This way is known that the 19 workers were killed in a forest near the town of Laja, and the Paper and Cardboard Manufacturing Company (CMPC) had relation with those deaths. The workers were captured, imprisoned, tortured and the night they were killed in the back. Despite the confessions and the investigation ́s findings, all the officers involved that night are free. Today, the case is still open waiting to know who will be convicted.
PAULINA / LA PATOTA
A film by Santiago Mitre
(Argentina/Brazil/France, 2015, 103 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Filmatique, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play Movies & TV, and YouTube
Paulina lives comfortably, the daughter of a prominent left-wing judge, herself a student of law with a political career on the horizon. Eager to put her principles to action, however, she leaves all this behind to take up a teaching position in a border-region of northern Argentina, among an indigenous community mired in extreme poverty. Despite her best intentions, Paulina's Guarani-speaking students at turns resist and actively subvert her civics lessons. When walking home late one night Paulina is attacked by a group of local boys, setting her on a collision course between her and her family's expectations of justice.
With a powerhouse performance by Dolores Fonzi as the epynomous character, Paulina examines a radical form of feminism that probes the limits of social justice in contemporary Argentina. Santiago Mitre's third narrative feature premiered in the Cannes Film Festival's Critics’ Week, where it won Best Film and the FIPRESCI Prize; Turin, where it won Best Feature Film; Miami, where it won the Grand Jury Prize; Lima, where it won Best Screenplay; and San Sebastián, where it won the Horizons Award.
BRIMSTONE & GLORY
A film by Viktor Jakovleski
(USA/Mexico, 2017, 67 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play
The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town for ten days. Artisans show off their technical virtuosity, up-and-comers create their own rowdy, lofi combustibles, and dozens of teams build larger-than-life papier-mâché bulls to parade into the town square, adorned with fireworks that blow up in all directions. More than three quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival more than revelry for revelry’s sake. It is a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-old, homegrown business of making fireworks by hand. For the people of Tultepec, the National Pyrotechnic Festival is explosive celebration, unrestrained delight and real peril. Plunging headlong into the fire, Brimstone & Glory honors the spirit of Tultepec’s community and celebrates celebration itself.
DECEMBER 2020
VIDEOFILIA (AND OTHER VIRAL SYNDROMES) / VIDEOFILIA (Y OTROS SÍNDROMES VIRALES
A film by Juan Daniel F. Molero
(Peru/U.S., 2015, 102 mins. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo
The first Peruvian film to ever win the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) follows Luz, a teenage misfit from Lima who meets online Junior, a weird slacker who is obsessed with conspiracy theories, Mayan prophecies of the end of the world, and underground porn. They try to hook up in the real life but supernatural events start to unfold. Set in Lima, Juan Daniel F. Molero’s exhilarating debut fiction film is a playful mashup of internet cafes, slackers, not-so-innocent schoolgirls, amateur porn, Google Glass, acid trips, and guinea pigs as extras in an exorcism.
DAYS OF THE WHALE / LOS DÍAS DE LA BALLENA
A film by Catalina Arroyave
(Colombia, 2019, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on HBO Max, Hulu. and Amazon Prime Video
Set in the bustling city of Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, Days of the Whale follows Cristina (Laura Tobón) and Simon (David Escallón), two young graffiti artists who tag spots around where they live. Simón comes from a more working-class background and lives with his grandmother. They are part of an art collective that is the center for a group of young revolutionaries. Cristina is a college kid from an upper-middle-class family who finds herself living with her dad because her mother is a journalist who moved to Spain when threatened by the city’s criminal street gangs. The love that unites them, and their friendship with other artists keeps Cristina from leaving the city as tensions rise when Cristina and Simon’s rebellious, restless spirit leads them to defy this same gang by painting a mural over a threatening tag at the center.
HEROIC LOSERS / LA ODISEA DE LOS GILES
A film by A film by Sebastian Borensztein
(Argentina/Spain, 2019, 117 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on HBO Max, Hulu, and Amazon Prime
The top-grossing Argentine film of 2019 stars father and son Ricardo and Chino Darín for the first time together on the big screen. Set in 2001, this delightful heist dramedy follows a group of friends and neighbors who pool all of their savings to reactivate an agricultural cooperative in their small town. The day after they deposit the group's money in the bank, the banking system collapses, and they lose it all. But they soon find out that they are not only victims of the country-wide crisis, they have been scammed by an unscrupulous lawyer and bank manager who were poised to take advantage of the situation. This group of everymen and women band together and put a plan into action to recover what’s rightfully theirs.
THE THREE DEATHS OF MARISELA ESCOBEDO / LAS TRES MUERTES DE MARISELA ESCOBEDO
A film by Carlos Pérez Osorio
(Mexico/USA, 2020, 109 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
Directed by Carlos Pérez Osorio, The Three Deaths of Marisela Escobedo / Las tres muertes de Marisela Escobedo tells the true story of a mother's tireless crusade to jail her daughter's murderer after Mexico's justice system failed to do so. When Rubí, a sixteen-year-old teenager is murdered by her boyfriend in Ciudad Juárez, Marisela Escobedo began a tireless crusade to achieve the capture and trial of the man who killed her daughter. With the support of family and friends, Marisela traveled the country for two years, conducted her own investigations, and faced criminal organizations and corrupt officials. Throughout her fight, she risked her life exposing the failures of the justice system in Mexico, a country where ten women they are killed every day and most of the cases go unpunished. The film follows Escobedo during the two years that she dedicated to carry out her own research to clarify the femicide of her daughter. The film also depicts her perseverance to find the truth, and her unshakable strength that continue to be an example for those who knew its history, and those who are about to discover it.
CANOA
A film by Felipe Cazals
(Mexico, 1976, 115 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Prime
“One of Mexico’s most highly regarded works of political cinema, Canoa: A Shameful Memory reimagines a real-life incident that had occurred just eight years before its release, when a group of urban university employees on a hiking trip were viciously attacked by residents of the village of San Miguel Canoa who had been manipulated by a corrupt priest into believing the travelers were communist revolutionaries. Director Felipe Cazals adopts a gritty documentary style to narrate the events in Canoa while referencing the climate of political repression that would lead to the massacre of student protesters in Mexico City shortly thereafter. The resulting film is a daring commentary on ideological manipulation, religious fanaticism, and mass violence, as well as a visceral expression of horror.” —Criterion Collection
ROMA
A film by Alfonso Cuarón
(Mexico/USA, 2018, 135 min. In Spanish and Mixtec with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
“In Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographically inspired film, set in Mexico City in the early ’70s, we are placed within the physical and emotional terrain of a middle-class family whose center is quietly and unassumingly held by its beloved live-in nanny and housekeeper (Yalitza Aparicio). The cast is uniformly magnificent, but the real star of ROMA is the world itself, fully present and vibrantly alive, from sudden life-changing events to the slightest shifts in mood and atmosphere. Cuarón tells us an epic story of everyday life while also gently sweeping us into a vast cinematic experience, in which time and space breathe and majestically unfold. Shot in breathtaking black and white and featuring a sound design that represents something new in the medium, Roma is a truly visionary work.” —New York Film Festival
A SORT OF FAMILY / UNA ESPECIE DE FAMILIA
A film by Diego Lerman
(Argentina/Brazil/France/Poland, 2017, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netlfix
“Legal adoption can be a long, laborious, and exhausting process. Its frustrations and disappointments often push eager would-be parents to find other arrangements. Diego Lerman’s latest feature, A Sort of Family, follows one determined woman as she navigates the complex world of child adoption in Argentina’s Misiones province. Malena (Bárbara Lennie), a doctor, is overjoyed when she learns that the woman whose child she intends to adopt is due to give birth soon. But after she travels from Buenos Aires to be present for the occasion, it becomes clear that the process will not be a smooth one — the biological mother’s family suddenly demands an extra $10,000. Urged by both the doctor at the clinic and a lawyer, Malena enlists the help of her estranged husband Mariano (Claudio Tolcachir), who has been hesitant to adopt a child under the couple’s current circumstances. Through their experiences, Lerman exposes a legally and morally ambiguous system sustained by the complicity of medical and legal professionals. Set in the rural, disadvantaged communities of Argentina’s north, Lerman’s film uses thriller overtones to construct a suspenseful social drama. In a superbly calibrated performance, Lennie portrays the frustration of a woman overwhelmed by a situation that exceeds her control. But her desire for a family trumps her better instincts, leading her to deal with a corrupt system where adoption is just another transaction, one that exploits the poor, the desperate, and the newly born.” — Toronto International Film Festival
WORKFORCE / MANO DE OBRA
A film by David Zonana
(Mexico, 2019, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Hulu, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime Video
“Following the death of his brother at a construction site in Mexico City, Francisco learns that his widowed sister-in-law will not receive compensation from the wealthy owner of the luxury house where the accident occurred. After enduring a succession of further abuses against himself and his colleagues, and having made several attempts to obtain justice, he finally takes the law into his own hands—but will the world he’s fighting against consume him? David Zonana’s acclaimed debut feature is a poignant and astute meditation on class warfare.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
FOUND MEMORIES / HISTORIAS QUE SO EXISTEM QUANO LEMBRADAS
A film by Julia Murat
(Brazil/Argentina/France, 2011, 98 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Sling TV, and Film Movement Plus
“Set in a remote area of Brazil where coffee plantations flourished in the 1800s, this finely calibrated film follows Rita, a young, wandering photographer, as she comes to understand life in a community where time has seemingly stood still and people’s traditional roles clash with modern society. The film’s original title, which translates as ‘Stories That Only Exist When Remembered,’ beautifully expresses the theme of Murat’s poetic rendering of the fictive Jotuomba, its inhabitants affectionately wedded to the rituals and land that contain the memories of their lives. Rita’s visit occasions a confluence of generations and cultures that seem to grow organically out of the setting in this extraordinarily accomplished and mature first feature.” —New Directors/New Films
CRÓNICAS
A film by Sebastián Cordero
(Ecuador/Mexico, 2004. 97 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and iTunes
With an impressive international cast including John Leguizamo, Damián Alcázar, Henry Layana, Alfred Molina, Leonor Watling, and Jose Maria Yazpik, and co-produced by Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, Sebastián Cordero’s suspense thriller is a film about the duality of good and evil, of truth and media manipulation.
"One Hour with the Truth" is broadcast nightly from Miami across Latin America, carrying the hardest sensationalistic stories it can find. Star anchorman Manolo Bonilla has flown down to a small town in Ecuador with producer Marisa and cameraman Ivan on the trail of a child serial killer and rapist, "The Monster of Babahoyo."
The accidental death of a young boy brings the town to the verge of lynching Vinicio Cepeda, a humble traveling salesman. Manolo's intervention saves the man's life, and makes a great story for his show. Vinicio is put in jail for involuntary manslaughter and he offers Manolo information about the "Monstruo" in exchange for a news story on television about his wrongful imprisonment. Manolo accepts, powerfully drawn to the dark side he senses in Vinicio. He begins to break the rules, determined to be the hero who single-handedly stops the killer.
NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET / LA NOCHE DE ENFRENTE
A film by Raúl Ruiz
(Chile/France, 2012, 110 min. In Spanish and French with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime and iTunes
“On the verge of forced retirement, an elderly office worker (Sergio Hernández) begins reliving memories from his past, both real and imagined: a trip to the movies as a young boy with Beethoven, listening to tall tales from Long John Silver, a brief stay in a haunted hotel, conversations with a writer’s fictional doppelgänger. Stories are hidden within stories and the thin line between imagination and reality steadily erodes, opening up a marvelous new world of personal remembrance and melodrama. In his final masterwork, loosely adapted from the fantastical short stories of Chilean writer Hernán del Solar, Ruiz has crafted a playfully elegiac film that addresses his favorite subjects: fiction, history, and life itself.” —New York Film Festival
THE FISH / O PEIXE
A film by Jonathas de Andrade
(Brazil/USA, 2016, 38 min. No dialogue)
Watch it for free for a limited time courtesy of the New Museum
“Over the last decade, de Andrade has developed works in photography, video, and installation that stem from observations of everyday life in Brazil and what he regards as its ‘urgencies and discomforts.’ In particular, many of de Andrade’s works consider how Brazilian national identity and labor conditions have been constructed against a backdrop of colonialism and slavery. De Andrade’s works also attend to the ways in which attitudes and emotions are shaped—and governed—by images, social conventions, and political ideologies. In his diverse examinations of Brazilian culture and history, he reinterprets the methodologies of education and the social sciences, using nuances of fiction, artifice, and appropriation to undermine assumptions and confound the sensation of truth.”
A USEFUL LIFE / LA VIDA ÚTIL
A film by Federico Veiroj
(Uruguay/Spain, 2010, 67 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now available on Tubi, Pluto TV, and Amazon Prime Video
“The life expectancy of a product in Spanish is called ‘la vida útil’. The film title refers to the career of Jorge, who seems to have reached his sell-by date. He’s worked for 25 years as a programmer and projectionist for the Uruguayan Cinémathèque. He selects the films and sits beside the projector every day to translate the films during screening. In his weekly film column on the radio, he recommends the Manoel de Oliveira retrospective and hopes to fill seats with the slogan: ‘You need the Cinémathèque and the Cinémathèque needs you.' It doesn’t help, and the Cinémathèque is closed because it is losing money. To the sounds of exotic film music, Jorge roams the streets. Director Federico Veiroj himself worked at the Cinémathèque and, after his dry and humorous teenage portrait Acne (2008), this time he follows a man without a future who is saved by cinema—and by love. A Don Quichote who embarks on a new adventure.”
SUMMER OF GOLIATH / VERANO DE GOLIAT
A film by Nicolás Pereda
(Mexico/Canada, 2010, 76 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo, Amazon Prime and DAFilms
“Pereda’s Summer of Goliath combines documentary and fiction as it intertwines the stories of people living in a small town in rural Mexico. Those people include: a woman who believes her husband has left her for another woman; her soldier son, who hopes that one day he and his soldier partner will be issued machine guns so that they may intimidate the people passing motorists; and three brothers whose father left them many years ago in the care of their mother, who can barely support them.” —New Directors / New Films
NOVEMBER 2020
SILENCE IS A FALLING BODY / EL SILENCIO ES UN CUERPO QUE CAE
A film by Agustina Comedi
(Argentina, 2017, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms and Kanopy
Agustina Comedi weaves together a complex and moving portrait of her late father Jaime, constructed from more than 100 hours of videotape he recorded as a hobby prior to his untimely death. It seemed as though he recorded everything, although he left only small clues as to the man he was before marrying her mother and the secrets he kept with him.
Interviews with those who knew him reveal fragments of a youth filled with political activism, joyful friendships, and sexuality that never fully bloomed in the repressive social climate of 1980’s Argentina. With equal marriage being introduced in the country in 2010, Comedi’s film is at once a love letter to her father, and also profound thank you to those who sacrificed so much for the freedoms of the next generation.
LIVE-IN MAID / CAMA ADENTRO
A film by Jorge Gaggero
(Argentina, 2004, 87 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the Argentinean film starring Norma Aleandro (The Official Story) follows a beautiful, grand middle aged woman whose recent divorce has left her in a precarious financial position. While she tries desperately to keep up appearances by pawning one luxury possession after another, finally she is forced to do the unthinkable: discharge her live-in maid of 30 years. Filled with humor and pitch perfect acting, this story of two women who need each other more than either could ever imagine is a real gem.
ELENA
A film by Petra Costa
(Brazil/USA, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, iTunes
Elena, a young Brazilian woman, travels to New York with the same dream as her mother, to become a movie actress. She leaves behind her childhood spent in hiding during the years of the military dictatorship. She also leaves Petra, her seven year old sister. Two decades later, Petra also becomes an actress and goes to New York in search of Elena. She only has a few clues about her: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary and letters. At any moment Petra hopes to find Elena walking in the streets in a silk blouse. Gradually, the features of the two sisters are confused; we no longer know one from the other. When Petra finally finds Elena in an unexpected place, she has to learn to let her go.
“A masterful debut” — IndieWire
SEMANA SANTA
A film by Alejandra Márquez Abella
(Mexico, 2015, 87 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
Dali travels to Acapulco to spend the Easter holidays with her son Pepino and boyfriend Chávez. Her inner demons threaten the burgeoning family as her son and boyfriend try desperately to connect with her. Acknowledging her dismissal of them, Pepino leads a group of raucous young kids at the resort while Chavez takes off on a drug fueled binge with some teenage girls. Dali takes a solitary jet ski ride – something Pepino had asked to do for his birthday and has an emotional connection with an older American tourist. As morning comes, the transformed family reunites to await what destiny has in store for them.
SO MUCH WATER / TANTA AGUA
A film by Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge
(Uruguay/Mexico/Netherlands, 2013, 102 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime
“Alberto has lost custody of his children in a divorce, but is determined to keep his bonds with Lucia and Federico. For his visitation week, he plans a vacation to a hot springs resort, but as soon as he picks up Lucia and Federico from their mother’s home, it begins to rain. And rain. And rain! It does not stop raining, and Alberto’s plans for creating quality family memories are washed away in the cramped cabin he has rented, which does little to remedy the adolescent resentments and rebellion of Lucia, and the boredom of Federico. The unique, wry humor of the Uruguayan character brings a richness to this wonderfully atmospheric tale of a father and a daughter trying to find a common ground.” —Miami Film Festival
A PAPER TIGER / UN TIGRE DE PAPEL
A film by Luis Ospina
(Colombia, 2007, 115 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DAFilms Americas
“Luis Ospina’s healthy skepticism of revolutionary dogma is also reflected in a feature-length film essay, Un tigre de papel (A Paper Tiger, 2007), about the Colombian collage artist, poet and sometime revolutionary, Pedro Manrique Figueroa. PMF, as he is sometimes referred to in the film, disappeared without a trace in 1981, but is also an enigma because virtually no images of the artist or many of his collages survive. Two of his found footage films do exist and are included in the essay, along with footage from various Communist propaganda films, newsreels and interviews with contemporaries. Born in 1934, and strongly influenced by the murder of leftist politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, when he was a ticket collector on a tram, we learn that Figueroa was trained as a professional revolutionary in East Germany in the 1960s. He travelled to Eastern Europe and China, but also spent a good portion of his life homeless, an intellectual who floated in and out of Bogotá’s coffee house scene, distributing homemade pamphlets, leaflets and collages, which reflected his own strange mixture of Communist, Socialist and Maoist ideologies with a healthy dose of sexuality. Ospina’s portrait of an artist who never quite fit in is also, then, a social and political history of Colombia’s turbulent past.” —UCLA Film Archie
WHISKY
A film by Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll
(Uruguay, 2004, 94 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Pluto TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime
“The tall and silent sixty-year-old Jacobo Köller is owner of an ageing sock factory. Day in, day out, he sets off to work early, where his faithful assistant Martha arrives with him at the same time. They greet each other with few words and get on with their everyday activities. This imperturbable regularity comes to an end when Jacobo's younger brother Herman comes over from Brazil. The two brothers have not had much contact for years, but now Herman feels forced to get involved with placing a gravestone for their mother. Jacobo gets so nervous at the prospect of facing his socially successful brother, that he asks Martha to act as his wife. When Herman invites them for a short holiday, a tragicomic triangular relationship ensues.
With their début success 25 Watts Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll put Uruguay on the map as a film country. The sequel Whisky (the local variation on 'Say cheese!') has already been compared with the films of Aki Kaurismäki, with which they share the precise framing and montage, the touching, dry humor and a deep psychological insight and compassion with ordinary people. But however honorable the comparison may be, with their award-winning second film, Stoll and Rebella mainly show that a specifically Uruguayan cinema is alive and well.” —Rotterdam International Film Festival
AQUARIUS
A film by Kleber Mendonça Filho
(Brazil/France, 2016, 142 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime.
