Liborio by Nino Martínez Sosa
The Rotterdam International Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 2021 edition, which includes five Latin American films in competition: the Dominican film Liborio by Nino Martínez Sosa and the Brazilian film Madalena by Madiano Marcheti in the Tiger Award competition; and the Costa Rican film Aurora by Paz Fábrega, the Brazilian Carro Rei by Renata Pinheiro, and the Argentine film The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet / El perro que no calla by Ana Katz, in the Big Screen competition.
Filmmaker Nino Martínez Sosa’s feature film debut unearths an under-explored part of Dominican culture and identity from collective memory. Liborio is a sensory story of the Dominican messianic figure Papá Liborio and the community he inspired. In Madalena, the death of a trans woman links three lives in Brazil’s agrarian heartland. An ingenious debut by director Madiano Marcheti, bursts with visual flair.
Aurora by director Paz Fábrega, winner of the 2010 Tiger Award for her debut feature Cold Water of the Sea, is a loving, painstaking study of the dilemmas of a girl facing an unwanted pregnancy and the woman helping her. In Carro Rei by Renata Pinheiro, revived wrecked cars prove more evil than expected in this highly original Brazilian film about steel, sex, populism, ecology and humanity. Ana Katz’s The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet follows kind-hearted thirty-something Sebastian hops listlessly from job to job in this pleasing mix of empathetic drama and the slightly absurd.
Additionally four Latin American shorts will participate in the Tiger Short Competition selection: the Peruvian-Dutch co-production film Er is een geest van mij by Mateo Vega, the Mexican-French co-production Luces del desierto by Félix Blume, the Cuban film Terranova by Alejandro Pérez Serrano and Alejandro Alonso Estrella, and the Colombian-German co-production Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 3 Micro Resistances by Marwa Arsanios.
The 50th edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival will take place as a two-stage event, initially with a hybrid showcase of films February 1-7, followed by a physical event June 2-6, 2021.
