By Pilar Dirickson Garrett
The year 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of four landmark Latin American films that helped usher in a new wave of international cinema and put Latin America firmly on the cinematic map as a hotspot of contemporary narrative filmmaking: Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénaga from Argentina, Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mama También from Mexico, Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll’s 25 Watts from Uruguay, and Lourdes Portillo’s Señorita Extraviada from Mexico.
All four titles premiered between January and September 2001, defining a generation of new Latin American cinema and jump-starting the careers of their directors that have since gone on to become mainstays of not only the Latin American and U.S. Latinx arthouse film industry but the industry at large (all minus Juan Pablo Rebella, who sadly died in 2006 at the age of 32 after making his mark on the international scene).
One of the key artworks of the so-called New Argentine Cinema movement of the late nineties and early aughts, La Ciénaga heralded the arrival of one of the most astonishingly vital and captivating voices in recent cinema memory. Marking her debut into the international spotlight, La Ciénaga launched Lucrecia Martel’s career as one of the leading and most recognizable filmmakers in the world today. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday, February 8, 2001, attended by the director and actors Mercedes Morán and Juan Cruz Bordeu.
La Ciénaga by Lucrecia Martel
After opening to widespread critical acclaim, La Ciénaga made cinema history by earning its director the first Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize ever awarded to a woman, as well as the first to ever be awarded to a Latin American production. Following its unequivocal success at the Berlinale, the film returned to Argentina for its domestic premiere at the Mar del Plata Film Festival on March 8, 2001. It was released in local theaters on April 12, 2001.
Martel is widely regarded to be one of the most critically-acclaimed filmmakers in Spanish-language art cinema outside of Latin America, film scholar Paul Julian Smith noting that her “transnational auteurism and demanding features have earned her a hard-won reputation in the world art cinema festival circuit.” Director of the Harvard Film Archive Haden Guest similarly praises Martel as "one of the most prodigiously talented filmmakers in contemporary world cinema.”
Starring Graciela Borges, Mercedes Morán, Martín Adjemián, Daniel Valenzuela, and Leonora Balcarce, La Ciénaga presents a radical and disturbing take on narrative, coupled with stunning cinematography and a highly sophisticated use of on- and offscreen sound, to spin a tale of a dissolute bourgeois extended family whiling away the hours of one sweaty, sticky summer in the northern Argentine province of Salta. A cinematic marvel and a visceral take on class, nature, sexuality, and the ways that political turmoil and social stagnation can manifest in human relationships, La Ciénaga brilliantly depicts the social and economic degradation of the Argentine middle-class with extraordinary tactility, making it one of the great contemporary film debuts.
Y Tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón
Premiering just a few months later on June 8, 2001, Alfonso Cuarón’s fourth feature film Y Tu Mamá También similarly took the festival world and box office by storm, launching its teenage protagonists Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna to international stardom and cementing Cuarón as a leading filmmaker on the world stage. The film won the award for Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival and García Bernal and Luna took home the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actors. It was a runner up at the National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Picture and Best Director and earned Cuarón his third Oscar’s nomination, for Best Original Screenplay at the 2003 Academy Awards.
Opening to critical acclaim upon its original release, Y tu mama también broke Mexican box office records for a domestic film. It went on to gross a record $12 million in Mexico. After being picked up by U.S. independent distributors Good Machine and IFC Films, Y tu mama también became a global sensation, grossing $13.8 million in the U.S. and Canada and making it the second-highest grossing Spanish language film in the United States at the time. It also positioned Bernal for crossover success in the American market, leading to his 2004 performance in Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries which broke said record, grossing $33.6 million worldwide.
A raunchy rode comedy, Y Tu Mamá También combined sexually explicit subject matter with emotional warmth to offer a moving look at human desire and the nature of friendship. The film follows Mexico City teenagers Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna), best friends from different classes who, after their girlfriends jet off to Italy for the summer, are bewitched by a gorgeous older woman from Spain (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.
In manipulating and re-imagining the traditional American road movie to depict Mexico’s rural geography, politics, people, and culture, Cuarón aimed to challenge mid-20th century Latin-American cinema trends that rejected models typical of mainstream Hollywood Cinema. Instead, he grafted the style onto the Mexican landscape to produce a piece of work that comments decisively on the political, social, and economic issues of the period.
25 Watts by Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll
Representing Uruguay at a moment when the country’s film output was still relatively modest, Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll’s urban comedy drama 25 Watts heralded the arrival of another young directorial duo, hailing from the Southern Cone, to make a splash on the international film circuit. Covering 24 hours in the life of three youths in Montevideo, 25 Watts premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival on January 28, 2001. Although it opened to mixed critical reviews, the film nevertheless won the Best Feature Film Award at Rotterdam, the Best First Feature Award at the Havana Film Festival, and the FIPRESCI and Best Male Actor Awards at the Independent Film Festival Buenos Aires, amongst a total of ten awards and three additional nominations.
A shaggy, comedic look at youth culture in urban Uruguay inspired by the American independent film movement of the 1990s, 25 Watts offers a unique take on the slacker lifestyle that easily establishes it alongside other monumental works from the period. 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 one day, 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, from the delivery guy to the philosophical counter clerk at the video store. Historically, 25 Watts offers a rare cinematic glimpse into urban Uruguay at the turn of he 21st century 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.
Sadly, director Juan Pablo Rebella passed away in 2006 at the age of 32. The cause of death was suicide. He had recently premiered his second feature film Whisky, also co-directed with Pablo Stoll, to international critical acclaim at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Regard Original Award there as well as the FIPRESCI prize.
Señorita Extraviada by Lourdes Portillo
Delivering a more somber narrative perspective that nonetheless made strides for independent documentary filmmaking, Lourdes Portillo’s Señorita Extraviada premiered on September 8, 2001 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Critically acclaimed in both the independent film world as well as in public television—Señorita Extraviada had a broadcast premiere on the PBS documentary showcase POV — the film won numerous awards including the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the Silver Ariel Award for Best Feature Length Documentary at the Mexican equivalent of the Academy Awards, and the Best Documentary award at the Havana Film Festival, among others.
Since releasing her first film After the Earthquake / Después del terremoto in 1979, Mexico-born Los Angeles-raised filmmaker Portillo has been recognized for making innovative documentary films at the intersection of Latin American, Mexican, and Chicanx experiences and social justice advocacy. Her signature hybrid style as a visual artist, investigative journalist, and activist is apparent in her seventeen completed films that include the Academy Award-winning documentary Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo from 1986.
The thirteenth installment in her extensive body of work, Señorita Extraviada continues Portillo’s artistic / investigative bend and sought to lay bare a shocking crime wave against young women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, one of the world's largest border cities. Since 1993, over 270 young women had been raped and murdered in a chillingly consistent and brazen manner. Authorities blamed the women for being prostitutes — though many were workers and students — and followed outlandish leads while relatives of the women demanded justice. Most disturbingly, Portillo unearths evidence of police complicity that remained un-investigated, even as the killings continued.
Marking an important shift in the way that documentary films could be made and subjects prioritized, Señorita Extraviada gives voice to the families who wanted the world to know that their daughters did not deserve the fates that they met in the desert. It also poses important questions about police corruption, the perceived disposability of young women, and the cheapening of the quality of life in a city where poverty and globalized capital create a chaotic environment of lawlessness and brutality. Although twenty years old, many of the issues Portillo addressed then are, unfortunately, still relevant, making the documentary as poignant now as it was then.