“A highlight of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s follow-up to his acclaimed Neighboring Sounds revolves around the leisurely days of a 65-year-old widow, transcendently played by the great Brazilian actress Sônia Braga. Clara is a retired music critic and the only remaining resident of the titular apartment building in Recife. Trouble starts when an ambitious real estate promoter who has bought up all of Aquarius’s other units comes knocking on Clara’s door. She has no intention of leaving, and a protracted struggle ensues. Braga’s transfixing, multilayered performance and the film’s deliberate pacing and stylistic flourishes yield a sophisticated, political, and humane work.” —Film at Lincoln Center
WHITE ELEPHANT / ELEFANTE BLANCO
A film by Pablo Trapero
(Argentina, 120 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Vudu, Crackle, Amazon Prime, and Sling TV
In the “Villa Virgin”, a shantytown in the slums of Buenos Aires, Julian (Ricardo Darín, The Secret in Their Eyes, Carancho) and Nicolas (Jérémie Renier, In Bruges, Atonement)—two priests and long-standing friends—work tirelessly to help the local people. Nicolas joins Julian in overseeing the construction of a hospital following the failure of a project he was leading in which paramilitary forces assassinated members of the community. Deeply troubled by his actions, Nicolas finds solace in Luciana (Martina Gusman, Carancho, Lion’s Den), a young, attractive atheist social worker. As Nicholas’s beliefs wane, tension and violence grow between the slum’s drug-dealing cartels and when work on the hospital is halted by ministerial decree, the faith of the entire community is put to the test.
OCTOBER 2020
PAN’S LABYRINTH / EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO
A film by Guillermo del Toro
(Mexico/Spain, 2006, 119 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Prime
“In Academy Award–winning dark fable set five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Pan’s Labyrinth encapsulates the rich visual style and genre-defying craft of Guillermo del Toro. Eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, in a mature and tender performance) comes face to face with the horrors of fascism when she and her pregnant mother are uprooted to the countryside, where her new stepfather (Sergi López), a sadistic captain in General Francisco Franco’s army, hunts down Republican guerrillas refusing to give up the fight. The violent reality in which Ofelia lives merges seamlessly with her fantastical interior world when she meets a faun in a decaying labyrinth and is set on a strange, mythic journey that is at once terrifying and beautiful. In his revisiting of this bloody period in Spanish history, del Toro creates a vivid depiction of the monstrosities of war infiltrating a child’s imagination and threatening the innocence of youth.” — The Criterion Collection
NO
A film by Pablo Larraín
(Chile, France, USA, 2012, 108 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes
“The third film by Pablo Larraín about the Chilean Pinochet dictatorship, which lasted from 1973 to 1990. After portraying life under the dictatorship (Tony Manero) and how it started (Post Mortem), he now shows the deathblow for Pinochet’s regime: the pro-democratic 'No' vote in a referendum held in 1988 under international pressure. This time, Alfredo Castro, the protagonist of Tony Manero and Post Mortem, has an important supporting role, while the lead is for Gael García Bernal, as a commercial advertising man who encourages the gloomy opposition to fight a cheerful and optimistic 'No' campaign. After the highly stylized design and black-comic tone of his two previous films, Larraín now uses a reportage style in which original news and advertising images have been integrated seamlessly into the film, thanks to the use of old U-matic video cameras.” —Rotterdam International Film Festival
LA YUMA
A film by Florence Jaguey
(Mexico/Nicaragua/Spain, 2011, 91 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Nicaragua’s first full-length feature in 20 years, La Yuma tells the story of a young woman who dreams of transcending her bleak life in the slums of Managua by becoming a boxer. Looking beyond the meager possibilities that seem available to her (and ignoring the advice of her gang-member friends), she finds solace and hope in her training and falls in love with a middle-class journalism student. With an extraordinary performance by Alma Blanco as Yuma, the strength, astuteness and determination of the main character reflect the feelings of a population that faces adversity and inequality. Jaugey’s film allows us the rare opportunity to get a glimpse of life in this Central American country where gender and class inequality are an everyday challenge.
WHISKY ROMEO ZULU
A film by Enrique Piñeyro
(Argentina, 2004, 105 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, iTunes
“Should profit outweigh safety? This courageous critique of civil aviation after deregulation, a whistle-blowing thriller of the highest order, offers a tense depiction of events leading to the crash of a Linea Aerea Privada Argentina 737 in Buenos Aires in 1999. The leading character’s childhood dreams of flying are shattered by a reality completely different from what he expected. As a pilot, his insistence on following safety regulations earns him the enmity of higher ups in the corporation who continually pressure him to cut corners. Soon colleagues who need to keep their jobs shun him. It’s achingly clear where the broken equipment, empty fire extinguishers and intimidated workers will lead - it’s a matter of when rather than if an accident will take place. Mirroring the main character’s dilemma is the story of a federal prosecutor investigating the case who resists physical threats to prove the crash cannot be explained by mere pilot error.” —Karlovy Vary Film Festival
A RED BEAR / UN OSO ROJO
A film by Adrián Caetano
(Argentina/France/Spain, 2002, 94 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“After doing seven years in prison for murder and armed robbery, Oso is released on parole. His wife Natalia and daughter Alicia now live with Sergio, who has racked up debts from playing the horses. Oso hopes to get them back and help them, but to do so he has to control his clumsiness and his irrepressible outbursts of violence. When Turco, owner of his favorite bar, tries to persuade him to take part in a new «job», he realizes the only way to ensure his daughters future is to be an outlaw. This disillusioned urban western relates the fate of a fringe dispenser of justice at odds with the harsh reality of the suburbs. His only reward is Alicias smile.” —Viennale
DUCK SEASON / TEMPORADA DE PATOS
A film by Fernando Eimbcke
(Mexico, 2004, 85 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Prime
“An uneaten pizza, two bottles of Coca-Cola, a tray of pot brownies, a tacky painting of ducks and an Xbox acquire quizzical significance in the single-apartment pressure chamber of Eimbcke’s debut Duck Season, all of which gives the deceptive impression of the film as a puzzle to be solved. It turns out, however, that the only real puzzle here is adolescence itself, the slippery focus of the director’s career thus far. The film begins as a portrait of a lazy Sunday afternoon between friends Flama and Moko, who’ve ordered a pizza to supplement hours of languishing in front of the TV while their parents are out. Upon being refused payment, the delivery guy protests by lounging around with his junior-high customers, and he is followed soon after by a female neighbor claiming that her oven’s not working—a bizarre setup that proves mostly an excuse to collide four differing expressions of adolescent curiosity, yearning and frustration. Eimbcke composes his low-stakes miniature with an eye toward symmetry and domestic rhythm that alternately evokes Yasujiro Ozu and Jim Jarmusch, while his take on restless youth suggests a demented tweak on The Breakfast Club.” —Harvard Film Archive
CINEMA NOVO
A film by Eryk Rocha
(Brazil, 2016, 90 min. In Portuguese and French with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Ovid
Cinema Novo is a film essay that poetically investigates the eponymous Brazilian film movement, the most prominent in Latin America in the past century, through the analysis of its main auteurs: Nelson Pereira do Santos, Glauber Rocha, Leon Hirszman, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Ruy Guerra, Caca Diegue, Walter Lima Jr, Paulo Cesar Saraceni, among others.
THE CHOSEN ONES / LAS ELEGIDAS
A film by David Pablos
(Mexico/France, 2015, 100 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
“Tijuana, Mexico. Sofia has fallen in love for the first time. This poverty-stricken 14-year-old girl is easy game for the scarcely older Ulises. He wants them to feel like they’ve never felt before, or so he says. While expertly wrapping the young girl around his little finger, he suddenly realizes he has developed real feelings for her. However, the truth is that his father sent him. The son of a pimp, Ulises is given the task of seducing young girls before forcing them into prostitution. But this time he wants to break away from the traditional family business and release his victim from the snare before it’s too late. A vicious circle ensues. It is difficult to tackle the topic of forced prostitution in a film without appearing exploitative. Director David Pablos has managed to tread this narrow path with incredible care and consideration. The Chosen Ones broaches a burning social problem with formal vigor and sensitivity towards its content.” —Zurich Film Festival
A WOLF AT THE DOOR / O LOBO ATRÁS DA PORTA
A film by Fernando Coimbra
(Brazil, 2013, 100 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play
Set in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, A Wolf at the Door is based on real events, and is a nerve-rattling tale of a kidnapped child and the terror of the parents left behind. When Sylvia (Fabíula Nascimento) discovers her six-year-old daughter has been picked up at school by an unknown woman, police summon her husband Bernardo (Milhem Cortaz) to the station for questioning. There Bernardo confesses his extra-marital affair with the beautiful young Rosa (Leandra Leal), whom detectives believe to be involved in the kidnapping. Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Coimbra’s suspenseful debut feature captures the heightened anxiety of every parent’s worst nightmare, casting a light upon the cruelties of which humans are capable. The film was the winner of the Latino Horizon Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival, the Best Film Award at the Havana Film Festival, the Best Film and Best Director Awards at the Miami Film Festival and the Best Film and Best Actress Award at the Rio Film Festival.
THE HUMAN SURGE / EL AUGE DEL HUMANO
A film by Eduardo Williams
(Argentina/Brazil/Portugal, 2016, 99 min. In Spanish, Cebuano, Portuguese, and English, with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Projectr and Amazon Prime
“A twentysomething in Argentina loses his warehouse job. Boys in Maputo, Mozambique, perform half-hearted sex acts in front of a webcam. A woman in the Philippines assembles electronics in a small factory. Williams’s inquisitive camera is in constant motion, as are his rootless characters, who wander aimlessly, make small talk, futz with their phones, and search for a working Internet connection. Unfolding within the unfree time between casual jobs, this wildly original rumination on labor and leisure in the global digital economy seems to take place in both the immediate present and the far horizon of the foreseeable future. Winner of the top prize in the 2016 Locarno Film Festival’s Filmmakers of the Present section.” —Film at Lincoln Center
NORTHLESS / NORTEADO
A film by Rigoberto Perezcano
(Mexico/Spain, 2009; 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on iTunes
“After several documentaries, Rigoberto Perezcano makes his debut as a fiction director with an appealing feature filled with documentary detail and psychological insight. The protagonist Andrés—just like the director—comes from the distant Oaxaca and tries to reach the United States. He makes friends with two ladies who run a shop in Tijuana. Every time Andres gets sent back by the border police, he returns to Cata and Ela. Their husbands once successfully crossed the border and have not been in touch since. As the Variety critic remarked: 'It's almost shocking to discover there really are new, compelling ways to tell the story [about migration]'. Perezcano's style is as modest, touching and determined as his protagonists. Northless is an ode to the often absurd inventiveness of the undocumented immigrant, but also makes subtly and occasionally humorously clear just how painful the situation of migrants is and the problems faced by a border town like Tijuana.” —Rotterdam International Film Festival
TOPONYMY / TOPONIMIA
A film by Jonathan Perel
(Argentina, 2015, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DaFilms.com and Vimeo on Demand
“In 1974, shortly after Juan Peron’s return to power, the misleadingly named ‘Operation Independence’ went into effect, resulting in the creation of rigidly designed villages in northern Argentina arranged to thwart guerilla resistance. In his masterful structuralist study, made with no narration or dialogue, Jonathan Perel reveals the sinister politics behind the plan. ‘An elaborate memory puzzle whose dry, enigmatic humor would surely have tickled Perel's illustrious countryman Jose Luis Borges.’ (Neil Young, The Hollywood Reporter).” —Museum of the Moving Image
LINA FROM LIMA / LINA DE LIMA
A film by María Paz González
(Chile/Argentina/Peru, 2019, 83 min. In Spanish, Quechua, and Haitian Creole with English subtitles)
Now streaming on HBO Max
“The issue of migrant labor gets a winningly light touch in this musical comedy—and debut fiction film—from documentarian María Paz González, about a Peruvian woman working as a domestic helper for a wealthy Chilean family who prepares for a trip home to visit the son she left behind. At once a delightful renovation of the musical comedy and a timely examination of the realities of migrant labour, the inventive debut fiction feature from Chilean director María Paz González tackles weighty themes with a light touch and a saucy sense of humor.” —Toronto International Film Festival
BOY AND THE WORLD / O MENINO E O MUNDO
A film by Alê Abreu
(Brazil, 2013, 80 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime
Brazilian artist Alê Abreu’s Academy Award-nominated masterpiece is a riotous explosion of music and color, a breathtakingly original and vibrant cinematic experience that depicts the wonders and struggles of the modern world as seen through the eyes of a young boy.
Cuca’s cozy rural life is shattered when his father leaves for the city, prompting him to embark on a quest to reunite his family. The young boy’s journey unfolds like a tapestry, the animation taking on greater complexity as his small world expands. Entering civilization, industrial landscapes are inhabited by animal-machines, with barrios of decoupage streets and shop windows and flashing neon advertisements that illuminate the night. The story depicts a clash between village and city, hand crafted and mechanized, rich and poor – and throughout the tumult, the heart and soul of the people beats on as a song.
SIDEWALLS / MEDIANERAS
A film by Gustavo Taretto
(Argentina/Germany/Spain, 2011, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube and Google Play
"How does architecture condition the lives of people living in the city? Mariana and Martin are two lonely souls who have a lot in common and live on the same block, but somehow never meet. With this clever romantic comedy, Taretto pays homage to the city of Buenos Aires as he reflects on how urban chaos, as well as new technologies, can unite people but also keep them apart (as the sidewalls of the title). Mixing animation, photography and graphic art he reveals the characters’ isolation and anxieties that are a staple of modern life in a noisy city that nonetheless has an irresistible charm.” —Film at Lincoln Center
I DREAM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE / SUEÑO EN OTRO IDIOMA
A film by Ernesto Contreras
( Mexico/Netherlands, 2016, 101 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, Pluto TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Google Play
“Martin arrives in a remote Mexican village to record a dying, ancient indigenous language. He finds the last two speakers of the language, but they refuse to speak to each other because of a 50 year grudge. Martin learns the surly Evaristo got into a fight with Isauro because they fell in love with the same woman. Now widowed, Evaristo continues to bitterly avoid the ailing Isauro. Martin and Evaristo’s granddaughter, Lluvia, work to convince the men to reconcile. Perplexed by their intensity when they meet, Martin realizes there is more to the story, and Lluvia finally reveals the secret behind the men’s entanglement. As Isauro’s health declines, Evaristo struggles to come to terms with his feelings, and strange bird calls from deep inside the jungle begin to stir, evoking the mythical origin of their ancestors.
Distinctly enigmatic in tone, permeating the vibrations of the jungle’s enchantment through sound and cinematography, writer and director duo the Contreras brothers imaginatively use language and metaphor, and eternity over history to weave an unexpected and transcendental love story.” —Sundance Film Festival
YOUNG & WILD / JOVEN Y ALOCADA
A film by Marialy Rivas
(Chile, 2012, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play
Seventeen-year-old Daniela is obsessed with sex. But her self-proclaimed “pussy in flames” is in direct conflict with her well-to-do, strict evangelical family in Santiago, Chile. She finds an outlet by detailing her naughty ruminations and exploits on her blog “Young & Wild” to her eager online followers. She dates handsome and pious Tomas, but maybe Antonia, the really cute girl at work is more her speed. As she struggles to balance both relationships, Daniela learns that having it all—sex, love and eternal salvation—is more complicated than she ever imagined. Marialy Rivas masterfully directs her first feature, which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival where Rivas and co-writer Camila Gutiérrez (whose life the film is based on) picked up the World Cinema Screenwriting Award. Rooted in a fearless and unforgettable performance by Alicia Rodríguez, Young & Wild is a stunning, energetic look at family and youth culture in contemporary Chile.” —Film at Lincoln Center
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN / LA MONTAÑA SAGRADA
A film by Alejandro Jodorowsky
(Mexico, 1973, 114 min. In English)
Now streaming on iTunes and Amazon Prime
“The follow-up to his Midnight Movie sensation El Topo, writer-director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain caused a scandal at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival with its flood of sacrilegious imagery, existential symbolism and outrageous violence. Once again, Jodorowsky plays the allegorically named lead, “The Alchemist,” who assembles a group of people from all walks of life and renames them for the planets in the solar system. Putting his recruits through strange mystical rites and divesting them of their worldly baggage, he leads them on a trip to Lotus Island to ascend the Holy Mountain and displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe. This gorgeous new digital restoration, overseen by the filmmaker himself, returns Jodorowsky’s most visually extravagant film to all its trippy splendor.” —IFC Center
LOVELING / BENZINHO
A film by Gustavo Pizzi, 2017, Brazil/Uruguay, 95 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“Irene is raising four rambunctious sons in a home that is physically crumbling but warm and happy. As Irene simultaneously shelters her sister Sonia (who just left a volatile marriage), supports her own husband through a financial crisis, and plans her own long-awaited high school graduation, Irene’s eldest son, Fernando, suddenly announces he has been recruited by a professional handball team in Germany and will be leaving in just three weeks. Consummate caretaker Irene prickles at the idea of emancipating the 16-year-old so he can travel and live alone, and she becomes increasingly anxious about what her future holds.
Writer/director Gustavo Pizzi exquisitely captures a family’s home and life in intimate, crisp, fully realized detail, while co-writer/actress Karine Teles embodies Irene with delicacy and passion, articulating in equal measure her fierce familial devotion, seemingly endless reserve of warmth and patience, and growing existential doubt. Loveling thoughtfully contemplates the complicated balance between the destructive and restorative elements of our bonds to the people we love and cherish most.” —Sundance Film Festival
GUILTY MEN / PARIENTE
A film by Iván D. Gaona
(Colombia, 2016, 115 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play
“Iván D. Gaona’s sharp debut feature taps into Colombia’s roiling discontent amidst corruption and the foreboding legacy of paramilitaries in the countryside. The queasily tense drama tracks a rural love triangle that ensues when a woman’s ex surfaces, to the displeasure of her corrupt strongman fiancé. Despite a sweet sense of yearning between the potential lovers, any hope of romance seems set to wither and die amidst the moral rot and, more concretely, the thefts and killings that periodically occur and drive home the powerlessness of the area’s inhabitants. Gaona shows how the violence becomes a part of the landscape as much as the local sugarcane, as he charts the varying degrees to which people give in, or resist.” —Nicolas Rapold, Film Comment.
SALVADOR ALLENDE
A film by Patricio Guzmán
(Chile, 2004, 100 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Ovid.tv, Vudu and iTunes
A leftist revolutionary or a reformist democrat? A committed Marxist or a constitutionalist politician? An ethical and moral man or, as Richard Nixon called him, a 'son of a bitch'? In Salvador Allende, acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile and Chile, Obstinate Memory) returns to his native country thirty years after the 1973 military coup that overthrew Chile's Popular Unity government to examine the life of its leader, Salvador Allende, both as a politician and a man.
Using rare archival footage, family photos, interviews with Allende's friends, professional colleagues, his daughters and other relatives as well as UP militants, workers, journalists, his personal secretary and Edward Korry, former U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Salvador Allende portrays the life, times and political formation of the Valparaiso-born doctor who was active in Socialist Party politics as a senator and who ran unsuccessfully for President three times before finally being elected in 1970.
MISS BALA
A film by Gerardo Naranjo
(Mexico, 2011, 113 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu
“One of the most exciting young talents around, the Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo (I’m Gonna Explode) approaches the hot-button topic of drug violence through the perspective of an unlikely, unwitting heroine: a Tijuana beauty pageant contestant (Stephanie Sigman) who stumbles into the path of ruthless cartel operatives and corrupt officials. Although inspired by a true story, Miss Bala avoids docudrama cliches and tabloid sensationalism, and instead evokes the pervasive climate of fear and confusion that has enveloped daily life in some increasingly lawless pockets of northern Mexico. Using long takes and fluid, precise camera work, Naranjo fashions a highly original thriller: an anguished and harrowing mood piece with an undertow of bleakly absurdist humor and moments of heart-stopping action.” —New York Film Festival
CLANDESTINE CHILDHOOD / INFANCIA CLANDESTINA
A film by Benjamín Avila
(Argentina/Spain/Brazil, 2012, 110 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now available on Tubi, Sling TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play.
