Heartless by Nara Normande and Tião
The San Francisco Film Festival (SFFILM), the longest-running festival in the Americas, has announced six Latin American titles in its Cine Latino competition taking place April 24-28: Eureka by Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso, Heartless / Sem Coração by Brazilian directors Nara Normande and Tião, Alemania by Argentine director María Zanetti, On the Invention of Species / La invención de las especies by Ecuadorian filmmaker Tania Hermida, and The Practice / La práctica by Argentine director Martín Rejtman. This year's SFFILM will also screen a 4K restoration of Mexican director Roberto Gavaldón’s 1960 film Macario.
A triptych of stories focused on Indigenous culture in the Americas, Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka features a striking opening sequence that revisits and remixes his last film Jauja, and reunites the director with lead actor Viggo Mortenson, who now plays a gunslinger looking for his kidnapped daughter. In an abrupt shift of location, filmmaking style, and gaze, the scenario moves to the Pine Ridge reservation in wintry South Dakota where Native American police officer Alaina searches for another missing young woman.
In the final segment, a shape-shifting bird introduces viewers to a forest-dwelling tribe in the Amazon and a community contending with interpersonal rivalries. Employing different cinematic styles and an increasingly dreamlike narrative, Eureka, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, is elusive and pointed in its willingness to abandon traditional storytelling methods in favor of something stranger and more magical.
In the dramatic feature Heartless, inspired by co-director Nara Normande’s own life, teenage Tamara spends the summer of 1996 hanging with her group of friends before leaving them behind to study in Brasilia. While restlessly exploring her village on Brazil’s northwest coast, Tamara’s relationships begin to shift. She grows apart from her boyfriend Kinzão while developing an attraction for another girl, nicknamed “Heartless” for the surgical scar on her chest.
Dazzling images illustrate this magical realist coming-of-age tale that touches on a young woman’s blossoming sexuality and anxious anticipation of the future. Normande and her co-director Tião elegantly weave poetic sentiments with fantastical elements to spin a strikingly poignant story of the connection between nature, sexuality, and growing up.
In María Zanetti’s vivid debut feature Alemania, inspired by her own family’s story, 16-year-old Lola dreams of escaping her challenging home life. Lola struggles with school and driving lessons but the mental illness of her older sister Julieta presents greater challenges. Julieta consumes their parents’ time and money, leaving Lola often ignored, at constant odds with her mother, and dreaming of a different life.
Maite Aguilar makes an indelible screen debut as a young woman yearning for refuge and security in this complex drama that drifts between a teen’s inherent need to embark on her path and the difficulties her parents face in meeting the disparate needs of their daughters. Striking cinematography further enhances this vibrant coming-of-age tale, which won the Best Director and Best Screenplay prizes at Cine Ceará—Ibero-American Film Festival.
In On the Invention of Species, when Carla’s dad drags her to the Galápagos Islands for a convention on conservation and species evolution, she is less than thrilled. On the cusp of womanhood and grappling with the loss of her brother, Carla finds herself adrift on the historic archipelago that led to Charles Darwin’s breakthrough studies on adaptation. Befriending two young boys who become her emotional foils, Carla pretends to be a different version of herself in order to surmount this emotional and physical journey.
In her stunningly lensed lyrical debut, Hermida deftly toys with parables while exploring the evolving relationship between man and nature. With Terrence Malick stylings, hints of Agnès Varda observational irony, and a dash of Alice Rohrwacher magical-realism, this tender film is a celebration of the shared sentient experience—biological and emotional.
In The Practice, Argentina’s master of deadpan humor Martín Rejtman returns with a droll satire of relationships and wellness culture in a tale centered on an Argentinian yoga instructor living in Chile. The film follows recently divorced Gustavo who struggles with the end of his marriage, problems at his yoga studio, and an injury he is trying to treat with exercise instead of the recommended surgery. An ex-wife he is still in love with, a nagging mother who wants him to return to Chile, a student recovering from a brain injury, another student who may be a thief, and a comely pharmacist are among the characters whose lives and problems intersect in Rejtman’s surreal, absurd, and complex comedy.
For over 30 years, the SFFILM Mel Novikoff Award has been given to an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the film-going public’s appreciation of world cinema. This year’s Mel Novikoff presentation will include Gary Meyer in conversation with Anne Thompson, followed by a screening of the 1960 Mexican classic Macario. Roberto Gavaldón’s 1960 film, set on a village’s Day of the Dead celebration, foreshadows a bewitching magical realist fable in a dreamy adaptation of a B. Traven short story set in colonial Mexico.
Impoverished woodcutter Macario, played by Ignacio López Tarso, has never gone a day without hunger, more acute now that he has five children to feed. His wife produces a rare turkey for him and him alone to eat but when he elects to share it with a mysterious stranger, he gains the power to heal, a gift that enriches the family but also puts Macario in the murderous crosshairs of the Spanish Inquisition. Mexico’s first foreign-language film Oscar nominee, its star López Tarso won the Golden Gate Award for Best Actor when Macario screened at the 1960 Festival. Gabriel Figueroa’s, also the cinematographer in Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, luminous black-and-white cinematography sparkles anew and astonishes in a 4K restoration.
