Full Frame Documentary Film Festival has announced the official feature and short film selections for the festival’s 23rd edition, which despite of the four-day event’s cancellation is moving forward with cash juried awards. The non-fiction film festival had selected seven Latin American and U.S. Latinx titles, some of them in their world or North American premiere including Bernardo Ruiz’s The Infinite Race, Five Years North by Chris Temple and Zach Ingrasci, Laura Herrero Garvin’s La Mami, Antón Terni’s Mirador / Lookout, Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent / El agente topo, Denize Galiao’s Saudade, and Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch’s Mucho, Mucho Amor.
“We are honored to present the 2020 official Full Frame selections. By turns exciting and bold, luminous and poignant, these carefully crafted titles display a staggering range of creativity and dedication in examining the world around us,” said artistic director Sadie Tillery. “While we are deeply disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to showcase this work in Durham and welcome these filmmakers for the four-day festival, in light of the circumstances, it felt especially vital to champion these films."
The Infinite Race is set during the annual Ultra Maratón Caballo Blanco, a spectacular fifty-mile race in Mexico’s Copper Canyon, that was created as a way for indigenous Rarámuri endurance runners to preserve their culture. With stunning cinematography and access on all sides, Ruiz’s documentary film employs personal testimonies to examine the underbelly of an event marred by appropriation and exploitation.
In Five Years North, Luis, an undocumented Guatemalan teenager living in New York City, has prioritized work over school to help support his family back home. Judy, a Cuban-American ICE agent in the Bronx, is grateful for a stable job but struggles with changing priorities in her longtime line of work. With outstanding access and character development, their stories come together in this nuanced account of immigration in the United States today.
La Mami follows the character of “La Mami,” who reigns as the benevolent, calm center of the legendary nightclub Barba Azul Cabaret in Mexico City. Night after night, she presides over the hard-working female dancers and hostesses in their communal haven—the bathroom—often silent but always watchful. Gradually, a beautiful friendship develops between La Mami and a new, hopeful hire.
The Uruguayan film Lookout follows Pablo, Valeria, and Oscar, who spend their time camping, swimming, drinking and talking, and going to concerts along the Uruguayan coast. Their reverie, shared through poetic imagery and Pablo’s insightful musings, is a sensory experience in which the three friends navigate their blindness while foregrounding their connection with each other.
In this astutely shot thriller The Mole Agent, octogenarian Sergio is a newly minted spy planted between the walkers and lunchtime gossip of a Chilean nursing home to report on the well-being of a fellow resident. And the cameras? There to film an ordinary story about the organization, or so it seems. This tale navigates the charming rapport between characters while weaving together profound truths about aging, loneliness, and compassion.
In the short, sensitive personal essay Saudade, a Brazilian-born filmmaker grapples with the physical, and emotional, distance between her life in Germany and her family back at home. Saudade, a Portuguese word that cannot be translated into any other language, is the thread that ties familial generations together and explores what it means to long for home.
Mucho Mucho Amor features the legendary Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado graced the airwaves for decades, donning elegant robes and broadcasting his charming, comforting presence to millions of viewers. A foundational figure in Latin American television, his popular shows were a cultural mainstay until he mysteriously disappeared in 2007. Now, with this intimate invitation into Mercado’s world, the dynamic, gender-fluid icon returns to the screen in a humorous and touching examination of a life fully lived.
Originally scheduled to take place April 2-5 in downtown Durham, North Carolina, the 23rd edition of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival was recently cancelled amid COVID-19 public health and safety concerns.