1979: after years of exile, 12-year-old Juan and his family return to Argentina under fake identities. Juan’s parents are members of a left-wing political organization which is fighting against the Military Junta that rules the country. Because of their activities they are in constant danger of being captured by the oppressive government regime. But young Juan is still a child, and his world consists of his friends at school and his crush, Maria. He knows his family's survival is at stake and accepts this reality until one day he is told that they must flee again immediately, and leave his friends and Maria behind without an explanation. This is a story about militancy, undercover life, and love. The story of a clandestine childhood.
SANTA & ANDRÉS
A film by Carlos Lechuga
(Cuba, 2016, 105 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play
Set in 1983, during a time of political turmoil and oppression in the Caribbean island, Santa & Andrés takes place in the rural mountain region of Eastern Cuba where Andrés—a noncompliant gay writer in his fifties (played by Eduardo Martinez)—resides after he has been blacklisted by the government for having “ideological problems.” After a big event occurs someone reliable must be appointed to watch over him and make sure he does not get out and make any public political statement. Santa—a country girl in her thirties who works on a farm—is assigned to the task.
For three days in a row, Santa (played by Lola Amores) will sit in front of Andrés’ hut and keep watch on him. Santa and Andrés are as close as it gets to being true opposites and are not meant to like each other. What they cannot imagine, however, is that they have more things in common than they expect.
SÓLO CON TU PAREJA
A film by Alfonso Cuarón
(Mexico, 1991, 94 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“Before Alfonso Cuarón helmed the international sensation Y tu mamá también, he made his mark on Mexican cinema with the ribald and lightning-quick contemporary social satire Sólo con tu pareja. Don Juan–ish yuppie Tomás Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho, from Bad Education) spends his nights juggling so many beautiful women that he can’t keep their names straight—until one of his many conquests, a spurned nurse, gives him a taste of his own medicine. Beautifully filmed in widescreen by the inimitable Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World), Cuarón’s wildly successful feature debut (which has never been released in the U.S.) gave voice to a Mexican middle-class that had remained largely unseen onscreen, and surveys contemporary urban sexual mores with style to spare.” —Criterion Collection
IN THE PIT / EN EL HOYO
A film by Juan Carlos Rulfo
(Mexico, 2006, 84 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Using state of the art digital filmmaking, "gorgeous time lapse sequences" (NY Newsday), and a "terrific soundtrack" (Time Out) made of a "magical montage of found sounds" (Chicago Sun-Times), Juan Carlos Rulfo's In the Pit is a powerful documentary about the personal struggles behind the construction of a massive elevated freeway. With lyricism and compassion, this Sundance Film Festival prize-winning film reveals the medieval nightmare underneath an ambitious utopian dream: Mexico City's Periférico Beltway, more than ten miles of elevated reinforced concrete, supported by massive towers, that has been planned to both soar above and link the city's densely gridlocked urban neighborhoods. But while the roadway is a spectacular miracle of modern architectural design, it comes with a human cost. A film of "unlikely beauty" (Variety), In the Pit lays bare "the secret human face of an inhuman world" (New York Times).
WORKERS
A film by José Luis Valle
(Mexico/Germany, 2013, 122 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
After a whole life of work at Tijuana, Rafael and Lidia are victims of injustice against their rights and dignity: Rafael learns that due to a paperwork mistake, he will not be entitled to his retirement pension. And Lidia, she finds out that her employers will leave the entire heirloom to the dog.
The fiction debut from Chile-born director José Luis Valle, this deadpan comedy is an impressive masterclass in emotional subtlety and sense of timing. Minimalist in capturing the inner worlds of each character, Workers offers a biting, urgent commentary on the alienating ethics of modern labor.
NEIGHBORING SOUNDS / O SOM AO REDOR
A film by Kleber Mendonça Filho
(Brazil, 2012, 131 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes
“Set in a middle and upper middle class residential block in Recife, a city of over 4 millions in northeast Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s sharply observed debut feature lays bare the inner dynamics of Brazilian society. Behind a peaceful and comfortable façade is the collective fear of violence and crimes brought in by outsiders. Residents who enjoy a privileged life join forces to hire a security team to keep watch over the neighborhood. Fragmented vignettes piece together a complex world defined by class and racial disparity. With three features to date, including Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019), Mendonça has firmly earned a reputation for his penetrating takes on Brazilian life.” —The Museum of Modern Art
EL ÁNGEL
A film by Luis Ortega
(Argentina/Spain, 2018, 114 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play
“Carlitos’s blond curls and angelic blue eyes belie a confused and violent soul. From a young age, he has stolen just because he can. It’s a fascination he cannot shake, much to the chagrin of his loving and upstanding parents (Cécilia Roth and Luis Gnecco). When he meets Ramon (Chino Darín), the son of career criminals, the attraction he feels causes him to up the ante and engage in more serious criminal activity. Soon, the young men are killing.
Loosely based on the real-life Argentine serial killer Carlos Robledo Puch, nicknamed the “Death Angel” for his innocent, cherubic good looks, this film by Luis Ortega presents a Carlitos that is not quite trustful of reality and is always performing. He walks and dances as though a camera were recording his every move. In fact, he calls himself a spy for god. It’s as though life were a game and danger merely a way of feeling everything more intensely.
Splendidly paced and gorgeously photographed, El Ángel is a departure from the sparser nature of Ortega’s previous films, yet his attraction to outlaws remains. As we follow Carlitos (Lorenzo Ferro) on his stealing and killing sprees, we see there’s something almost innocent in his approach, as though he believes his actions don’t carry real, permanent consequences. Through this turbulent and confusing character, Ortega offers a meaningful reflection on how violence is glamourized on the screen.” —Toronto International Film Festival
TO KILL A MAN / MATAR A UN HOMBRE
A film by Alejandro Fernández Almendras
(Chile, 2014, 81 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime
“Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ fascinating third film is based on a true story, making the unthinkable plausible. A subtle, yet impressive, psychological revenge thriller. When their rundown neighborhood is terrorized by a tyrannical delinquent and his gang, home doesn't feel safe anymore. Gentle forester Jorge stoically undergoes the mindless teasing, but his young adult son, frustrated by so much pacifism and passivity, argues back counter-productively. The family is driven crazy when threats are addressed to Jorge’s wife and beautiful teenage daughter. Tortured contemplation in his huge jungle workspace makes Jorge realise there is only one way out. Almendras has succeeded fabulously in conveying what feelings of powerlessness and the fear and anger that slowly drive you mad do to a person. Not about murder, but about what it is like To Kill a Man.” —Rotterdam International Film Festival
VIAJE
A film by Paz Fábrega
(Costa Rica, 2015, 70 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“After meeting at a party, Luciana and Pedro spark up a spontaneous rendezvous. Eschewing the fraudulent nature of traditional relationships, the pair embarks on a spur of the moment journey together that takes them to the forest. As they explore the beauty in the nature that surrounds them, they camp out under the stars, go on hikes, indulge in the passions of their encounter, and discuss their personal beliefs surrounding love, obligations, and attraction. Lensed in lush black-and-white cinematography amidst the gorgeous backdrop of the Costa Rican forest, an honest and genuine relationship story unfolds, lending a feeling of realism to their storybook romance in a refreshing and youthful way. This is a story about attraction and commitment for a generation whose understandings of personal freedoms and traditional limitations are more open to interpretation.” —Tribeca Film Festival
BEHAVIOR / CONDUCTA
A film by Ernesto Daranas
(Cuba, 2014, 108 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling, Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play
Eleven-year-old Chala lives with his addict mother Sonia. In order to provide for the two of them, he raises carrier pigeons and trains fighting dogs with a man who may or may not be his biological father. School provides a stabilizing force in Chala's life, thanks to his close relationship with his spirited sixty-something teacher, Carmela. When the boy is sent off to live in a «re-education facility» and Carmela mounts a campaign to have him released, she becomes the target of a witch hunt spearheaded by a school board administrator who regards Carmela's permissive beliefs as incongruent with the new Cuba. But the idealistic, strong-willed woman remains defiant and manages to recruit allies from amongst her fellow teachers, leading to a conflict in which one boy's future reflects the systemic dynamics of contemporary Cuba.
GÜEROS
A film by Alonso Ruizpalacios
(Mexico, 2014, 111 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling TV, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and iTunes
“A months-long student strike at the National University throws roommates Sombra and Santos into a droll sort of limbo in their shabby apartment in Mexico City, whiling away the hours pining for the girl from the pirate radio show and tricking their neighbor’s daughter into helping them steal electricity. Their idiosyncratic routine is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Sombra’s teenage brother, Tomás, who has been exiled from his home by their mother following an incident involving a baby and a water balloon. The trio sets out on a road trip in search of Tomás’s hero, fabled folk-rock star Epigmenio Cruz, traversing across the city through perilous slums and the rebellious halls of the university to the ritzy nightlife downtown. Director Alonso Ruizpalacios arrives as a bold new voice in Mexican cinema with his energetic and imaginative feature debut—a cool, retro, black-and-white portrait of Mexico City and of three restless young men searching for a purpose and identity in a city of millions.” —Tribeca Film Festival
VIOLA
A film by Matías Piñeiro
(Argentina, 2012, 65 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and iTunes
“Matías Piñeiro is one of contemporary Argentine cinema’s most sensuous and sophisticated new voices. In his latest film, Viola, he ingeniously fashions out of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night a seductive roundelay among young actors and lovers in present-day Buenos Aires. Mixing melodrama with sentimental comedy, philosophical conundrum with matters of the heart, Viola bears all the signature traits of a Piñeiro film: serpentine camera movements and slippages of language, an elliptical narrative and a playful confusion of reality and artifice.” —Film at Lincoln Center
AUGUST WINDS / VENTOS DE AGOSTO
A film by Gabriel Mascaro
(Brazil, 2014, 77 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play
“Gabriel Mascaro’s first narrative work is a sultry, richly sensorial meditation on sex, death, and decay in the tropics. In a remote seaside village, a steamy love affair between a city girl (Dandara de Morais) and a country boy (Geová Manoel dos Santos) unfolds on a lush coconut farm—until their languor is interrupted by a chilling discovery. Though working from a script, Mascaro’s documentary impulse prevails in his attention to the tempestuous meteorology (the director himself plays a scientist researching the winds) and weather-beaten landscapes of coastal Brazil in the climate-change era. Through stunningly composed images, he creates a haunting portrait of a place where life can be washed away at any moment.” —Film at Lincoln Center
THE WAVES / LAS OLAS
A film by Adrián Biniez
(Uruguay/Argentina, In Spanish with English subtitles, 2017, 88 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Mowies
The third feature film by Argentine-born Uruguay-based filmmaker Adrián Biniez (Gigante, El Cinco) is a playful, imaginative, and existentialist time-traveling tale about a man’s misadventures. Exhausted after leaving work, Alfonso, a man in his late thirties, goes to the beach and dives into the sea. Coming to the surface, he finds himself on another beach, in another time. His parents are waiting for him, calling to him from the water’s edge. Alfonso sees and understands everything as an adult, even if they treat him like an 11 year old. So begins a fantastic, achronological voyage through the various holidays of his life, as he comes face to face with past girlfriends, teenage and childhood pals, his daughter, and his own loneliness.
GLUE
A film by Alexis dos Santos
(Argentina/UK, 2006, 115 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Mowies
“In the extensive sub-genre of films about growth pains and the sexual awakening of young people, you need a good pedigree to come up with anything new. With minimal means, Alexis Dos Santos succeeds. With the money he was given for project development by the Hubert Bals Fund, Dos Santos set up a workshop, cast the protagonists, found some more money and shot digitally, and partly on Super8, in a windy corner of the desert in Patagonia in the town where he grew up. He found himself there in 1978 at the age of eight because his parents had to flee Buenos Aires for political reasons. One of the underlying themes in Glue is also the feeling that you're in the wrong place, augmented by the desire to be rebellious and a punk, but far from the possibilities of the big city, and far from kindred spirits. Atmospheric and acoustically shot, and wonderfully acted by the entirely young cast, Glue apparently effortlessly evokes the many ambivalent feelings of puberty. We see the small world through the eyes of 15-year-old Lucas. His parents' relationship is unstable at best, but he doesn't want to think about that too much. Together with his best friend Nacho he makes friends with the wayward girl Andrea. They lead a life of hanging around and rocking - for the connoisseurs think of the Violent Femmes before they learnt to play. And, of course, they go through the early stages of sex and drugs, or what passes for these.” —New Directors / New Films
JUAN OF THE DEAD / JUAN DE LOS MUERTOS
A film by Alejandro Brugués
(Cuba, 2011, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video
“Juan is a survivor. He survived Cuba’s 1975 intervention in Angola, the 1980 Mariel boatlift and the island’s Special Period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He WILL survive this new crisis: a pandemic that’s turning the residents of Havana into zombies. Juan will not let an opportunity go to waste and, alongside trigger happy Lazaro and his son California, opens a zombie exterminating business. Alejandro Brugués’ second-feature may wear its influences on its sleeve (its title is an obvious callback to Edgar Wright’s equally funny zombie masterpiece) but in its heady mix of gore, social and political satire, and affection for its ragtag warriors, Juan of the Dead, an official selection of the 47th Chicago International Film Festival, is the legitimate heir to George Romero’s throne. Juan of the Dead is also a celebration of resilience and of that very Cuban concept of resolver, of making do with what you have. Given our current crisis, we should all be like Juan.” —Chicago Film Festival
CRONOS
A film by Guillermo de Toro
(Mexico, 1993, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on The Criterion Channel, HBO Max, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and iTunes
“Guillermo del Toro made an auspicious and audacious feature debut with Cronos, a highly unorthodox tale about the seductiveness of the idea of immortality. Kindly antiques dealer Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) happens upon an ancient golden device in the shape of a scarab, and soon finds himself the possessor and victim of its sinister, addictive powers, as well as the target of a mysterious American named Angel (a delightfully crude and deranged Ron Perlman). Featuring marvelous special makeup effects and the haunting imagery for which del Toro has become world-renowned, Cronos is a dark, visually rich, and emotionally captivating fantasy.” —The Criterion Collection
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL / AL OTRO LADO DEL MURO
A film by Pau Ortiz
(Mexico/Spain, 2017, 68 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Ovid.tv
Winner of the Best International Documentary Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival and the Chicago Film Festival, The Other Side of the Wall tells the story of Honduran teenagers Rocío and Ale, who are left with no choice but to play the role of both mother and father to their two younger siblings after their mother is sentenced to 10 years in a Mexican prison on questionable charges. As apprehensions about the future intensify, Ale must make the difficult decision between keeping the family together in Mexico or breaking them apart to cross the US border for work.
SEDUCTION OF THE FLESH / SEDUÇÃO DA CARNE
A film by Júlio Bressane
(Brazil, 2018, 67 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
A tenacious writer, Siloé gave up on leaving her home after her husband’s death. While engaging in frequent conversations with a parrot, she’s always observed by a large portion of raw meat: her erotic relationship with it illustrates metaphorically the arduous realities of agriculture in Brazil. Júlio Bressane is a major figure of Brazil’s underground Cinema Marginal, a radical movement that developed in opposition to Cinema Novo. His recent work is an eloquent, eccentric riddle: a woman’s one-way conversation with a parrot that acts as a reflection between memory and prophecy.
OPEN CAGE / LOS BAÑISTAS
A film by Max Zunino
(Mexico, 2014, 83 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Mowies
“Open Cage takes a subtle and ultimately hopeful look into one of society’s mayor issues: the abandonment to its youth and senior populations. Among those affected when the economy collapses are rebel teenager Flavia and her elderly and grumpy neighbor Martín. Outside the building there is a camp of protesters among whom human values still govern coexistence. However, its members have a serious problem: they need a shower. Flavia, Martín, and their neighbors down the street will learn to relate to each other, not only to survive the crisis, but to rediscover the meaning of their lives.
“Juan Carlos Colombo as Martín and Sofía Espinosa as Flavia, carry the film with incredible chemistry. With Open Cage, Max Zunino proposes an optimistic solution to a conflict that may appear hard to solve, but that may be lessened by calling on small individual changes that allow us to get along better with others.” —Pragda
THE SUMMIT / LA CUMBRE
A film by Santiago Mitre
(Argentina/France/Spain, 2017, 114 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, and Google Play
“Santiago Mitre (The Student) continues his ongoing cinematic investigation into politics with his third feature, set at a summit of Latin American presidents in Chile. Here, the Argentine president—played by acclaimed actor Ricardo Darín—endures a political and familial drama that will force him to face his own demons. This high-profile thriller, an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, boasts an impressive international cast including Dolores Fonzi, Erica Rivas (Wild Tales), Elena Anaya (The Skin I Live In), Paulina García (Gloria), Daniel Giménez Cacho (Zama), Alfredo Castro (The Club), and Christian Slater.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
EL PREMIO / THE PRIZE
A film by Paula Markovitch
(Mexico/Argentina, 2011, 99 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming for free for a limited time courtesy of the Morelia Film Festival
Winner of the Silver Bear Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement at the Berlin Film Festival, the Best Film Award at the Morelia Film Festival, and four Ariel Awards including for Best Film and Best First Film, Paula Markovitch’s debut feature The Prize is set during the years of Argentine dictatorship and its notorious Dirty War (1975–83). The film tells the story of an anxious young mother and her precocious daughter who flee Buenos Aires for the temporary seclusion of a ramshackle cottage on a remote beach. What begins as a childhood idyll is soon contaminated by the larger political crisis. Markovitch draws on his own experiences to capture the lacunae of childhood’s social and psychological worlds in this exquisitely acted and atmospheric drama about innocence in tumultuous times.
ARABY / ARÁBIA
A film by João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa
(Brazil, 2017, 97 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Proyectr, iTunes, and Amazon Prime
“Araby begins by observing the day-to-day of Andre, a teenager who lives in an industrial area in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. After a local factory worker, Cristiano, has an accident on the job, he leaves behind a handwritten journal, which the boy proceeds to read with relish. The film shifts into road-movie mode to recount the story of Cristiano, an ex-con and eternal optimist who journeys across Brazil in search of work, enduring no shortage of economic hardship but gaining an equal amount of self-knowledge. Invigorating and ever surprising, Araby is a humanist work of remarkable poise and maturity.” —Film at Lincoln Center
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT / NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ
A film by Patricio Guzmán
(France/Germany/Chile, 2011, 90 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand and Ovid.tv
In the first entry in his trilogy of landscape and memory, film master director Patricio Guzman travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky is so translucent that it allows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe.
The Atacama is also a place where the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, "disappeared" by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973.
So while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families' histories. Melding the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the women, Nostalgia for the Light is a gorgeous, moving, and deeply personal odyssey.
THE SECOND MOTHER / QUE HORAS ELA VOLTA?
A film by Anna Muylaert
(Brazil, 2015, 114 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes
An excitingly fresh take on some classic themes and ideas, The Second Mother centers around Val, a hard-working live-in housekeeper in modern day Sao Paulo. Val is perfectly content to take care of every one of her wealthy employers’ needs, from cooking and cleaning to being a surrogate mother to their teenage son, who she has raised since he was a toddler. But when Val’s estranged daughter Jessica suddenly shows up the unspoken but intrinsic class barriers that exist within the home are thrown into disarray. Jessica is smart, confident, and ambitious, and refuses to accept the upstairs/downstairs dynamic, testing relationships and loyalties and forcing everyone to reconsider what family really means.
LA FAMILIA
A film by Gustavo Rondón Córdova
(Venezuela/Chile/Norway, 2017, 82 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime
Gustavo Rondón Córdova’s acclaimed debut feature, winner of the Best Ibero-American Feature Film Award at the Miami Film Festival, follows twelve-year-old Pedro, who roams the streets with his friends, raised by the violent urban atmosphere around him in a working class district of Caracas. After Pedro seriously injures another boy in a rough game of play, single father Andrés decides they must flee to hide. Andrés will realize he is a father incapable of controlling his own teenage son, but their situation will bring them closer than they have ever been.
