Two Latin American genre films were selected among the best of the year by the Boston Society of Film Critics, which were announced today in their annual year-end winners: the Chilean film The Wolf House / La casa lobo by Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León was named Best Animated Film, and the Guatemalan film La Llorona by Jayro Bustamante was selected as the Best Non-English Language Film.
Using stop-motion animation to unfurl a never-ending series of transformations that play out as a single sequence shot, The Wolf House tells the grim fairy tale of Maria, a young woman who finds refuge in a house in the south of Chile after escaping from a sect of German religious fanatics. She is welcomed into the home by two pigs, the only inhabitants of the place. As in a dream, the universe of the house reacts to Maria’s feelings. The animals transform slowly into humans and the house becomes a nightmarish world.
Variety described the naming of The Wolf House as Best Animated Film of 2020 as “the biggest jaw-dropper.” The film is ineligible for this Oscar’s submissions as it was released on MUBI before its theatrical release.
A tale of horror and magical realism, La Llorona reimagines the iconic Latin American fable, a grieving indigenous woman seeking revenge for the death of her children, as an urgent metaphor of Guatemala’s recent civil war which left an estimated hundreds of thousands dead, missing and displaced. Bustamante’s film follows indignant retired general Enrique, as he finally faces trial for the genocidal massacre of thousands of Mayans decades ago. As a horde of angry protestors threatens to invade his opulent home, the women of the house—his wife, daughter, and granddaughter—weigh their responsibility to shield the erratic, senile Enrique against the devastating truths being publicly revealed and the increasing sense that a wrathful supernatural force is targeting them for his crimes.
