Luis Sepúlveda, photographed by Daniel Mordzinski, Anemon Productions
An explosive fusion of history, literature, and crime, the documentary film Latin Noir will have its world premiere at the 38th edition of the Miami International Film Festival, set to run in-person and online from March 5 to 14, 2021, and available to audiences across the U.S.
Directed by Greek filmmaker Andreas Apostolidis, and a crime novelist himself, Latin Noir travels to five Latin American countries meeting leading crime novelists of the region along the way. Through the stories and heroes of Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina), Leonardo Padura (Cuba), the late Luis Sepúlveda (Chile), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico), Santiago Roncagliolo (Peru) and Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina), Apostolidis’ presents a panorama of recent Latin American political history and a portrait of a generation of emboldened novelists that emerged from the student movements of the late 1960s to comment on the societies they found themselves in through a new, and highly effective, literary genre: noir.
As military dictatorships rose to power across Latin America in the 1970s, this new generation of crime writers made it their imperative to say what their governments denied through the power of narrative: in noir fiction, these novelists found a way to describe not only their collective pasts, but also the truths of their present.
From the everyday criminality of life in Latin America during the 1970s emerged a new kind of novel that differed from its noir counterparts in Europe or North America—one that addressed more specifically urban nexuses of power, violence, and terror. Latin Noir offers a history of the genre while referencing the extent to which it became an undeniably useful tool for writers to reflect back to society the networks of crime that existed all around them.
Taking the viewer through the plot lines and protagonists of Padura, Sepúlveda (who died last year at age 70 of Covid-19), Taibo, Roncagliolo, and Piñeiro, the documentary brings into focus the lasting repercussions of the dictatorships on the Latin American psyche and the development of the region’s specific artistic and literary traditions. Both a history lesson and a reflection on the power of art in society, Latin Noir is a welcome addition to the Latin American studies documentary canon.
Special discount tickets for Friends of Cinema Tropical!