ALBA
A film by Ana Cristina Barragán
(Ecuador/Mexico/Greece, 2016, 98 min. In Spanish; English subtitles)
Now streaming on Mowies
“When her bedridden single mother is hospitalized, Alba, a shy, lonely 11 year old, is sent to live with Igor, the father she hardly knows. An eccentric, solitary figure, Igor lives in complete isolation in a run-down apartment, though an old photo Alba comes across reveals that he was once a radiant, happy young man. Few words are exchanged between father and daughter, yet the two slowly get to know one another. Ana Cristina Barragán's sensitive, award-winning feature debut has brought much excitement to Ecuadorian cinema.” —The Museum of Modern Art
INVASIÓN
A film by Abner Benaim
(Panama/Argentina, 2014, 93 mins. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Mowies
Winner of the Cinema Tropical Award Best Documentary, Invasion—Panama’s first film to be submitted for the Best Foreign Language Oscar—is a witty and engaging documentary that talks about the perils of sovereignty, democracy, and endangered virtues of today’s ultra-capitalist world. Using reenactments and interviews, filmmaker Abner Benaim documents the collective memory—as well as the selective amnesia—of his fellow Panamanians around the 1989 U.S. invasion to overthrow General Manuel Noriega. The lives of the people of the Central American nation were deeply shaken by the American military incursion. The film not only explores the mechanisms in which memory is turned into history, but holds a mirror to the present to show how the recent past shapes Panama today.
GIGANTE
A film by Adrián Biniez
(Uruguay/Argentina, 2009, 85 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand and Tubi
“Winner of the Grand Jury Prize Silver Bear, the Alfred Bauer Prize and the Best First Feature Award at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, Biniez's promising debut feature film Gigante tells the story of Jara, a shy and lonely 35-year-old security guard at a supermarket on the outskirts of Montevideo. He works the night shift, monitoring the surveillance cameras of the entire building. One night Jara discovers Julia, a 25-year-old cleaning woman, through one of the cameras and is immediately attracted to her. Night after night, he watches her on the cameras while she works. Soon he starts following her after work: to the cinema, the beach and even to a date with another man. Jara's life becomes a series of routines and rituals around Julia, but eventually he finds himself at a crossroad and must decide whether to give up his obsession or confront it.” —BAM Cinéma
EL VELADOR
A film by Natalia Almada
(Mexico/USA, 2011, 72 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Ovid.tv
“Natalia Almada’s astonishing new film takes us to a vast cemetery where notorious drug lords sleep. From dusk to dawn, Martin, the night watchman, guards this labyrinthine graveyard on the Mexican border. As young widows sweep the marble floors of elaborate crypts, luxurious cars glide silently between tombs, and poor laborers construct lavish new mausoleums. This city of the dead sits at the intersection between ordinary life and the violent conflict of Mexico’s drug wars, which have already claimed over 60,000 lives.” —The Museum of Modern Art
CRYSTAL FAIRY & THE MAGICAL CACTUS
A film by Sebastián Silva
(Chile/USA, 2013, 98 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Sling TV, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and Google Play
On a trip through Chile a boorish American expat named Jamie (Michael Cera, Arrested Development) and three Chilean brothers plan to set off in search of the prized San Pedro cactus and its promise of beachy hallucinations. But in the previous night’s drunken stupor Jamie invites a free- spirited fellow American (Gaby Hoffmann, Transparent) along on their mescaline-driven road trip, and her devil-may-care worldview gives them more of an adventure than any of them had bargained for. Winner of the Cinema Dramatic Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus by Chilean director Sebastián Silva (The Maid) is a “hilarious drug-fueled road movie” (IndieWire).
LAND AND SHADE / LA TIERRA Y LA SOMBRA
A film by César Augusto Acevedo
(Colombia, 2015, 94 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand, Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon Prime
“A poetic and devastating statement on how environmental issues impact every aspect of life, César Augusto Acevedo’s Camera d’Or–winning directorial debut is not to be missed. The elderly Alfonso (Haimer Leal) returns to the small house in Valle del Cauca he left 17 years earlier in order to care for his bedridden son Geraldo (Edison Raigosa), who suffers from a mysterious ailment related to the harsh farming techniques of the sugar-cane plantations around them. Tensions quietly simmer between Alfonso and his ex-wife (the wonderful Hilda Ruiz), but familial ties and pride keep them tied to the land in Acevedo’s meditative and painterly allegory.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
BLEAK STREET / LA CALLE DE LA AMARGURA
A film by Arturo Ripstein
(Mexico/Spain, 2015, 99 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Director, Feature Film
Now streaming on iTunes
“Veteran auteur and master of the Mexican bizarre, Arturo Ripstein (DEEP CRIMSON) – an influence on a generation of his country’s directors – plunges into a Mexico City demimonde of crime, prostitution, and luchador wrestling. The film’s luscious black-and-white cinematography recounts a true crime story of twin mini-luchadores (who never remove their masks), the mother who adores them, and two prostitutes whose best days are long behind them. Ripstein imbues his Bunuelian tableaux with both empathy and dark humor.” — Film Forum
THE SWIRL / EL REMOLINO
A film by Laura Herrero Garvin
(Mexico, 2016, 73 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on DA Films Americas
“Perched on the bloated banks of the Usumacinta River in Chiapas, Mexico, El Remolino was forged decades ago by five families who saw promise in the area’s dense jungle and lightly mountainous landscape. Today, the town struggles to keep its school open, its farms dry enough to yield viable crops, and its livestock from drowning in the rainy season deluge. While many have fled, strikingly graceful and stoic siblings Pedro and Esther Benitez remain to conquer not only the flooded terrain but also the ghosts of a painful shared childhood.
“Pedro dreams of finding a loving husband and adopting a child. Esther wants to resurrect her studies and see her children graduate into thriving careers. Considerations of feminine identity and power, memory, and the influence of family poignantly converge in director Laura Herrero Garvin’s languid and beautifully filmed observation. This is a documentary shot with such dreamy yet acute depth and clarity that one can see almost anything in the water’s reflection.” —Full Frame Film Festival
THE CLAN / EL CLAN
A film by Pablo Trapero
(Argentina, 2015, 110 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, iTunes
Old habits die hard: The “disappearances” that marked the Videla regime in Argentina continued after the dictator’s fall in 1981, but the motive changed from politics to money. Arquimedes Puccio (Guillermo Francella, brilliantly cold-blooded here), kidnapped wealthy men and women and held them for ransom in his home, using domineering control over his family and - for a time—the tacit protection of police to do it. Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, this riveting true story directed by Pablo Trapero boasts great period detail (including a truly inspired soundtrack) and shocking violence, and was a huge box office hit in Argentina.
VIRUS TROPICAL
A film by Santiago Caicedo
(Colombia/Ecuador, 2017, 97 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI and Amazon Prime
“In Virus Tropical, director Santiago Caicedo takes biographical nuance to a new level using animation as his creative medium. Framed by a discovery of key relationships within a family and also oneself, this gripping film follows the life of Paola, born and raised in a somewhat traditional Colombian family — if you consider a father who is a priest, a mother who is a psychic, and completely distinct, but relatable siblings as “traditional.” Thanks to an empowering female community and her unique feminine lens, Paola strives for independence and a firm sense of self in the face of sweeping stereotypes. Through panning images across the years, the black-and-white animation creates a timeless feel, and the film’s interconnecting stories will appease your eyeballs and feed your spirit with giggles and tears.” —Toronto International Film Festival
PIZZA, BEER, AND CIGARETTES / PIZZA, BIRRA, FASO
A film by Bruno Stagnaro and Adrián Caetano
(Argentina, 1998, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
“Bruno Stagnaro and Adrián Caetano’s milestone debut feature heralded the deeply influential New Argentine Cinema, fostered the careers of a vast generation of international filmmakers, and fueled the Latin American cinema renaissance of the past two decades. Rarely seen in the United States, Pizza, Beer, Cigarrettes is set in the Buenos Aires criminal underworld, and follows two impoverished teens who graduate from petty theft to armed robbery, though they’re incompetent at both.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
NORA’S WILL / CINCO DÍAS SIN NORA
A film by Mariana Chenillo
(Mexico, 2010, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand
Nora's Will is a comedy like nothing you've seen before, a truly unique tale of lost faith and eternal love from one of Mexico’s most talented new filmmakers, writer/director Mariana Chenillo. Nora's Will was named Mexico’s Best Picture of the Year, taking home seven Ariel Awards. Chenillo is the first female director ever to win Mexico’s Best Picture award. When his ex-wife Nora dies right before Passover, José (Fernando Luján) is forced to stay with her body until she can be properly put to rest. He soon realizes he is part of Nora's plan to bring her family back together for one last Passover feast, leading José to reexamine their relationship and rediscover their undying love for each other.
ADRIANA’S PACT / EL PACTO DE ADRIANA
A film by Lissette Orozco
(Chile, 2017, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitle)
Now streaming on Ovid.tv and Kanopy
Adriana was always director Lissette Orozco's favorite aunt. A confident woman who had settled in Australia, one day in 2007 she is suddenly arrested while visiting her family in Chile and accused of having worked for dictator Pinochet’s notorious secret police, DINA. As the aunt denies these accusations, her niece sets out to investigate Adriana’s history, managing the tough balancing act of maintaining her role as both niece and filmmaker. “Raw and compelling… a brave documentary” (Jay Weissberg, Variety) and Winner of a Special Jury Mention at the Cinema Tropical Awards, Orozco’s extremely personal debut feature is a riveting personal journey that serves as a timely account of lies and self-deception, both within a family and a nation.
MARIMBAS FROM HELL / MARIMBAS DEL INFIERNO
A film by Julio Hernández Cordón
(Guatemala/Mexico/France, 2010, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
“Straddling the line between documentary and fiction, Hernández Cordón’s second feature tells the story of the improbable artistic collaboration between Don Alfonso, a homeless marimba player, and Blacko, a pioneer of Guatemalan heavy metal music. Both meet thanks to Chiquilin, a young outlaw who casually describes his escape from prison as he helps the musicians find funding for their project. The characters, alternately moving and funny, play themselves in this satire about the hardships of making art in Guatemala.” —Film at Lincoln Center
POST TENEBRAS LUX
A film by Carlos Reygadas
(Mexico/France/Germany/Holland, 2012, 115 min. In Spanish, English and French with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Prime
Winner of the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Post Tenebras Lux (“light after darkness”), ostensibly the story of an upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in domestic crises and class friction, is a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Carlos Reygadas conjures a host of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as Reygadas’s real-life daughter wanders a muddy field and farm animals loudly circle and thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a swingers’ bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns entrancing and mystifying, Post Tenebras Lux palpably explores the primal conflicts of the human condition.
LOS LOBOS
A film by Samuel Kishi Leopo
(Mexico, 2019, 94 min. In Spanish, English and Cantonese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on HBO Max“Eight year old Max and his younger brother Leo don't have much, but they have each other and their mother Lucía. And they share a dream as well: To visit Disneyland one day. The family has recently emigrated to the USA from Mexico, and while Lucía tries to finance their new life by doing odd jobs, the two brothers spend their days in their sparsely furnished one-room flat. The walls of the room, which they are forbidden to leave, become a projection screen for imaginative adventures and open a window on their new life. Director Samuel Kishi Leopo recalls aspects of his own childhood in Los Lobos and resituates them in a currently highly charged context – brutally honest and yet poetic, melancholic and full of hope.” —Berlin Film Festival
MACHUCA
A film by Andrés Wood
(Chile/Spain/UK, 2004, 120 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime and Kanopy
Released to widespread acclaim in Latin America and internationally, Machuca explores Chile’s bloody 1973 coup through the astonishingly intimate coming-of-age story of a pair of 12-year-old boys. From opposite extremes of society, Gonzalo (Matías Quer) and Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna) form and unlikely friendship as politics rip their world apart.
Machuca is not just a political drama, but a poignant coming-of-age film, with perfectly pitched performances by the young actors, its story drawn from the filmmaker’s childhood. Machuca—one of the first narrative Chilean films to deal with the coup, and a hit at home—was another step in Chile’s slow reconciliation with its historical past.
Director and co-writer Andrés Wood, himself eight when Pinochet seized power, resurrects searing images of life—and tons of innocence—amidst a crumbling democracy. Cinematographer Miguel Juan Littin’s arresting visuals are accompanied by a lively, evocative soundtrack, adding further vibrancy to this unforgettable story. The film premiered at Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight and has won numerous festival prizes including the Audience Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Machuca was Chile’s official entry for the 2005 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
DIDN'T DO IT FOR LOVE
A film by Monika Treut
(Germany, 1997, 80 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
With: Eva Norvind, Jan Baracz, Rene Cardona Jr., José Luis Cuevas, Nicolá Echevarría, Juan Ferrara, José Flores, Juan José Gurrola.
Now streaming on Vimeo on Demand, presented as part of Anthology Film Archives’ dual retrospective ‘Female Misbehaviour: The Films of Monika Treut and Elfi Mikesch’ available through August 4.
A fascinating look into the incredible life of sexual revolutionary Eva Norvind, alias Mistress Ava Taurel, born Eva Johanne Chegodaieva Skonskaya, the daughter of a Russian prince and a Finnish sculptress in Trondheim, Norway. The film recounts the phases in her adventurous life-story: from the early success as a showgirl in Paris and Québec, as a Nordic Marilyn Monroe in the Mexican B-movies of the sixties, and finally, as the most famous dominatrix in New York during the Eighties. Eva Norvind studied Forensic Psychology to be able to help sexual offenders as well as a way of searching for the dark secret of her own sexuality. It is the story of an odyssey through the wilderness of sexuality that has not yet reached its destination.
AGAIN, ONCE AGAIN / DE NUEVO OTRA VEZ
A film by Romina Paula
(Argentina, 2019, 84 min. In Spanish and German with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
“Moving freely between documentary and scripted drama, Argentine novelist, actor, and playwright Romina Paula’s debut feature is a rich and surprising personal work exploring the poignant emotional landscape of motherhood. Paula—who recently appeared in La Flor—plays a fictionalized version of herself, a mother who returns to her childhood home in Buenos Aires, which ignites memories and feelings of her life before starting a family. Performing alongside her real mother and three-year-old son, Paula creates an intimate, shape-shifting film full of affection and wisdom.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
IN THE INTENSE NOW / NO INTENSO AGORA
A film by João Moreira Salles
(Brazil, 2017, In Portuguese, French, and Czech with English subtitles)
Now streaming on OVID.tv
“In the Intense Now immerses itself in the excitement and heady idealism of the ‘60s. Inspired by Chris Marker’s meditative essays on political radicalism, João Moreira Salles brilliantly collages archival materials from Paris ’68, Prague Spring (and the Soviet invasion), and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He explores how the intensity of thinking one is revolutionizing the world can feel a lot like the ecstasy of falling in love. And when that moment fades, life’s quotidian realities can become a hard pill to swallow. This is a film that puts those profoundly significant events of 50 years ago into something like proportion. It’s a movie for everyone who ever marched for civil rights, shouted an anti-war slogan, or expected the women’s movement to usher in a brave new world.” —Film Forum
TIME SHARE / TIEMPO COMPARTIDO
A film by Sebastián Hofmann
(Mexico/Netherlands, 2017, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
“Pedro and Eva arrive at the Vistamar mega-resort to “heal” their lives. Settling into a private villa with their young son, they’re surprised to find another family at the door; a clerical mistake has left them double-booked. The families make do, attending the resort’s time-share seminar and enjoying its pools and activities, and they are catered to by the staff of “leisure experts,” including Andres and Gloria, an estranged, middle-aged couple. While Gloria advances her career, Andres toils in a laundry job, dubious of the resort’s new corporate ownership. As Pedro becomes paranoid that his family is being pried away from him, he and Andres band together to expose the sinister forces at work in the tropical paradise. Propelled by a wry, subversive tone and an unnerving aesthetic, Sebastián Hofmann (Halley) cleverly lures us into his dark imagination via the sunny Vistamar, where paradise is not only within reach—it’s on sale. Time Share offers a haunting vision of humanity, lounging by the pool as an insidious corporate organism callously dangles the false promise of happiness and healing. Enjoy your stay!” —Sundance Film Festival
THE APOSTATE / EL APÓSTATA
A film by Federico Veiroj
(Spain/France/Uruguay, 2015, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes Netflix, and Tubi
“With wry humor and deep conviction, Uruguayan filmmaker Federico Veiroj (A Useful Life) observes a young Spaniard’s maddening efforts to abandon the Catholic Church. Petitioning the local bishop in Madrid to hand over his baptismal records, the philosophy student is soon confronted with a stubborn bureaucracy and comically agonized tests of his fidelity and patience. Scenes of pithy theological discussion (performed by the film’s excellent ensemble cast) are interspersed with oneiric flights of imagination, cohering to produce a work that is by turns seriously philosophical and irreverently funny. While Veiroj’s tone may be more gently ironic than that of Luis Buñuel (his spiritual forebear), The Apostate nonetheless traces in bracing fashion the competing forces of conformity and rebellion, spiritual yearning and carnal desire, at war within us all.” —New Directors / New Films
THE MAID / LA NANA
A film by Sebastián Silva
(Chile, 2009, 95 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on iTunes, Amazon Prime, and Sundance Now
“At the age of 41, Raquel has already spent over 20 years working for the Valdes family as a live-in maid. She knows each member of the household intimately, and they are fond of her. Raquel’s devotion to the family is absolute, as is the unmistakable boundary between employer and employee. This kind of relationship—equally familial, amiable, and unnatural—is commonplace in many Latin American households, and masks a deeply rooted class divide. Feisty, grumpy, motherly, and humorous, Raquel lives in the center of the film, rather than in the background where a maid usually ‘belongs,’ making Sebastián Silva’s second feature especially tender and perceptive.” —The Museum of the Modern Art
ABOUT TWELVE / JUANA A LOS 12
A film by Martín Shanly
(Argentina, 2014, 80 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
The problem facing Juana, a 12-year-old girl, is imperceptible to others. She might even be even unaware of it herself, but it is latent in every shot of Martín Shanly’s debut feature: Juana fails easily. She performs poorly at her private British school in the outskirts of Buenos Aires and even worse in her social life among friends and family.
About 12 nurtures a rare bitterness in its particular mixture of uncomfortable comedy and tempered tragedy. In the depiction of female bodies out-of-sync with the world they inhabit, Shanly’s film successfully blooms as an odd cousin to Todd Haynes’s Safe and Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse. The lead performance by Rosario Shanly—the director’s sister—transcends masks thanks to a mise-en-scène that manages to be as frail and mysterious as its main character. Juana’s inadequacy to deal with the most basic social rules turns her apparently passive behavior into an intimate revolutionary act, a silent cry of resistance that is both funny and piercing. Juana is a gentle girl, a soul maybe too beautiful for this world.
Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN
A film by Alfonso Cuarón
(Mexico, 2001, In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on the Criterion Channel, iTunes, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Sling TV
“This smash road comedy from Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón is that rare movie to combine raunchy subject matter and emotional warmth. Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna shot to international stardom as a pair of horny Mexico City teenagers from different classes who, after their girlfriends jet off to Italy for the summer, are bewitched by a gorgeous older Spanish woman (Maribel Verdú) they meet at a wedding. When she agrees to accompany them on a trip to a faraway beach, the three form an increasingly intense and sensual alliance that ultimately strips them both physically and emotionally bare. Shot with elegance and dexterity by the great Emmanuel Lubezki, Y tu mamá también is a funny and moving look at human desire.” —The Criterion Collection
JESÚS
A film by Fernando Guzzoni
(Chile/France/Germany/Colombia, Greece, 2016, 83 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, and Tubi
“Jesús, an arrogant, third-rate Justin Bieber-type, has essentially dropped out of high school and lives in an apartment with his fellow boy band mates. One night, he and his bros get really drunk and beat another teen so badly that he falls into a coma and dies. With the police eager to find the culprit or culprits, Jesús’s friends immediately turn on him, which leaves only his widowed father to help. Although their relationship has been strained, his dad goes to extremes to protect him. Exquisitely shot, and moodily lit, this tense thriller will keep you guessing about the outcome until the final frame.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
FAT, BALD, SHORT MAN / GORDO, CALVO Y BAJITO
A film by Carlos Osuna
(Colombia, 2011, 97 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Tubi
“Antonio—the fat, bald, and short man of the title—is a functionary in a notary office in Bogota, Colombia, a middle-aged virgin whose life has become a pitiable routine. As alone as a character in an Edward Hopper painting, Antonio suffers the indifference of society and the abusive, macho humor of his co-workers, until the day a new executive director comes to run the office. Señor Enriquez is as short, fat, and bald as Antonio, but clearly unafraid to be a success. The presence of Enriquez challenges Antonio’s belief that he is destined to be a failure and presents him with the terrifying possibility of confronting his own fears and desires. Beautifully mixing rotoscope animation—used in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life and Through a Scanner Darkly—with other two and three-dimensional techniques, first-time director Carlos Osuna puts us inside Antonio’s sad and beautiful inner world to tell a moving universal story of one man’s struggle to be himself.” —Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
THE SHARKS / LOS TIBURONES
A film by Lucía Garibaldi
(Uruguay/Argentina/Spain, 2019, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video
“Lucía Garibaldi’s assured and understated debut feature is an engaging and provocative coming-of-age tale. The film tells the story of 14-year-old Rosina (played by the wonderful newcomer Romina Bentancur), who lives in a quiet beach resort rumored to be plagued by sharks. Upon meeting the older Joselo, Rosina begins to circle him, as if inspired by the area’s mysterious predators. Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Best Director Award, The Sharks adds Garibaldi’s name to an exciting list of powerful female voices emerging in South America cinema.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
THE MODERN JUNGLE
A film by Charles Fairbanks and Saul Kak
(Mexico/USA, 2016, 72 min. In Zoque and Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube and Google Play
“Centered on the relationship between indigenous and Western culture, The Modern Jungle documents the tensions that emerge when an elderly Zoque couple come into contact with global capitalism and the filmmaking process. Carmen and Juan are fighting to keep the small plot of land they’ve worked on their whole lives in southern Mexico. Juan, who is also a shaman, struggles with a hernia that traditional methods can’t treat, and soon gets sucked into a nutritional supplement pyramid scheme. Fairbanks and Kak (himself an advocate for indigenous rights) disclose upfront that Juan and Maria are being paid, dismissing long-held myths about “pure” relationships between ethnographer and subject.” —Film at Lincoln Center
THE HEADLESS WOMAN / LA MUJER SIN CABEZA
A film by Lucrecia Martel
(Argentina/France/Italy/Spain, 2008, 87 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime
A bourgeois middle-aged dentist named Veronica (María Onetto) drives alone on a dirt road, becomes distracted, and runs over something. Immediately she becomes disoriented, unmoored from her identity and reality, like a sleepwalker who’s actually awake. As the week go on, she becomes obsessed with the possibility that she may have killed someone: a young boy whose body is found in a roadside canal. Veronica tries to piece together what happened while her husband systematically erases her tracks. A chilling parable about a woman in shock, Lucrecia Martel’s third feature explores the intricacies of class and the role of women in a male-dominated society.
MUCHO MUCHO AMOR
A film by Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch
(USA, 2020, 96 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix
“Extravagant Puerto Rican astrologer, psychic, and gender nonconforming legend Walter Mercado charmed the world for over 30 years with his televised horoscopes. Equal parts Oprah, Liberace, and Mr. Rogers, Walter was a celebrated daily part of Latin culture—until one day in 2007 he mysteriously disappeared. Over a decade later, the filmmakers find Walter and invite us into his home and interior world as he prepares to restore his legacy in the public eye.
“The film explores Walter’s complex story from the rural sugarcane fields of Puerto Rico to international astrology superstardom, rising above homophobia and the heteronormative beliefs of Latin society with a message of love and hope. From Latinx co-directors Kareem Tabsch and Cristina Costantini (Science Fair, Festival Favorite Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival), Mucho Mucho Amor is a love letter to Walter Mercado. The filmmakers, who grew up watching him with their abuelitos, craft a film with levity and a playful spirit. Light-years ahead of his time, Walter has become a nostalgic cult icon of self-expression and positivity for the gender-fluid youth of today.” —Sundance Film Festival
WAITING FOR THE CARNIVAL / ESTOU ME GUARDANDO PARA QUANDO O CARNAVAL CHEGAR
A film by Marcelo Gomes
(Brazil, 2019, 86 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on OVID.tv
“The most recent film by acclaimed director Marcelo Gomes (Once Upon a Time Veronica) is an engaging documentary portrait of relentless capitalism, centered in the small Brazilian village of Toritama. Here, more than 20 million pairs of jeans are produced in makeshift factories every year. The locals work nonstop, proud to be the masters of their own time. During Carnival—the area’s only leisure time of the year—they sell their belongings and flee to the beaches in search of ephemeral happiness. When Ash Wednesday arrives, a new work cycle begins.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
25 WATTS
A film by Pablo Stoll and Juan Pablo Rebella
(Uruguay, 2001, 94 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Mowies
“25 Watts is a a shaggy, comedic look at young slackers in urban Uruguay. Inspired by the American independent movement of the 1990s, Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll offer a unique take on the slacker lifestyle with 25 Watts. Beginning on a Saturday morning in Montevideo, the film follows Leche, Javi, and Seba as they toss back drinks and avoid work or responsibility. Set over the course of 24 hours, the low-budget black-and-white film maintains a mellow yet probing attitude as it explores a particular neighborhood and its bizarre cast of characters. 25 Watts offers a rare cinematic glimpse into urban Uruguay through the eyes of those who know it best, the guys who don’t have anything better to do than bum around the place they call home.” —Facets Cinémathèque
THE TINIEST PLACE / EL LUGAR MÁS PEQUEÑO
A film by Tatiana Huezo
(Mexico, 2011, 104 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on OVID.tv
“On the surface The Tiniest Place is the story of Cinquera, a village literally wiped off the official map during El Salvador's 12-year civil war. But on a deeper level it is a story about the ability to rise, to rebuild and reinvent oneself after a tragedy. Holding the past and present in focus together, the film takes us to the tiny village nestled in the mountains amidst the humid Salvadoran jungle, while villagers, survivors of the war's massacres, recount their journey home at war's end. When they first returned their village no longer existed.
Nevertheless they decided to stay. And over the years as they worked the land, built new homes and started new families, the people of Cinquera learned to live with sorrow. The Tiniest Place juxtaposes scenes of contemporary village life, of Cinquera's remarkable renaissance, with stories of the war - how conflict arose, civil war erupted, and hopes for liberation turned to struggles for survival. 'Don't cry when they kill me' a mother recalls her 14-year old daughter telling her before running away to fight with the rebel army.
And though the village's history is always visible - in an elaborate memorial for the dead, or the persistent tremor of a survivor's hand, towards the end of The Tiniest Place we too are returned to the present. A cow gives birth, a high school marching band plays, and children walk to school in the rain. We see that, if Cinquera is reemerging, it is through the strength and deep love of its inhabitants.” —OVID.tv
WILD TALES / RELATOS SALVAJES
A film by Damián Szifron
(Argentina/Spain, 2014, 122 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Available for streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Amazon, Vudu, iTunes, Fandango Now
Inequality, injustice and the demands of the world we live in cause stress and depression for many people. Some of them, however, explode. This is a movie about those people. Vulnerable in the face of a reality that shifts and suddenly turns unpredictable, the characters of Wild Tales cross the thin line that divides civilization and barbarism. A lover's betrayal, a return to the repressed past and the violence woven into everyday encounters drive the characters to madness as they cede to the undeniable pleasure of losing control.
THE SECRET NATION / LA NACIÓN CLANDESTINA
A film by Jorge Sanjinés
(Bolivia/Spain, 119 min. In Aymara and Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vimeo
Winner of the Golden Shell for Best Film at the 1989 San Sebastián Film Festival and eight years in the making with a cast of hundreds of Aymara people, Jorge Sanjinés powerful film The Secret Nation / La nación clandestina is a profound depiction at power, corruption, resistance and redemption and landmark film in Bolivian cinema.
“Set against the turbulent backdrop of a military coup, the film follows Sebastian Maisman (Reynaldo Yujra), who returns to his former Aymara village after life in the city but ultimately disgraces his community by collaborating with the corrupt government and embezzling aid money. As a rite of expiation, he decides to journey to his homeland once more and enact the ancient Jacha Tata Danzanti, a ceremony in which the performer dances himself to death as a sacrificial offering. This series of events is told through a darting, elliptical mode of continuity, inspired by the Aymara’s cyclical notion of time.” —Light Industry
EXTRAORDINARY STORIES / HISTORIAS EXTRAORDINARIAS
A film by Mariano Llinás
(Argentina, 2008, 245 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Currently streaming on Projectr, Part I (83 min.), Part II (81 min.) and Part III (90 min.)
Mariano Llinás is one of the world’s most audacious directors—evidenced alone by his singular 14-hour epic La Flor. But his ambition was clear from the start, with this endlessly engrossing feature. A sensation in his home country of Argentina and finally available to own in the U.S., Extraordinary Stories plays out as a series of nested Borgesian narratives that zigzag across different characters, locations, and genres. Thick with incident and ironic twists, this novelistic 18-chapter experience refuses easy resolutions to its many mysterious tales but supplies satisfaction at every turn.
LET IT BURN / DIZ A ELA QUE ME VIU CHORAR
A film by Maíra Bühler
(Brazil, 2019, 82 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Available to stream on MUBI
“Four years in the making, the new documentary feature by Brazilian filmmaker Maíra Bühler (I Touched All Your Stuff) is a powerful and delicate portrait of the seven-floor Dom Pedro hostel in downtown São Paulo, which houses 107 homeless residents from marginalized communities, many of whom are struggling with drug addiction and the ever-present threat of eviction. Employing elegant photography, the filmmaker reveals the tragic human stories of his individuals full of loneliness and heartbreak who nevertheless fight for life in solidarity.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
108 / CUCHILLO DE PALO
A film by Renate Costa
(Paraguay, 2010, 91 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on OVID.tv
“When Rodolfo Costa was found naked on the floor of his home in Paraguay, he had been dead for days. Though ostensibly jobless, he had mysteriously amassed a small fortune. He also had a secret alias-Hector Torres-and a secret life. At the time, Renate Costa Perdomo was a young girl. Asked to select her uncle's burial garb, she found his closet empty. Surely the lively, colorfully-dressed Rodolfo she knew could not, as those around her claimed, have died of sadness.
In her powerful debut feature, which unfolds like a mystery novel, Costa Perdomo investigates the shadowy circumstances of Rodolfo's death. Witnesses and clues gently reveal Rodolfo's true identity as a persecuted gay man and the terrifying "108" homosexual blacklists that ruined lives, careers, and families. The film is also a fascinating portrait of the relationship between the filmmaker, who has left Paraguay and now lives in Spain, and her now-divorced father, Pedro Costa, who remains in the family blacksmithing shop. 108 is a moving illustration of the impact that the right-wing dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989, had on the so-called "108"s living in the country as experienced by a single Paraguayan gay man and his family.” —OVID.tv
NO DRESS CODE REQUIRED / ETIQUETA NO RIGUROSA
A film by Cristina Herrera Bórquez
(Mexico, 2017, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Sling TV and Starz
“Winner of the John Schlesinger Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Best Mexican Documentary Award at the Guanajuato International Film Festival 2017, Cristina Herrera Bórquez’s memorable documentary follows an unassuming same-sex couple, Víctor and Fernando, as they fight for the right to be married in their hometown of Mexicali, Baja California. As their struggle gets complicated and their case becomes public—winning them both allies and enemies—they become improbable media cause célèbres. With the filmmaker’s remarkable access to the epic story, No Dress Code Required is a rallying cry for equality, and a testament to the power of ordinary people to become agents of change.” —Tucson Cine Mexico
ISLAND / ILHA
A film by Ary Rosa and Glenda Nicácio
(Brazil, 2018, 94 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube
“A man is kidnapped and brought to an island that is impossible to leave for those who are born there. Emerson, the young kidnapper, is one of those island people, and he has a passionate wish: to make a film about his own life. His radical solution to help achieve this leads to a film about both himself and his hostage, who reenact their lives. When real life beyond the camera increasingly shapes the narrative of the film, things start to get out of hand. The multilayered Island evolves from a playful game of metacinema to an allegorical tale of Brazil’s untold stories.” —Film at Lincoln Center
CASTANHA
A film by Davi Pretto
(Brazil, 2014, 95 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Available to stream on Amazon Prime
“Davi Pretto’s first feature-length film chronicles the daily life of João Carlos Castanha, a middle-aged, single, ailing actor who supports both himself and his live-in mother by working as a cross-dressing nightclub MC. When in drag, Castanha plays the part of a larger-than-life scoundrel, verbally assailing the clientele while also enjoying periodic visits from friends backstage. On the side, Castanha finds work as an extra in film productions and taking bit parts in small plays. His greatest roles, and greatest loves, are in the past, making way for his repressed memories to take over, and finally allowing the line between his experience of reality and fantasy to blur, as the film takes haunting and confounding turns.” —Film at Lincoln Center
A FANTASTIC WOMAN / UNA MUJER FANTÁSTICA
A film by Sebastián Lelio
(Chile/Germany/Spain/USA, 104 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime, Vudu
“When her significantly older boyfriend dies under what is made out to be suspicious circumstances, transgender woman Marina (Daniela Vega) comes into conflict with both the man's family and the authorities, forcing her to fight not only to clear her name, but for the one thing she demands above all: respect. Making nods to Almodóvar and Fassbinder, the new film from Chilean director Sebastián Lelio (Gloria) is both an incisive character study and an alluring exercise in style.” —Toronto International Film Festival
FROM AFAR / DESDE LEJOS
A film by Lorenzo Vigas
(Venezuela/Mexico, 2017, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Available to stream on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, iTunes
Winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, the debut feature by Venezuelan filmmaker Lorenzo Vigas follows a wealthy, middle-aged Armando (played by Pablo Larraín’s regular Alfredo Castro) who lures young men to his home with money. He doesn’t want to touch, only watch from a strict distance. Armando’s first encounter with street thug Elder (Luis Silva) is violent, but this doesn’t discourage the lonely man’s fascination with the tough handsome teenager. Financial interest keeps Elder visiting him regularly and an unexpected intimacy emerges. However, Armando’s haunted past looms large, and Elder commits the ultimate act of affection on Armando’s behalf.
THE DEAD AND OTHE OTHERS / CHUVA É CANTORIA NA ALDEIA DOS MORTOS
A film by Renée Nader Messora and João Salaviza
(Brazil/Portugal, 2018, 114 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
“Winner of the Un Certain Regard special jury prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora’s hybrid follows Ihjãc (Henrique Ihjãc Krahô), a 15-year-old indigenous Krahô from the north of Brazil, who runs away from home after he is called to direct his deceased father’s spirit to the village of the dead. Denying his tribal duty as a prospective shaman, Ihjãc instead resides in the nearby town of Itacajá against the advice of his wife (Raene Kôtô Krahô) and community. Shot on 16mm by co-director Nader Messora, The Dead and the Others is a dramatically intriguing, richly textured portrait of grief and the threats facing ancient traditions by modern society.” —Neighboring Scenes, Film at Lincoln Center
GOOD MANNERS / AS BOAS MANEIRAS
A film by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra
(Brazil/France, 2017, 135 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Available to stream on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play , and Vudu
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival, and a favorite in numerous international film festivals including New Directors/New Films, Sitges, BFI London, and Fantastic Fest, the second collaboration between filmmakers Rojas and Dutra (after Hard Labor, a Cannes Un Certain Regard favorite) follows Clara, a lonely nurse from the outskirts of the city who is hired by mysterious and wealthy Ana to be the nanny of her soon-to-be-born child. Against all odds, the two women develop a strong bond. But a fateful night marked by a full moon changes their plans.
With powerful visuals and impeccable cinematography (by Zama's Rui Poças), Good Manners is Disney meets Jacques Tourneur. The film becomes an unexpected and wild werewolf movie unlike any other, and a poignant social and racial allegory on modern-day Brazilian society.
ALAMAR
A film by Pedro González Rubio
(Mexico, 2009, 73 min. In Spanish and Italian with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Film Movement Plus and iTunes
“Five-year-old Natan goes with his father Jorge on an expedition to Banco Chinchorro, the largest coral reef in Mexico. There he experiences life in harmony with nature, staying in a house on stilts above the water, catching barracuda and other fish on baited lines thrown from a boat, observing as his father and “grandfather” (Jorge’s older mentor) go spearfishing and lobster catching. He also encounters crocodiles—but is not afraid—and makes friends with a feisty wild egret, a migratory bird, that he names Blanquita. With just a few weeks before Natan goes back to Italy to live with his mother, Jorge is intent on teaching his son about their Mayan heritage, and the rhythms of a fisherman's life. Alamar captures the pristine beauty of the Quintana Roo coast and the strong, affectionate bond between father and son.” —Museum of the Moving Image
THE WAY HE LOOKS / HOJE EU QUERO VOLTAR SOZINHO
A film by Daniel Ribeiro
(Brazil, 2014, 97 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Available to stream on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, iTunes, and Sling TV.
“Set to the bouncy beats of Belle and Sebastian, this euphoric, sun-kissed coming-of-age fable—a sensation at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival, where it swept the Teddy Award and FIPRESCI prize—dances entirely to its own tune. Stuck fending off bullies and over-protective parents, Leonardo spends his days allowing his best friend Giovana to drag him around town. Being blind has always been an inconvenience for Leonardo, but his angsty adolescence gets a lift when the handsome and smooth-talking Gabriel turns down numerous offers from ogling girls to hang with Leonardo after school. The longer they spend together, the more apparent their shared attraction becomes – not just to them but to a spurned Giovana as well. As social pressure mounts on both to fit within their confined social boxes, the two must decide whether to ignore their feelings or to throw caution to the wind and admit that they might actually be falling in love.” —NewFest: the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival
BLACK MEXICANS / LA NEGRADA
A film by Jorge Pérez Solano
(Mexico, 2018, 100 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Available to stream on Amazon Prime and Artmattan Virtual Cinema
“La Negrada is the first Mexican feature film about the Afro-Mexican community, filmed entirely with people from different towns around the Costa Chica in Oaxaca. Neri, a fisherman, splits his time between two women: his wife Juanita with whom he has a daughter and his lover Magdalena, mother of three additional children. Things are about to change for Neri as Juanita falls gravely ill and Magdalena prepares to take her place. Shot entirely on the beautiful beaches of Corralera in Oaxaca and featuring a cast of non-professional actors from the nearby communities, La Negrada explores the social mores of and the discrimination faced by Mexico’s unacknowledged black community.” —Pan African Film Festival
MIDAQ ALLEY / EL CALLEJÓN DE LOS MILAGROS
A film by Jorge Fons
(Mexico, 1995, 140 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Film Movement Plus, iTunes, Tubi and Amazon Prime Video
Heated tempers, frustrated desires and dashed hopes plague a diverse group of individuals whose lives cross paths in Mexico City in the cinematic adaptation of the novel by the Egyptian Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfuoz by Mexican veteran filmmaker Jorge Fons. There is the bar-owner's son, Chava, who yearns to emigrate to the Unites States. A poor barber, Abel, is madly in love with the gorgeous Alma, who eventually becomes a high-class prostitute. Finally, there is Susanita, the desperate spinster who pursues many love affairs in hopes of finding a husband.
