New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), the annual film festival presented by Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art, has announced the lineup for its 51st edition taking place April 20-May 1, 2022, and including three feature films and one short film from Latin America: Dos Estaciones and Robe of Gems / Manto de gemas from Mexico; Album for the Youth from Argentina; Suncatcher / Atrapaluz from Costa Rica; and August Sky /Céu de Agosto from Brazil.
In director Malena Solarz’s solo debut feature, Album for the Youth, she takes a surprising, gentle, altogether gratifying approach to the coming-of-age genre. Encouraging naturalistic performances from her charming cast and using a rigorously unshowy visual approach, Solarz explores how young people navigate their creative impulses, focusing on Sol (Irina Rausch) and Pedro (Santiago Canepari), who, during summer break after high school graduation, prepare for possible futures as, respectively, a musician and a playwright. Drifting through tiny, mundane moments of connection and personal growth, exam preparations and writing workshops, Album for the Youth eschews predictable narrative beats of revelation; rather than being exalted, artistic endeavor is treated as a natural part of the human condition.
One is unlikely to forget the subtle expressivity of Teresa Sánchez, winner of Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Acting and mysterious camera subject of Juan Pablo González’s absorbing, immersive fiction feature debut. Sánchez holds the screen as María, the taciturn yet fiercely committed owner of a troubled tequila factory in rural Jalisco. After taking a new financial administrator (Rafaela Fuentes) under her wing, María is forced to reckon with the difficult realities of her business, both economical and natural. González and Sánchez always leave us on the mesmerizing outside of her emotional state, while making room for unexpected divergences, including a mid-film digression following the life of her hairdresser, Tatín (Tatín Vera, in an exquisitely modulated performance). Shot with sun-dappled radiance, Dos Estaciones is a singular achievement: an interior portrait focused on the external processes of life and work.
Deep in the Mexican countryside, a community is plagued by the constant threat of looming violence. Here, three women from different social classes—a maid, her wealthy employer, and a police officer—become tragically affected by a missing-person case related to organized crime. A work of accruing power and sinister depths simmering below a placid surface, Robe of Gems is the accomplished, unsettlingly oblique debut feature by Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear–winner Natalia López Gallardo (previously an editor for such filmmakers as Carlos Reygadas and Lisandro Alonso). Filled with unshakable images, Robe of Gems weaves an ever-expanding web of characters touched by violence, trauma, and daily rupture.
“I have a recurring dream / if I’m reborn one day I’ll have the sun in my mouth / I’ll be hot and gleamy oil and everything will feel ok. Lol, ” writes @lilaaa to @dream.bby. In Suncatcher, director Kim Torres crafts an atmospheric world awash in blue, where Lila spends her isolated days yearning for something more.
In Jasmin Tenucci’s August Sky, set in São Paulo, the skies glow fiery orange and black as the rainforests burn. A pregnant nurse (a magnetic Badu Morais), anticipating new life but anxious for an uncertain future, surprises herself when she finds community in a Pentecostal church.
