A few days ago, news portal LatAmcinema.com, published a special report with the highest grossing local films of 2011 for some Latin American countries, which happened to be mostly comedies. According to information offered by the publication, the most successful film from Argentina was Un cuento chino / Chinese Take-Away, directed by Sebastián Borensztein and starring Ricardo Darín about a hardware salesman and a Chinese boy in Buenos Aires, grossing a whopping equivalent of 4.4 million dollars.

The highest grossing picture for the neighboring country Brazil was Roberto Santucci's De pernas pro ar, a comedy about the exploration of the changes one woman faces after being fired from her job. The most successful Chilean film of the year was a biopic of Violeta Parra entitled Violeta se fue a los cielos by renowned filmmaker Andrés Wood (Machuca), which just had its US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this week.

The most successful Colombian film was El paseo, director Harold Trompetero's comedy of a family road trip to Cartagena produced by Dago García. In Mexico, the animated film Don Gato y su pandilla, directed by Alberto Mar in co-production with Argentina and based on the American cartoon created by Hannah-Barbera, ranked number one at the box office.

Director Gaston Vizcarra's El Guachimán, a film about an ordinary man's sudden acquisition of a large amount of money, took the top spot in Peru last year. Likewise, Uruguay's top-grossing film was Artigas - La Redota, César Charlone's fusion of history and fantasy that was part of the film series "Libertadores" about key historical figures in the fight for the independence of eight Latin American countries.

Lastly, the Indiana Jones parody, Er Conde Jones: El secreto de la bola criolla written and directed by Benjamín Rausseo, not only topped the year's box office in Venezuela, it became the highest grossing Venezuelan film ever with more than 650,000 spectators.