Featuring a powerful ensemble cast including Ernesto Gómez Cruz, María Rojo, Juan Manuel Bernal, Bruno Bichir, Margarita Sanz, and the cinematic breakthrough of Salma Hayek, in the role of Alma, Midaq Alley was the winner of a Special Mention at the 1995 Berlin Film Festival and became the most awarded Mexican film ever—winning 11 Ariel Awards including for Best Picture and Best Director, and more than 50 international awards and nominations.
SAND DOLARS / DÓLARES DE ARENA
A film by Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas
(Dominican Republic/Argentina/México, 2014, 80 min. In English, Spanish and French with English subtitles)
Stream on Vudu, iTunes, and Sling TV
From the acclaimed directorial duo of Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas (Jean Gentil), comes this “enchanting and thoughtful” (Hollywood Reporter) romance, an older European woman becomes captivated with a young Dominican woman struggling to make ends meet. Every afternoon Noelí (played by Yanet Mojica), goes to the beaches at Las Terrenas with her boyfriend to look for ways to make a living at the expense of one of the many tourists that wander the beach.
As people parade through her life, Noelí has a steady client; Anne (played by legendary film actress Geraldine Chaplin), a mature French woman who, as time goes by, has found an ideal refuge on the island to spend her last years. When Noeli’s boyfriend feigns to be her brother, he outlines a plan in which Noelí travels to Paris with the old lady and sends him money every month. For Noelí, the relationship with Anne is one of convenience, but the feelings become more intense as the departure date closes in.
END OF THE CENTURY / FIN DE SIGLO
A film by Lucio Castro
(Argentina, 2019, 84 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Vudu and iTunes
Winner of the Best First Feature Award at Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, and the Best Argentine Film Award at the Buenos Aires Film Festival (BAFICI), End of the Century was hailed as “the best gay film of the year” (IndieWire), and as "an erotic, emotional imagining of a Grindr hookup as memory palace” (The Hollywood Reporter).
In his alluring debut feature, Castro offers both a sun-soaked European travelogue and an epic, decades-spanning romance. When Ocho (Juan Barberini), a 30-something Argentine poet on vacation in Barcelona, spots Javi (Ramón Pujol), a Spaniard from Berlin, from the balcony of his Airbnb, the attraction is subtle but persistent. After a missed connection on the beach, a third chance encounter escalates to a seemingly random hookup. But are these two merely beautiful strangers in a foreign city or are they part of each other’s histories—and maybe even their destinies?
Castro deliberately parses out mystery after mystery, leading the audience on a journey of discovery as the two leading men discover themselves and each other. With sumptuous lensing of a Barcelona summertime and tangible chemistry between the actors, End of the Century is a love story that echoes across time.
THIS IS NOT BERLIN / ESTO NO ES BERLIN
A film by Hari Sama
(Mexico, 2019, In Spanish with English subtitles)
Stream it on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, and Hulu
A compelling autobiographical coming-of-age tale, Hari Sama’s film boasts a knock-out ensemble cast headed by Xabiani Ponce de León and José Antonio Toledano, Set in Mexico in 1986, as the country gets ready for the World Cup, the film follows 17-year-old Carlos, an introverted kid who doesn't fit in: not in his family nor at school. Everything changes when he’s invited to the Aztec, a legendary Mexico City nightclub where he discovers the underground nightlife scene—post-punk, sexually fluid, and fueled by drugs. Carlos’s awakening will challenge his relationship with his best friend, Gera, the brother of his crush, Rita, while helping him discover his passion for experimental art and lead him into adulthood.
With impeccable art direction and a pulsing soundtrack, the film offers a revealing portrait of Mexico City in the eighties—an era of deep political, social, and cultural changes for the country that shaped today’s contemporary Mexico.
MALA MALA
A film by Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini
(Puerto Rico, 89 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Stream it on Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video
“In a celebration of the trans community in Puerto Rico, the fissure between internal and external is an ever-present battle. A unique exploration of self-discovery and activism, featuring a diverse collection of subjects that include LGBTQ advocates, business owners, sex workers, and a boisterous group of drag performers who call themselves The Doll House, Mala Mala portrays a fight for personal and community acceptance paved with triumphant highs and devastating lows. Through riveting cinematography that encapsulates the candy-colored, vivacious personalities as well as their frequently dark personal experiences, directors Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles dynamically present the passion and hardships reflective of this distinctively binary human experience.” —Liza Domnitz, Tribeca Film Festival
BIXA TRAVESTY
A film by Kiko Goifman & Claudia Priscilla
(Brazil, 2018, 75 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Stream on Vimeo on Demand and Amazon Prime Video
“Linn da Quebrada is a black transwoman from impoverished periurban São Paulo; she is also a pop performer who raises her voice for queers of color from the favelas. Accompanied by her childhood friend and partner in crime, black transwoman and singer Jup do Bairro, her concerts are nothing short of dazzling. Aided by exorbitant costumes and plenty of twerking, her performances are onslaughts of electro against Brazil’s white heteronormative gender order and the machismo of the country’s funk scene. Private moments reveal her gentler side: as she showers with friends or cooks with her mother the talk turns to love, racism and poverty.
Archive footage in the shape of home videos shows her in intimate performances at a hospital during her own cancer treatment. We begin to realize that Linn uses radical nudity as a means to undermine accepted gender roles. This documentary also shows her in dramatized radio interviews in which she powerfully espouses her convictions about feminism and her transsexuality: not, for Linn, the role of a cis woman; she’d rather be a woman with a penis whose gender identity is not bound by her genitalia but is in a permanent state of flux.” —Berlin Film Festival
IXCANUL
A film by Jayro Bustamante
(Guatemala/France, 2015, 91 min. In Kaqchikel with English subtitles)
Stream it on Kino Now, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, and iTunes
Winner of the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize at the 2015 Berlinale—one of the most prestigious cinematic prizes ever received by a Central American production—the brilliant debut by Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante is a mesmerizing fusion of fact and fable, a dreamlike depiction of the daily lives of Kaqchikel speaking Mayans on a coffee plantation at the base of an active volcano.
Ixcanul tells the story of María, a 17-year-old Mayan girl, who lives and works with her parents on a coffee plantation in the foothills of a volcano. An arranged marriage awaits her, to Ignacio, the plantation overseer. A discouraged María seduces Pepe, a young coffee cutter, with plans to run away with him. When Pepe flees he leaves María pregnant, alone and in disgrace. Immersing us in its characters’ customs and beliefs, Ixcanul (which means “volcano” in Kaqchikel) chronicles with unblinking realism disappearing traditions and a disappearing people.
Drawing from real-life stories, director Jayro Bustamante wrote the narrative with the point of view of the mother. Using non-actor members of the Maya community, Ixcanul explores the arbiters of a fading way of life against a backdrop of a dominating and Westernized culture.
COCOTE
A film by Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias
(Dominican Republic/Brazil/Argentina, 2017, 107 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Topic, and Kanopy.
“This format-mixing, formally eclectic opus is at once a profound film about religion and a unique tale of revenge. Upon learning that his father has been murdered by a powerful local figure, Dominican private gardener Alberto travels from Santo Domingo back to his hometown to participate in his funeral rites—a mixture of Catholicism and West African mysticism that flies in the face of Alberto’s own evangelicalism. But Alberto’s family has vengeance in mind, and he finds himself at a spiritual and existential crossroads. Boldly synthesizing ethnographic documentary and scripted drama, Cocote is a visually resplendent and stylistically audacious work that evokes the films of Glauber Rocha and the fiction of Roberto Bolaño.” —Film at Lincoln Center
BAD HAIR / PELO MALO
A film by Mariana Rondón
(Venezuela/Peru/Argentina/Germany, 2013, 93 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Stream it on Tubi, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, and Amazon Prime Video
“A touching and humorous coming-of-gender story, Bad Hair chronicles the life of nine-year-old Junior, living in a bustling Caracas tenement with his widowed mother. Junior fears he has pelo malo – bad hair. For his school photo, he wants to iron his stubbornly curly mane straight to resemble one of his pop star idols. His mother, unemployed and frazzled from the pressures of raising two children in an unforgiving city, has serious misgivings; she suspects her son is gay.
Grandma is more accepting, teaching Junior to dance to one of her favorite ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll tunes. Writer-director Mariana Rondón grounds her film in the cultural realities of working-class Venezuela – and, by dint of two remarkable performances, finds warmth and humor between mother and son, even as the uncertainties of pre-adolescence threaten to pull them apart. Winner, Best Film, San Sebastian Film Festival, and winner of directing, acting, and screenwriting awards at numerous festivals throughout the world.” —Film Forum
UNCLE YIM / TÍO YIM
A film by Luna Marán
(Mexico, 2019, 83 min. In Spanish, Zapotec, and French with English subtitles)
Watch if for free through June 24 as part of the BBC’s LongShots global film festival
In her heartfelt and potent debut feature, director Luna Marán encourages his father Jaime Luna (Uncle Yim), an indigenous philosopher, social leader, and singer-songwriter, to compose a new song about his life after 15 years of silence. This time, though, he does so alongside his family; their memories and interpretations are contradictory and painful. Uncle Yim is a powerful documentary immerses us in the identity of a family shaped by tradition, music, and communality.
I’M NO LONGER HERE / YA NO ESTOY AQUÍ
A film by Fernando Frías
(Mexico, 2019, 106 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)
Watch it on Netflix
Winner of the Best Film Award at the Morelia Film Festival, Fernando Frías’s electrifying second feature follows a street gang from Monterrey named “Los Terkos." Spending their days listening to slowed-down cumbia music, attending dance parties, and showing off their outfits, hairstyles, and gang alliances, the members call themselves Kolombianos for their mix of cholo culture with Colombian music. Ulises, their leader, tries to protect his friends from a quickly evolving drug-political war, but after a misunderstanding with a local cartel he’s forced to migrate to New York City. There he tries to assimilate, but when Ulises learns that his gang and the whole Kolombia culture is under threat, he questions his place in America and longs to return home.
7 BOXES / 7 CAJAS
A film by Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori
(Paraguay, 2012, 100 min. In Spanish and Guaraní with English subtitles)
Watch it on iTunes, and Google Play
7 Boxes / 7 cajas is the electrifying debut film from the directing team of Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori. The film had its world premiere at the International Film Festival of San Sebastian to audience and critical acclaim and broke box office records in its native Paraguay, edging out Titanic and becoming the most successful film in Paraguay’s box-office history. An official selection of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, and a favorite at the Miami, Edinburgh, and Palm Springs Film Festivals, indieWIRE hailed the Paraguayan action-thriller as "The Fast and the Furious with wheelbarrows."
The film follows Víctor, a 17-year-old wheelbarrow delivery boy, dreams of becoming famous and covets a fancy TV set in the infamous Mercado 4. He's offered a chance to deliver seven boxes with unknown contents in exchange for a quick $100. With a borrowed cell phone the contractor uses to tell him the way, Víctor embarks on the journey. Crossing the eight blocks of the market seemed easy but things get complicated along the way. There is something in those boxes that starts a high-speed wheelbarrow chase in the secret and gloomy corridors of the market. Without even realizing, Víctor and his pursuers will get involved in a crime of which they know anything.
THE HEIRESSES / LAS HEREDERAS
A film by Marcelo Martinessi
(Paraguay/Germany/Brazil/Uruguay/Norway/France, 2018, 98 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch it on Hulu, HBO Go, and Amazon Prime.
Marcelo Martinessi’s acclaimed debut feature The Heiresses / Las herederas was Paraguay’s official submission in the foreign-language film category for the 91st Academy Awards. Winner of numerous international film awards, including two Silver Bears at the 2018 Berlin Film Festival, The Heiresses is a fascinating and subtle commentary on Paraguayan society.
The New York Times Critics’ Pick follows the stories of Chela and Chiquita, both of whom descended from wealthy families in Asunción, and have been together romantically for over 30 years. Recently their financial situation has worsened and they begin selling off their inherited possessions, but when their debts lead to Chiquita being imprisoned on fraud charges, Chela is forced to face a new reality.
Driving for the first time in years, she begins to provide a local taxi service to a group of elderly wealthy ladies. As Chela settles into her new life, she encounters the much younger Angy, forging a fresh and invigorating new connection. Chela finally begins to break out of her shell and engage with the world, embarking on her own personal, intimate revolution. Featuring outstanding performances (Ana Brun as Chela won the Best Actress prize in Berlin), The Heiresses puts Paraguay on the international cinematic map and announces Martinessi as an exciting talent to watch.
TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG / TARDE PARA MORIR JOVEN
A film by Dominga Sotomayor
(Chile/Brazil/Argentina/The Netherlands/Qatar, 2018, 110 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Available to stream on Vimeo, iTunes, and Amazon Prime.
The Chilean film Too Late to Die Young / Tarde para morir joven by Dominga Sotomayor was awarded with the Leopard Award for Best Director at the Locarno Film Festival, marking a first for a female filmmaker in the 71 editions of the prestigious Swiss film festival.
Starring trans actor Demian Hernández—who has transitioned since production—in the role of Sofía, and inspired by the director’s own childhood, the third feature by Sotomayor (Thursday till Sunday, Mar) is set in 1990, when Chile transitioned to democracy. Political change, however, seems a world away for 16-year-old Sofía, who lives far off the grid in a mountain enclave of artists and bohemians. Too Late to Die Young takes place during the hot, languorous days between Christmas and New Year’s, when the troubling realities of the adult world—and the elemental forces of nature—begin to intrude on her teenage idyll.
Acclaimed at numerous film festivals—including New York, Toronto, Viennale and BFI London—the film is a gorgeous and sun-splashed portrait of youth—and a country—on the cusp of exhilarating and impending change. With a subtle artistry and an impeccable cast, Too Late to Die Young confirms Sotomayor as one of Latin America’s leading filmmakers and one of the most exciting voices of her generation in world cinema today.
TWO SHOTS FIRED / DOS DISPAROS
A film by Martín Rejtman
(Argentina/Chile, 2014, 105 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now available to stream on MUBI
“Rejtman’s first feature in a decade is an engrossing, digressive comedy with the weight of an existentialist novel. Sixteen-year-old Mariano (Rafael Federman), inexplicably and without warning, shoots himself twice—once in the stomach and once in the head—and improbably survives. As his family strains to protect Mariano from himself, his elder brother (Benjamín Coehlo) pursues a romance with a disaffected girl (Laura Paredes) who works the counter at a fast-food restaurant, his mother (Susana Pampín) impulsively takes off on a trip with a stranger, and Mariano recruits a young woman (Manuela Martelli) to join his medieval wind ensemble.
Rejtman tells this story with both compassion and formal daring, pursuing one thread only to abandon it for another. Two Shots Fired is a wry, moving, consistently surprising film about the irrationality of emotions and how they govern our actions at each stage of our lives.” —Film at Lincoln Center
A WILD STREAM / UNA CORRIENTE SALVAJE
A film by Nuria Ibáñez
(Mexico, 2018, 72 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch it for free through Sunday, May 27, courtesy of the Morelia Film Festival
“Winner of the Best Mexican Feature Documentary at the Morelia Film Festival, the third feature by Spanish-born director Nuria Ibáñez (The Tightrope, The Naked Room) follows Chilo and Omar, who seem to be the only two men on earth. They live on a solitary beach in the desert-like landscape of Baja California and fish to survive. Selected by Film Comment as one of the best undistributed films of 2018, A Wild Stream is an engrossing portrait of the human condition, as well as an unusual and quirky bromance.” —Film at Lincoln Center
SITE OF SITES / EL SITIO DE LOS SITIOS
A film by Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada
(Dominican Republic, 2016, 61 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch for free for a limited time
“Humans have significantly altered the natural world in a way that no other species has. In Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada’s film, an award-winner at the 2016 IDFA Documentary Festival in Amsterdam, we witness one of the more obvious modes of this change: the creation of an artificial beach on a Caribbean resort. Alternating between semi-direct addresses to the camera and more intimate fly-on-the-wall moments, the film shows us the wealthy denizens of the resort—a beach bum actress, golfers—and the laborers who are reshaping the land for their benefit. Subtly teasing out the intersection of race, class, and environment, this documentary is not to be missed.” —Film at Lincoln Center
LA MEDEA
A film by Yara Travieso
(2017, USA, 80 min. In English)
Free screening of the film on Tuesday, May 19, 8pm EDT on YouTube Live.
Declared as "mythology's 'Nasty Woman'” by Vice, La Medea re-imagines Euripides’ myth into a Latin-disco-pop-feminist variety show. The pervasive figure of the dangerous immigrant woman who vengefully murders her own children is shattered in this genre-bending multidimensional dismantling that rejects the limited gaze imposed on her for centuries. At once a made for camera live streamed film and an immersive musical, La Medea was originally performed, shot, edited, and simulcast in real time. In-studio audiences and at-home-viewers, commenting in the live chat, acted as the "Greek chorus," bringing the live vulnerability of theater to the screen.
Written, directed, and conceived by Yara Travieso with an original score and libretto by Sam Crawford, La Medea’s screening with #BRICxHome will allow viewers to live chat with the performers and creators of La Medea while the film streams on BRIC's YouTube channel. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Rena Butler (playing the role of La Medea), Sam Crawford (composer and librettist), and Yara Travieso (writer, director, and creator).
HAMACA PARAGUAYA / PARAGUAYAN HAMOCK
A film by Paz Encina
(Paraguay/Argentina/France/Netherlands/Spain 2006, 78 min. In Guarani)
Watch for free (subtitles only in Spanish)
“Set in a remote Paraguayan village in the 1930s, Ramón and Cándida are an ageing couple of Guaraní peasants who are waiting for better times to come. They go about their daily chores, meeting at regular intervals at a clearing to sit in a hammock and talk about seemingly trivial things: the nuisance of a dog’s barking, the overwhelming heat, the rain which teases but doesn’t come. Broken-hearted by their son’s departure, they await his return from the Chaco War. Cándida’s hopes aren’t high but Ramón stays positive and maintains that no news is surely good news. Paz Encina’s debut feature, supported by World Cinema Fund, is a moving and minimalistic portrayal of isolated life and the struggle to maintain a hopeful outlook in the worst of situations, symbolized by the pervasive presence of thunder throughout.” —Berlin Film Festival
THE TERRITORIES / LOS TERRITORIOS
A film by Iván Granovsky
(Argentina/Brazil, 2017, 93 min. In Spanish, English, Arabic, and Basque with English subtitles)
Now streaming on MUBI
After the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Iván, a young film producer and self-proclaimed “frivolous” son of a prominent Argentine journalist, sets off on a journey to sites of contemporary geopolitical conflict. It is no easy undertaking. Determining where the frontline ends and this wannabe war correspondent’s ego trip begins proves even more difficult. It’s seemingly a miracle that this film even exists. As the director and protagonist Iván Granovsky relates with a sense of self-mockery, his three previous attempts to make a film turned into fiascos, so he decided to follow in the footsteps of his father. But from the refugee crisis in Greece to the less-democratic Brazil, from the Basque Country to Jerusalem, Granovsky is always too late, too early, in the wrong place, or asking clumsy questions. The Territories is a coming-of-age fiction nestled inside a geopolitical documentary.
THE FACE / EL ROSTRO
A film by Gustavo Fontán
(Argentina, 2012. 64 min.)
Click here to watch the film for free
The Face is a lyrical and personal film shot in stunning black and white, where past and present, fiction and nonfiction mix together. A man who sails alone approaches an island on the Paraná River. Once he lands, he’s no longer alone. He shares a meal with another man—his father. There will also be a woman. And some kids. And nature—in the form of birds, plants, and the river, which is always present through its quietness and constant flowing. The film was a selection of the Rome Film Festival and was awarded the Best Director prize at the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI) and the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Director.
LA FLOR DE LA VIDA
A film by Adriana Loeff and Claudia Abend
(Uruguay, 2017, 84 min. In Spanish and Italian with English subtitles)
Click here to watch it for free, courtesy of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, IDFA
“This is a film about love, related by people who should know: all the participants are at least 80 years old. Do they look back on a passionate life with many lovers, or were they in a stable marriage that lasted more than half a century? What starts out as a collection of interviews soon zooms in on the turbulent love lives of 83-year-old Aldo and his wife Gabriella. Aldo's narcissistic character has prompted him to record all the significant moments in their long life together in home videos. Not only are we transported through these stories, photos and videos into a world of nostalgia, but we also see Aldo watching the films of his life, including one of him as a young man kissing his newborn son. This evokes a familiar feeling of melancholy: being able to see what was, but not to touch it. When Aldo tells filmmakers Adriana Loeff and Claudia Abend that their visits are a welcome feature in his often empty days, it becomes painfully clear how growing older goes hand in hand with loneliness and loss.” —International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, IDFA
DAYS IN SINTRA / DIARIO DE SINTRA
A film by Paulina Gaitán
(Brazil/Portugal, 90 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
“Filmmaker Paula Gaitán was married to Glauber Rocha (1938-1981), a key figure in the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement, which embodied politically engaged filmmaking that resisted colonialism in Latin America. Rocha's signature films include Barravento (1961), Black God, White Devil (1964), Land in Anguish (1967), and Antonio das Mortes (1969), all remarkably influential films at the time and overdue for revival today.
“In Days in Sintra, Gaitán creates a deeply moving meditation on memory and time as she chronicles her return from Brazil to Sintra, Portugal, where she lived in exile with her husband and their children before his untimely death. In the form of an experimental narrative, she deftly interweaves Super 8 home movie footage and photographs taken of Rocha in 1981 with beautifully composed, evocative contemporary images of the Portuguese landscape. In this manner, Gaitán both weaves together place, uniting past and present, and highlights remembrance. Long, silent passages are gently overlaid with Gaitán's own voice meditating on memory, loss, and death, as well as with recordings of Rocha's voice, articulating his philosophies of life, politics, and filmmaking.
“Days in Sintra represents Gaitán's own voyage of discovery, which allows her to bring alive the physical, sensual, and even spiritual essence of her long-deceased companion. On a deeper level, the filmmaker also captures the mournful, atmospheric ether of the Portuguese nation. The proud country that launched the voyages of discovery in the 15th century has found its global position diminished with time, just as Rocha's fiercely independent, award-winning filmmaking had faded to a faint memory-until it was justly revived by his companion in this exquisite diary film. —Tribeca Film Festival
DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT / LA MUERTE DE UN BURÓCRATA
A film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
(Cuba, 1966, 84 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch the film for free, courtesy of the Havana Film Festival, New York:
“One of the most surprising films to come from Cuba, Death of a Bureaucrat is a black comic attack on bureaucracy. The situation in the film involves a worker who invented a machine to produce plastic busts of socialist heroes, who dies, and who is honored by being buried with his union card. His widow then needs the card to claim her pension; regulations prohibit an exhumation and her nephew tries to help by stealing the body in the coffin.
“There are more regulations against reburial and the endless comic possibilities of disposing of a body and a coffin are exploited in the comic tradition of Harold Lloyd, Buñuel, Laurel and Hardy, etc. to all of whom the film is dedicated. Although produced in 1966, Death of a Bureaucrat premiered in this country only this past May, to great critical acclaim. The New Yorker called it “a slam-bang, hilarious account of the tyranny of red tape”; The Soho Weekly News called it “deliciously subversive... one of the funniest movies in town this year.” —Pacific Film Archives
RUINS, YOUR REALM / RUINAS, TU REINO
A film by Pablo Escoto
(Mexico, 2016, 64 min.)
Watch for free (use password: ruinas)
“This lyrical and immersive documentary reminiscent of films by Peter Hutton and Kazuhiro Soda, follows the rhythms and tides of Mexican fishermen in extreme, minute detail. Fish are glimpsed underneath the water and gasping on the deck of a ship; men hoist their nets and sails. Interspersed with these quotidian images are snippets of text and poetry, juxtaposed against black background.” — Film at Lincoln Center
MY SKIN, LUMINOUS / MI PIEL, LUMINOSA
A film by Nicolás Pereda and Gabino Rodríguez
(Mexico/Canada, 2019, 40 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“My Skin, Luminous is written and directed by Gabino Rodríguez, in collaboration with TIFF alumnus Nicolás Pereda. Variously incorporating themes of education, environmental sovereignty, and spiritual rites, the provocative, absurdist film is composed of material ostensibly shot for the Ministry of Education in a rural school in Mexico's Michoacán state. Inspired by ideas from cult writer Mario Bellatin (who appears in the film), My Skin, Luminous beguilingly drifts into the realm of the oneiric as it narrates the story of a young boy's troubled adoption. Enigmatic and deceptively playful in tone, the film boldly transforms the mundane into fantasy, acting as a meditation on the double-edged nature of rituals and childhood (cleansing, humiliation, rebirth); on race; and on water as both symbol and metaphor.”
JONAS AND THE BACKYARD CIRCUS / JONAS E O CIRCO SEM LONA
A film by Paula Gomes
(Brazil, 2015, 80 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
“Jonas has 13 and his dream is maintain the circus that he created in his backyard. He was born in a travelling circus. But his family left the circus and settled down in a violent neighborhood. Jonas never was adjusted to the new lifestyle, so he created his own circus. Now, Jonas is growing up and the adolescence imposes upon him with thousands of challenges. So, while Jonas’ circus goes crumbling he realizes his powerlessness, leading us to a journey where we’ll at least find a great question: What do we do with our dreams when we grow up?” — International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, IDFA
EX IT / EX ISTO
A film by Cao Guimarães
(Brazil, 2010, 86 min. In Portuguese, with English subtitles)
Click here to watch it for free
Freely inspired by the work Catatau, by Paulo Leminski, the plot begins with the historical hypothesis imagined by the poet from Curitiba: “What if René Descartes had come to Brazil with Maurício de Nassau?” The film materializes this hypothesis and joins the father of modern philosophy in his journey through the tropics. Under the effect of hallucinatory herbs, he investigates questions revolving around geometry and optics in the face of an absolutely strange world. Known for his famous sentence “I think, therefore I am”, Descartes faces his doubt towards phenomena reason doesn’t explain. René, Renatus, Re born.
EMA
A film by Pablo Larraín
(Chile, 2019, 107 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“In his first film since the 2016 double bill of Neruda and Jackie, Pablo Larraín returns to present-day Chile for an incendiary portrait of a young woman in rebellion. Set in Valparaíso, the film concerns married couple Ema, a platinum-blonde reggaeton dancer (played brilliantly by Mariana Di Girolamo), and choreographer Gastón (Gael García Bernal), who have abandoned their adopted 7-year-old son. A portrait of a modern family and a tenacious exploration of art, desire, and personal liberation, Ema is a rare character study that moves with the intensity of a heart-pounding dance film, set to an absorbing electronic score by Nicolas Jaar.” —Film at Lincoln Center
A film by Juan Padrón
(Cuba, 1985, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch the film for free, courtesy of the Havana Film Festival New York
“Pepito is many things in Cuban folklore, but mostly an irreverent kid with an uncanny gift for thumbing his nose at adults. In Juan Padrón's animated horror comedy, Vampiros en La Habana, Pepito is a swinging trumpet player (music performed by Grammy-winner Arturo Sandoval) in 1930s Havana who sidelines as an anti-dictator Machado revolutionary and irresistible ladies' man. Unbeknownst to our busy hero, he's also a vampire. Turns out Pepito's uncle Werner, son of Count Dracula, has been using him as un unwitting test subject for an elixir, Vampisol, that allows vampires to live in broad daylight. It's not long before the Chicago mob of Johnny Terrori and nefarious European businessmen start pursuing the formula, each for his own greedy interest. What's a helpless Cuban vampire to do?
“Director Padrón has the last laugh as he blithely sends-up the stick figures of Cuban propaganda. Vampiros en La Habana is a very politically incorrect romp that matches Ralph Bakshi's notorious Fritz the Cat for sheer bawdiness. The stakes couldn't be higher. Excessive consumption of Vampisol can effectively wipe out a vampire's identity, turning him into that most wretched of creatures: a human.” —Coral Gables Art Cinema
CENIZAS / ASHES
A film by Juan Sebastián Jácome
(Ecuador/Uruguay, 2018, 97 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“Ecuadorean director Juan Sebastian Jacome marries geological and familial catastrophe in his sharply observed sophomore effort” —The Hollywood Reporter
On the brink of eruption, Cotopaxi spews ash issuing an eerie shadow over Quito while a young woman confronts dormant familial conflicts in this stunning and poignant drama.
Caridad hasn’t spoken to her father in years—not since he left the family under a cloud of suspicion and accusations. But that changes when Cotopaxi, a long dormant volcano overlooking Quito, suddenly threatens to erupt, and Caridad finds herself isolated and trapped within the blast zone. Out of options, she reaches out to her father and confronts the emotions she repressed for so many years.
THE LETTERS / LAS LETRAS
A film by Pablo Chavarría Gutiérrez
(Mexico, 2015, 77 min. In Spanish and Tzotzil with English subtitles)
Click here to watch the film for free
“Las Letras is an exercise in (and exorcism of) outrage, a performative representation of indigenous Mexican professor Alberto Patishtán’s random arrest and erroneous 13-year imprisonment for a brutal slaying. Chavarría Gutiérrez’s camera stalks the countryside, ghostlike, observing wandering lost children and a woman’s balletic expression of grief, punctuated by Patishtán’s proud, hopeful jailhouse letters to his family.” —The Museum of Modern Art
RESURRECTION / RESURRECCIÓN
A film by Eugenio Polgovsky
(Mexico, 2016, 94 min, digital. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch for free for a limited time, courtesy of the Morelia Film Festival
The final film by the late Mexican director Eugenio Polgovsky—one of the finest documentary filmmakers of his generation—is a poignant portrait of a family’s fight for survival and the regeneration of their local river. Once known as the Mexican Niagara, the waterfall of El Salto de Juanacatlán was a source of immense joy and continuous sustenance for the villages surrounding it. This natural paradise disappeared when an industrial complex was established across the Santiago River close to Guadalajara.
Nowadays its poisonous waters destroy everything in their path, including the memories of the fishermen and farmers who watched their whole world disappear. From among the toxic ruins of the river’s banks, ancient specters emerge as an echo of a lost Eden. The destiny of a river goes hand in hand with that of a village, and humanity itself.
JEAN GENTIL
A film by Laura Amelia Guzmán & Israel Cárdenas
(Dominican Republic/Mexico/Germany, 2010, 84 min. In Spanish and Haitian Creole with English subtitles)
“Jean Gentil narrates the struggles—both material and philosophical—of an educated, deeply religious Haitian immigrant as he travels throughout the Dominican Republic, in search of work as well as a deeper meaning. centering on the remarkable figure of Jean Remy Genty, playing a role closely modeled on his own life, the film traces his path from the city of Santo Domingo into the countryside, as this former French teacher is forced to find any possible means of subsistence.
“Though possessed of a profound dignity and stoicism, he is nevertheless severely tested by discrimination, exploitation, loneliness, and despair. Husband-and-wife filmmakers Guzmán and Cárdenas, along with the deeply compelling Genty, have created a remarkable portrait of a man struggling to survive, not only financially but spiritually, in a harsh world.” —Anthology Film Archives
SURIRE
A film by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff
(Chile, 2015, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch for free through Sunday, April 26 (enter ‘retro’ under ‘Apply discount code’)
“Filmmaking team Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff present to the viewer the otherworldly landscape of the Salar de Surire, a salt flat located 4,300 meters above sea level in the Chilean Andes. Along with views of the unique geology (hot springs, now being tapped for a geothermal energy project) and wildlife (which include pink flamingoes), the film presents plenty of dryly comic moments shared by the people who live in this seemingly inhospitable land, who are descended from the Aymara tribe. Through gorgeously shot long takes, this extreme terrain slowly reveals itself to symbolize contrast—between humanity’s future and its past.” —Film at Lincoln Center
EL VIGILANTE / THE NIGHTGUARD
A film by Diego Ros
(Mexico, 2016, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now available on YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime.
Winner of the World Fiction Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and the Best Film and Best Actor Awards at the Morelia Film Festival, the auspicious debut feature by Diego Ros is “a wonderfully atmospheric, slightly off-kilter piece through which evil gently and troublingly pulsates” (Jonathan Holland, The Hollywood Reporter).”
The film follows Salvador (Leonardo Alonso) works the night shift as a security guard in a construction site located on the outskirts of Mexico City. One evening, while the rest of the country celebrates a national holiday, Salvador repeatedly tries to leave the site in order to attend an important event, but a series of improbable situations turns the night into a bizarre and exhausting experience.
HOTEL NUEVA ISLA
A film by Irene Gutiérrez
(Spain/Cuba, 2014, 71 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch the film for free for a limited time
“In bygone days, the Nueva Isla hotel in Cuba was a place of grandeur, overflowing with life and guests. Now, it is a dilapidated ruin, with parts of the ceiling falling down and damp eroding the walls. Nevertheless, the building is still inhabited - by the aged Jorge and his faithful dog, as well as a few of his friends who find themselves homeless.
“Jorge's best years were spent working as an official in a strictly governed but vital Cuba. Now, he spends his days poking around and digging - if you look carefully, there is memorabilia buried beneath the rubble. His friends have a more realistic outlook, and one by one leave the disintegrating building. The old man is followed in tender, calm footage of his day-to-day life - ‘maintaining’ the hotel, talking to the other residents, carrying on a romantic relationship with a woman in his improvised home; with kind words and a cautious dance to music recalling an era that has gone forever.” — Rotterdam International Film Festival
BEAUTIES OF THE NIGHT / BELLAS DE NOCHE
A film by María José Cuevas
(Mexico, 2016, 91 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on Netflix.
Winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Morelia Film Festival, María José Cuevas’ engrossing debut documentary feature offers a moving portrait of five of Mexico’s most popular showgirls of the late 70s and 80s—Olga Breeskin, Lyn May, Princesa Yamal, Rossy Mendoza, Wanda Seux—almost forty years after they ruled Mexico’s entertainment world.
With a keen eye and devoid of any sensationalism, Cuevas enters the fascinating world of these women who have struggled to reinvent themselves after the decline of the burlesque heyday era in Mexico.
A MAN MARKED FOR DEATH - TWENTY YEARS LATER / CABRA MARCADO PARA MORRER
A film by Eduardo Coutinho
(Brazil, 1984, 119 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Named the best Brazilian documentary of all-time by the Brazilian Association of Film Critics, Eduardo Coutinho's Twenty Years Later is a landmark of Latin American cinema, and hailed as one of the greatest metadocumentaries ever made.
“In 1964, Eduardo Coutinho was at work on a film about João Pedro Teixeira, who was murdered by the police as a result of his efforts to organize farm workers in northeast Brazil. The director cast non-actors in the production, including Teixeira’s widow, who plays herself, but shooting was cut short in the wake of the military coup that same year; footage was seized, a number of participants imprisoned. The project was resumed 20 years later, as the country was transitioning to a democracy, but had begun to take a rather different shape: Coutinho incorporated the earlier material as well new interviews with those originally involved and reflections on the injustices of the interval, yielding a prismatically reflexive, genre-defying essay on political commitment and life under dictatorship.” —Film at Lincoln Center
THE ADVENTURES OF JUAN QUIN QUIN / LAS AVENTURAS DE JUAN QUIN QUIN
(Julio García Espinosa, Cuba, 1967, 113 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“Hailed as revolutionary Cuba’s first feature-length comedy, Julio García Espinosa’s picaresque, parodic and hugely popular adventure film offers a giddily inventive mix of classic movie genres and styles: war, Western, slapstick, musical, gangster, Buñuelian satire, Soviet-style Socialist Realism, and more. The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin is set in pre-revolutionary Cuba, where the flim-flam, jack-of-all-trades hero lives by his wits and ekes out an existence as, variously, a farmer, altar boy, bullfighter, and circus act (as Jesus on the cross, no less). Godardian intertitles, animated sequences, and comic strips further enliven the anarchic proceedings.
An encounter with cartoonish imperialists ultimately turns the hero into an anti-government guerilla. Director Espinosa conceived of the film as an accommodation between ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ art, as an attempt to combine movie entertainment with a subversive critique of old forms of movie entertainment. The result was one of the most widely seen films in Cuban history.” —Pacific Cinémathèque
OVARIAN PSYCOS
A film by Joanna Sokolowski and Kate Trumbull-LaValle
(USA, 2016, 72 min. In English)
Winner of a Special Mention for Best U.S. Latinx Film at the Cinema Tropical Awards, Joanna Sokolowski and Kate Trumbull-LaValle’s Ovarian Psycos follows a peculiar ensemble of women that rides at night through streets deemed dangerous in Eastside Los Angeles, and use their bicycles to confront the violence in their lives.
At the helm of the crew is founder Xela de la X, a single mother and poet M.C. dedicated to recruiting an unapologetic, misfit crew of women of color. The film intimately chronicles Xela as she struggles to strike a balance between her activism and nine year old daughter Yoli; street artist Andi who is estranged from her family and journeys to become a leader within the crew; and bright eyed recruit Evie, who despite poverty, and the concerns of her protective Salvadoran mother, discovers a newfound confidence.
“Observational, inspirational, thought-provoking...always quite beautiful to look at " ( Los Angeles Times), Ovarian Psycos rides along with the Ova’s, exploring the impact of the group’s activism, born of feminist ideals, Indigenous understanding and an urban/hood mentality, on neighborhood women and communities as they confront injustice, racism, and violence, and take back their streets one ride at a time.
WELCOME TO NEW YORK
A film by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff,
(Chile/Italy/Spain, 2006, 77 min. In English)
“Welcome to New York is a set of impressions, an exercise of inverted ethnography (from South to North) in which the directors show their contradictory encounter with the ‘Capital of the World.’ Tragedy and comedy alternate with strong contrasts while the camera goes across the city penetrating social classes, dog hotels, ethnic groups, fashion castings, political conflicts, pet cemeteries, photo shootings, religious communities, techno parties, electoral campaigns, all within the framework of the 2004 Presidential Election, in which George W. Bush was reelected.
But Welcome to New York is fundamentally a reflection on the contemporary human being, his inescapable animal nature and tragic fate. Instead of disappearing under a heavy layer of civilization, these philosophical topics seem to become more evident in the most influential city of the present world. What it is proposed through this tragicomic glance at reality is to face without cynicisms what seems to be inevitable and inherent to human existence: the heartrending and permanent contradictions between abundance and lack, humanity and animality, life and death.” —International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)
INTIMIDADES ENTRE SHAKESPEARE Y VÍCTOR HUGO / SHAKESPEARE AND VICTOR HUGO´S INTIMACIES
A film by Yulene Olaizola
(Mexico, 2008, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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“Yulene Olaizola literally stays close to home in her feature-length debut, which won both the audience award and the press prize at the Mexican FICCO festival. The title refers to the intersection of two streets in Mexico City where the home of Rosa Carbajal, the filmmaker's grandmother, is located. Through conversations with the occupants of the house, some live-in cleaning people, her grandma's brother, and some old acquaintances, the story of Jorge Riosse gradually unfolds. Riosse was a disturbed young man who rented a room in the house for seven years.
The film is also a portrait of Rosa, who unashamedly gives her granddaughter and the viewer a tour of her home and her past. Jorge Riosse lived a withdrawn life, shutting out a past that he rarely spoke about. Still, an intimate friendship developed between him and Rosa. This man in his early twenties was a virtuoso guitarist and singer (demonstrated by some cassette tapes recorded by Rosa), a talented writer (Rosa cherishes Riosse's poems), and a skilled painter: the house is filled with his work, all portraits of women. But bit by bit, this ingeniously constructed tale also brings out Riosse's darker side, from his repressed homosexuality and his struggle with schizophrenia to some disconcerting discoveries after his death in 1993.” —International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, IDFA
SO LONG, ENTHUSIASM / ADIÓS ENTUSIASMO
A film by Vladimir Durán
(Argentina/Colombia, 2017, 79 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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The acclaimed debut feature by Colombian filmmaker Vladimir Durán—a favorite at the Berlinale’s Forum and winner of the Best Director and Best Colombian Film awards at the Cartagena Film Festival—follows Axel and his older sisters Antonia, Alejandra, and Alicia. They live in an apartment that becomes their kingdom ruled by extravagant policies that they’ve imposed, including locking up their mother, Margarita, in a room. The children communicate with their mother through a small window, giving her blankets, DVDs and reading material, and celebrating her birthday in the corridor. When she’s eventually had enough, it’s Axel who must decide what to do. Shot in Argentina, So Long, Enthusiasm establishes Durán as a talent to watch.
THE DEATH OF JAIME ROLDÓS / LA MUERTE DE JAIME ROLDÓS
A film by Lisandra I. Rivera and Manolo Sarmiento
(Ecuador/Argentina, 2013, 123 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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“In 1979, Jaime Roldós Aguilera became the first democratically elected president of Ecuador; on May 24, 1981, he and his wife Martha died in a plane crash. Was it an accident or a premeditated attack on a young leader who had made a lot of powerful enemies in a very short time? If so, who was behind it? And is it a coincidence that several of Roldós's supporters also died in plane crashes? Directors Manolo Sarmiento and Lisandra I. Rivera dive into the archives, talk about the affair with those close to it, and visit the three children Roldós and his wife left behind.
This investigative documentary is an attempt to find out what was really going on behind the scenes. What secret powers and interests were pulling the strings? The personal accounts about the background combine with the aftermath of Roldós's death to create a drama of Shakespearean proportions. Additional information adds new perspectives to official archive footage. The directors hope that this thoroughly researched film will provide answers to questions and fearful suspicions. As Sarmiento explains in voice-over, although this drama is not widely known about, it played a crucial political role in Ecuador and neighboring Latin American countries,” —International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, IDFA
THE ENDLESS FILM / LA PELÍCULA INFINITA
(Leandro Listorti, Argentina, 2018, 54 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
The Endless Film stands as a contemporary cinematic Frankenstein. Made from different fragments of unfinished, abandoned, or unrealized Argentine films, this film-essay tells the story of a parallel history of cinema. An endless film is a film that has no end, a film that has not reached its destiny. From this limbo, Listorti gathers these orphan images and silenced sounds and finds a new opportunity to screen their stories.
Not only a filmmaker, Listorti nurtures his talented film practice with his experience as an archivist in the film museum Pablo Hickens Ducros in Buenos Aires. The Endless Film is composed of the remains of such films as El eternauta by Hugo Gil (1968); La neutrónica explotó en Burzaco by Alejandro Agresti (1984); Zama by Nicolás Sarquís (1984); Sistema español by Martín Rejtman (1988); and El ocio by Mariano Llinás and Agustín Mendilaharzu (1999); among others. With the voices of musician and actress Rosario Bléfari and filmmaker and writer Edgardo Cozarinsky, The Endless Film proposes itself as a negative journey through creation, memory, and loneliness.
“In a country where the remains are of fundamental importance in understanding the past, The Endless Film offers a window to forgotten memories, and invites the viewer to evaluate its own culture and identity.” –Rotterdam Film Festival
THE GOLDEN BOAT
A film by Raúl Ruiz
(USA/Belgium, 1990, 83 min. In English)
“Raúl Ruiz’s first film made in the U.S. freely borrows from American police dramas and telenovelas in transforming downtown New York into a phantasmagorical labyrinth of noirish intrigues, inexplicable menace, and metaphysical quagmires, achieving a unique portrait of its particular time and place. A bloodthirsty assassin (Michael Kirby) joins up with a philosopher and a rock critic in pursuit of the Mexican soap star who has captured his heart, and along the way he encounters one bizarre character after another. Featuring memorable cameos from Kathy Acker, Jim Jarmusch, Barbet Schroeder, Annie Sprinkle, and Vito Acconci, and music by John Zorn, The Golden Boat must be seen to be believed.” —Film at Lincoln Center
SOLAR
A film by Manuel Abramovich
(Argentina, 2016, 76 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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“Flavio Cabobianco was 10 years old when his messianic message of self-salvation, I Come from the Sun, became a bestseller in Argentina. As Flavio releases a 20th-anniversary edition, first-time feature filmmaker Manuel Abramovich follows him and his family to try to understand the book’s origins and tangled authorship. But Flavio’s escalating attempts to control the film give rise to a compelling tale about the complexities of artistic collaboration.” — MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight
THE DEATH OF THE MASTER / LA MUERTE DEL MAESTRO
A film by José María Avilés
(Ecuador/Argentina, 2018, 62 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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“On April 16, 2016, a severe earthquake hit coastal Ecuador. José María Avilés’s first feature film is based on this national disaster, but at a great distance from the collapsed buildings and buried loved ones. He shows how an unexpected event can suddenly modify all the rules of the game, even in the remote town of Angamarca – the setting of the film – where the effects of the quake arrive as distant echoes of hostility in the natural environment. An elderly farmer has become one with the land, the lemon trees, and the livestock. But something has changed; nature is disturbed. Water doesn’t run off well, a calf dies for no reason, and the wind keeps picking up. Acting calmly, yet with rising desperation, the ‘maestro’ adheres to his daily routine, trying to get things back on track. It will kill him, that’s certain.” –International Film Festival Rotterdam
YO
A film by Matías Meyer
(Mexico/Canada/Dominican Republic/Switzerland, 2015, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
The third feature film by acclaimed Mexican director Matías Meyer (The Last Christeros, The Cramp) is an adaptation of a short story of the same name by Nobel laureate author J. M. G. Le Clézio. The film follows Yo, a teenager in the body of an adult with an apparent mental incapacity. He lives and works at his mother’s roadside café by a busy highway. One day he meets Elena, an eleven-year-old girl, who will change his life forever. Winner of the Best Film award at the Morelia Film Festival and a Special Mention at the Fribourg Film Festival, Yo is an intriguing mediation on the epic human journey of emotional maturation.
THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL / LA VENDEDORA DE FÓSFOROS
A film by Alejo Moguillansky
(Argentina, 2017, 71 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“Alejo Moguillansky’s follow-up to The Gold Beetle is a fantasia that elegantly weaves together disparate elements: Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the little match girl, Bresson’s saintly abused donkey Balthazar, a Red Army Faction member’s correspondence with an Argentine pianist, and a composer trying to mount an opera at the Teatro Colón.
Winner of Best Argentine Film at last year’s BAFICI, The Little Match Girl is infused with emotion, and never devolves into the obscure or didactic, despite its many literary and cinematic references. Featuring exquisite cinematography from Inés Duacastella, this spectacular work must not be missed.” —Film at Lincoln Center
INTRODUZIONE ALL’OSCURO
A film by Gastón Solnicki
(Argentina/Austria, 2018, 71 min. In English and Spanish)
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Introduzione all’Oscuro by acclaimed Argentine filmmaker Gastón Solnicki (Kékszákallú, Papirosen), is a heartfelt essay on mourning and a cinematic tribute to the late Hans Hurch, a film critic, assistant to filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, and director of the Vienna Film Festival from1997 till his unexpected death from a heart attack in July of 2017 at the age of 64.
In Introduzione all’Oscuro, a man wanders the streets of Vienna, guided by the memory of a friend who has recently passed away. The vestiges of a once sumptuous empire becomes the setting of a cinematic elegy and understated celebration of life. Solnicki honors his dear friend Hurch, an eccentric man with a flamboyant personality, inspired by the tenderness and the humor that made their bond so special with this cinematic postcard made from personal objects and archives.
With performative and fictionalized components as well as an elegant cinematography by Rui Poças (Zama, The Ornithologist), Solnicki creates a compelling meditation on grief and an inadvertent portrait of Vienna. In Introduzione all’Oscuro, Solnicki brings different elements from his previous films and masterfully mixes them to create a delicate, uplifting work of cinema about cinema.
LA SOLEDAD
A film by Jorge Thielen Armand
(Venezuela/Canada/Italy, 2016, 89 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch the film for free as part of Filmatique’s ‘7 Days of Cinema’
Winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best First Film, La Soledad is an hypnotic blend of fiction and a documentary-like style. Director Jorge Thielen Armand looks beyond the headlines and gives a voice to those affected by contemporary Venezuela’s inner turmoil.
The film follows José, a young father who discovers that the dilapidated mansion he squats will soon be demolished. Desperate to save his family from homelessness, José embarks on a mystical search for a cursed treasure that is rumored to be buried in the house. Based on the filmmaker’s family and childhood home, most of the characters are played by his real friends and family members. Thielen Armand’s lyrical debut feature offers a poignant allegory of the desperate reality of today's Venezuela.
THEATRE OF WAR / TEATRO DE GUERRA
A film by Lola Arias
(Argentina/Spain, 2018, 82 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
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A selection of Cinema Tropical’s Shortlist of 2018 as one of the Best Latin American Films of the Year and winner of the Best Director Award at the Buenos Aires International Film Festival (BAFICI), Lola Arias’ debut documentary feature Theatre of War / Teatro de guerra is a delirious essay on how to represent war, performed by former enemies.
In 1982, Argentina and UK fought the Malvinas Falklands War. The war ended with the British military victory and took about 1.000 lives, both British and Argentinean. While the conflict took place years ago, the sovereignty of the islands is still in dispute.
Theatre of War, which had its New York premiere at The Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight, tells the story of how six veterans from the Malvinas/ Falklands War came together to make a film. Almost thirty-five years after the conflict, three British and three Argentine veterans spent months together discussing their war memories and then rehearsing their re-enactment.
Theatre of War playfully switches between reality and fiction, spontaneity and acting. It explores how to transform a soldier into an actor, how to turn war experiences into a story, how to show the collateral effects of war. The movie brings together former enemies to perform their wartime and post-war nightmares.
ANTONIO & PITI
A film by Vincent Carelli and Wewito Piyãko
(Brazil, 2019, 78 min.)
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A hit at the past edition of the Margaret Mead Film Festival, Antônio & Piti directed by Vincent Carelli and Wewito Piyãko, and produced by the acclaimed collective Vídeo nas Aldeias is an Amazonian story of a rebel love that breaks the moral and cultural boundaries of the time, told by Dona Piti, daughter of Chico Coló, a “rubber soldier”, and by Antonio, an Ashaninka from Peru.
Thirty years ago, a rubber company enslaved a group of Asháninka people, manipulating them into tapping the trees in the lush borderland between Peru and Brazil. The company was expelled by a coalition of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, led by one mixed race couple. Now the adult children of this marriage combat political corruption and ongoing environmental disaster.
LEAGUES / LEGUAS
A film by Lucrecia Martel
(Argentina, 2015, 12 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Watch the short film Leagues / Leguas by acclaimed director Lucrecia Martel (Zama), which was part of the 2015 omnibus film The Empty Classroom / El aula vacía. Produced by Gael García Bernal and the Inter-American Development Bank, The Empty Classroom is an anthology of narrative and documentary short films by eleven directors that tell the story of the high school dropout crisis in Latin America.
As beautifully diverse and complex as the region, the shorts are shot in seven different countries and explore the underlying reasons why nearly one out of every two students never makes it to graduation day. In addition to Martel, other filmmakers in the omnibus film are Tatiana Huezo and Nicolás Pereda from Mexico, Pablo Stoll from Uruguay, and Diego and Daniel Vega from Peru.
Martel’s Leagues explores the subject of academic exclusion in the native communities in northern Argentina despite the promise of equal opportunities for all by the system of education.
WE LIKE IT LIKE THAT
(Mathew Ramirez Warren, USA, 2014, 81 min. In English)
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Nominated for the Cinema Tropical Award for Best U.S. Latinx Film, Mathew Ramirez Warren’s documentary We Like It Like That tells the story of Latin boogaloo, a colorful expression of 1960s Latino soul, straight from the streets of New York City. From its origins to its recent resurgence, it’s the story of a sound that redefined a generation and was too funky to keep down.
Starring Latin boogaloo legends like Joe Bataan, Johnny Colon and Pete Rodriguez, the film explores this lesser-known, but pivotal moment in Latin music history, through original interviews, music recordings, live performances, dancing and rare archival footage and images. From its origins to its recent resurgence in popularity, We Like It Like That tells the story of a sound that redefined a generation and was too funky to keep down.
LA CAMIONETA
A film by Mark Kendall
(Guatemala/USA, 2013, 71 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Available to stream for free on Friday and Saturday, March 27 and 28, 2020.
A New York Times Critics' Pick and 100% Rotten Tomatoes Fresh, the Guatemalan documentary film La Camioneta by Mark Kendall is a “an upbeat story of resilience, regeneration and artistic imagination” (Stephen Holden, New York Times) and a timely film that reminds us of the interconnected world in which we live.
Every day dozens of decommissioned school buses leave the United States on a southward migration that carries them to Guatemala, where they are repaired, repainted, and resurrected as the brightly-colored camionetas that bring the vast majority of Guatemalans to work each day.
Since 2006, nearly 1,000 camioneta drivers and fare-collectors have been murdered for either refusing or being unable to pay the extortion money demanded by local Guatemalan gangs. La Camioneta follows one such bus on its transformative journey: a journey between North and South, between life and death, and through an unfolding collection of moments, people, and places that serve to quietly remind us of the interconnected world in which we live.
THE WIND KNOWS THAT I’M COMING BACK HOME / EL VIENTO SABE QUE VUELVO A CASA
A film by José Luis Torres Leiva
(Chile, 2016, 102 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Nominated for Best Documentary and Best Director at the 2017 Cinema Tropical Awards, the Chilean film The Wind Knows That I’m Coming Back Home / El viento sabe que vuelvo a casa by prolific director José Luis Torres Leiva is an intimate and fragile portrait of an isolated society.
“In the early 1980s, a couple vanished without a trace in the woods of Meulín Island. Director Ignacio Agüero (This Is the Way I Like It II) had intended to shoot a documentary about this strange occurrence, but eventually abandoned the project. Now, he journeys to the area to shoot his first fiction film based on the events, and José Luis Torres Leiva follows Agüero as he speaks with locals about the legends that have arisen surrounding this mysterious occurrence in between scouting for locations and auditioning nonprofessionals, who often provide a source of tender comic relief. The film is also a meditation on the isolation of those living on Chile’s Chiloé Archipelago, capturing its unique and solitary landscapes.” —Film at Lincoln Center
PORCELAIN HORSE / MEJOR NO HABLAR (DE CIERTAS COSAS
A film by Javier Andrade
(Ecuador, 2012, 104 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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Porcelain Horse / Mejor no hablar (de ciertas cosas) is the powerful debut feature by Javier Andrade and was Ecuador’s submission to the 86th Academy Awards in the Foreign Language Film competition. Hailed as a “an impressively strong and mature piece of work” by The Hollywood Reporter, Andrade’s film is a bittersweet and poignant family drama of sex, drugs and punk rock.
Paco Chávez leads a careless and charming life on the coast of Ecuador: a life that is all about illicit drugs and the forbidden love affair he carries on with Lucía, a former high school sweetheart who is now married to another man. One night, Paco and his brother Luis—a punk musician with an even bigger drug habit— break into their parent’s home in order to steal a porcelain horse that they intend to pawn, but their plan backfires when their father catches them in the act. The ensuing fight and its consequences will change the lives of everyone around them and haunt both brothers forever.
Winner of the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature at Austin’s Cine Las Americas, and an official selection of the Miami, Warsaw, Sao Paulo, Goa, and Gijon film festivals, among others, Porcelain Horse is testament to the unprecedented strength and vitality of contemporary Ecuadorian cinema.
KINGS OF NOWHERE / LOS REYES DEL PUEBLO QUE NO EXISTE
A film by Betzabé García
(Mexico, 2015, 83 min. In Spanish; English subtitles)
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Winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Director, the Mexican feature film Kings of Nowhere / Los reyes del pueblo que no existe by Betzabé García is a hauntingly beautiful documentary that serves as a powerful allegory for the current times.
A once-prosperous village in Mexico, flooded by the careless construction of a new dam, is abandoned by all but three families who cling to their lives amid the rising waters. Interviews with the villagers and tours of passages through the waterways reveal a world brought back from the brink of extinction—until the hope found in the daylight is all but extinguished by unseen raiders in the treacherous night.
García first visited the town of San Marcos, Sinaloa when she was thirteen. Years later the town, which had been standing more than 200 years was flooded due to the construction of the Picachos dam. She decided to return to San Marcos in 2009 and began to get to know the people that had stayed in the flooded town. With the support of the entire community García produced the short film Venecia, Sinaloa, which was inspired by the families that endured the flood. Shortly thereafter García decided to stay in San Marcos and began working on Kings of Nowhere.
MAURO
A film by Hernán Rosselli
(Argentina, 2014, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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Hernán Rosselli’s auspicious debut feature film, a winner at the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI), is a sharp character study following Mauro (played by Mauro Martínez), a metalworker who moonlights as a currency forger trading fake bills in the streets of Buenos Aires. He decides to set up a little printing shop with his roommate Luis and Luis’s pregnant girlfriend to produce counterfeit money. Yet things get complicated when he falls for the mysterious Paula.
“An engrossing X-ray of life in a southern barrio of Buenos Aires that doubles as a study of a society in crisis, Mauro ripples with quiet virtues. First-timer Rosselli has brought to his debut feature the same precision and craft as his troubled protagonist brings to his forgery, and the result is a slow-burning, intense item that exists somewhere on the increasingly blurred line between feature and documentary, harking back to established films such as Pablo Trapero’s Crane World and, indeed, to the Romanian New Wave in its dark, focused gaze and its unpatronizing treatment of social issues.” –Jonathan Holland, The Hollywood Reporter.
DARK SKULL / VIEJO CALAVERA
A film by Kiro Russo
(Bolivia/Quatar, 2016, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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Selected as one of the year’s Best Latin American Films in Cinema Tropical’s 2017 Shortlist, Bolivian film Dark Skull / Viejo calavera is the debut feature by director Kiro Russo. Winner of 27 international film awards. The film is a hybrid work set in the uniquely rough world of the Bolivian mines and is a potent character drama and an idiosyncratic portrait of workers’ daily lives.
The film follows Elder Mamani, who is forced to live with his grandmother—far from the city—to stay away from trouble after his father has died, He has to learn to be a worker. His godfather, Francisco has to take care of Elder’s acceptance in the mining company. Francisco and Elder end up working together, but Elder skips work daily.Francisco endures this grudgingly. His co workers mock him because of the behavior of his godson.
When Francisco finds Elder lost in the smokey alleys about to be blasted, he leaves him alone there, because of his survival, the miners that rescue him see him as an amulet of good luck. Now the miners have to travel together to the tropic, in which context the conflict between Elder and Francisco unravels.
MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
A film by Cecilia Aldarondo
(Puerto Rico/United States, 2016, 72 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
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Winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best U.S. Latinx Film, Cecilia Aldarondo’s debut documentary feature Memories of a Penitent Heart, is a documentary that cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama, combining a wealth of newly discovered home movies, video, and written documents with artfully shot contemporary interviews and vérité footage,
Originating from filmmaker Aldarondo’s suspicion that there was something ugly in her family’s past, the film charts her excavation of the buried family conflict around her uncle Miguel’s death, and her search for Miguel’s partner Robert a generation later. After two years of dead ends, Robert turns up: but he is not the same man. He has reinvented himself as Father Aquin, a Franciscan monk with 25 years of pent-up grief and bitterness.
For the first time, a member of Miguel’s family wants to hear Aquin’s side of the story—but is it too little, too late? A story about the mistakes of the past and the second chances of the present, Memories of a Penitent Heart is a cautionary tale about the unresolved conflicts wrought by AIDS, and a nuanced exploration of how faith is used and abused in times of crisis.
