March 31 - April 12, 2021
Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema
Presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinema Tropical
With the Support of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)
at New York University (NYU)
“New York’s Neighboring Scenes series has quickly become
one of the most exciting bits of any year’s film festival schedule”
—Joshua Brunsting, CriterionCast
Now in its sixth year, Neighboring Scenes is Film at Lincoln Center's wide-ranging showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema, highlighting impressive recent productions from across the region. This selective slate of premieres exhibits the breadth of styles, techniques, and approaches employed by Latin American filmmakers today, and spans a wide geographic range, featuring established auteurs as well as fresh talent from the international festival scene.
This year’s edition of the festival kicks off a series of events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Cinema Tropical, the leading presenter of Latin American cinema in the U.S., with a special screening of Silvia Prieto (1999), the landmark film by Argentine director Martín Rejtman.
Organized by Carlos A. Gutiérrez and Cecilia Barrionuevo.
All films streaming on www.virtual.filmlinc.org/page/neighboring-scenes
Special thanks to Jill Lane, Omar Dauhajre, Sofía Bordenave, Paola Buontempo, Daniella Schestatzky, Raúl Camargo, Corey Sabourin, Mary Jane Marcasiano, Pilar Garrett, Juan Pablo Medina, Marina Mendes Gandour.
Opening Night:
ALL THE DEAD ONES / TODOS OS MORTOS
A film by Caetano Gotardo and Marco Dutra
(Brazil/France, 2020, 120 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
The class struggle permeates every time period, and in each political and social era it is reconfigured in new ways—though never not cruelly. This reality is at the root of All of the Dead Ones, which had its world premiere in the official competition of the 2020 Berlinale. In this impressive film, Marco Dutra (Good Manners) and Caetano Gotardo (The Moving Creatures) join creative forces to offer a strong female-driven historical drama, which unfolds at the edges of the stories of two clans: a white aristocratic family and a formerly enslaved Black family. The film makes clear how the abolition of slavery has not meant the destruction of racism and social discrimination. The past never ends—it always catches up to us, no matter where we are.
Cinema Tropical 20th Anniversary screening:
SILVIA PRIETO
A film by Martín Rejtman
(Argentina, 1999, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Silvia Prieto sells soap to passersby in busy city squares, pores over phone books to find women who share her name, and refuses to settle down with either of the two boyish men in her orbit. Rejtman’s radiant second feature, which follows Silvia (played by the singer Rosario Bléfari) for a short stretch of her life in Buenos Aires, is a comedy of details—like the statue that supposedly resembles Silvia and passes from owner to owner; the blazer Silvia permanently borrows from a wealthy male admirer; the chicken she buys every night—and occasional, quiet epiphanies. Silvia Prieto is one of the jewels of recent Argentine cinema, and one of Rejtman’s most perfectly realized films. 20th anniversary restoration undertaken by Museo del Cine in collaboration with EYE Filmmuseum. Restored by Museo del Cine de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires and Constanza Sanz Palacios, in collaboration with Eye Institute Amsterdam, and supported by Mecenazgo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.
ONE IN A THOUSAND / LAS MIL Y UNA
A film by Clarisa Navas
(Argentina/Germany, 2020, 120 min. In Spanish with with English subtitles)
Winner of the Best Picture Award at the 2020 Jeonju International Film Festival, Clarisa Navas’s potent queer drama is set in a housing project in the northeastern Argentine city of Corrientes. The film follows Iris, a basketball-loving 17-year-old teenager who falls for Renata, a woman who is a few years older than her and has a mysterious past. Iris slowly realizes that she will have to overcome her fears and struggle with her insecurities in order to experience first love. One in a Thousand is a story of tenderness in a hostile environment, where desire takes many forms in the darkness and gossip can turn into a weapon.
LOS FANTASMAS
A film by Sebastián Lojo
(Guatemala/Argentina, 2020, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
The auspicious debut feature by Guatemalan director Sebastián Lojo is a vigorous character study that follows Koki, a young, attractive, and charismatic man who makes a living in Guatemala City as a thief by proxy. During the day he works as a tourist guide, and at night he seduces men in bars, leading them to a hotel where they are robbed by the owner, Carlos. When the tables are turned and Koki is betrayed by Carlos, he finds himself pushed even further into society’s margins, forced to witness the violent effects of his actions from an almost disembodied perspective.
PANQUIACO
A film by Ana Elena Tejera
(Panama, 2020, 80 min. In Portuguese and Dulegaya with English subtitles)
Returning from Portugal to Panama, the land that brims with promise, Cebaldo revisits his hometown with the familiar eyes of someone who grew up there but also the alienation of someone who left. Ana Elena Tejera’s poetic debut feature moves freely between fiction and documentary, as a story about myths, rituals, memory, and identity unfolds. A record of the history of Panama and the encounters and disagreements between the protagonist’s past and present show us that the most painful exile is the exile from whom we once were—and the things that made us what we now are.
SAMICHAY: IN SEARCH OF HAPPINESS / SAMICHAY: EN BUSCA DE LA FELICIDAD
A film by Mauricio Franco Tosso
(Peru/Spain, 2020, 87 min. In Quechua and Spanish with English subtitles)
Samichay, which means “in search of happiness” in Quechua, is the aptly named cow in this debut feature by Mauricio Franco Tosso. High up in the Andes mountains, in a landscape both hostile and profoundly beautiful, a beleaguered family tries to scrape by. Shot in striking black and white, the film presents a moving story that puts at stake the viability of certain traditional lifestyles in rural and urban environments. At the heart of the film is the indigenous protagonist Celestino’s tender and heartbreaking relationship with Samichay, who is his only source of income and hope for a better future.
BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF / ENTRE PERRO Y LOBO
A film by Irene Gutiérrez
(Cuba/Spain/Colombia, 2020, 75 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Even though its frame of reference is the Angolan Civil War, Irene Gutiérrez’s film is not a story of battle but of abiding faith. As it meticulously revisits the experiences of Estebita, Miguel, and Alberto, three former Cuban soldiers who fought in Africa, that faith in certain ideals that have endured across decades and in spite of reality comes under examination. Premiered at the Forum section of the 2020 Berlinale, this second film from Gutiérrez (Hotel Nueva Isla) depicts the three veterans re-enacting war games and playing out the theatricality of past glories in the jungles of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra.
CHACO
A film by Diego Mondaca
(Bolivia/Argentina, 2020, 77 min. In Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish with English subtitles)
Set in 1934, during the Chaco War fought between Bolivia and Paraguay over territorial disputes, this spare historical drama follows a small regiment made up mostly of Aymara and Quechua indigenous soldiers commanded by a retired, gruff German officer fighting for the Bolivian Army. The troop is in a limbo, looking fruitlessly for the enemy, and wandering through the hostile, semi-arid lowlands in extreme weather. Inspired by the experiences of his grandfather, director Diego Mondaca’s debut feature is a powerful meditation on the futility and absurdity of war.
NIGHT SHOT / VISIÓN NOCTURNA
A film by Carolina Moscoso
(Chile, 2020, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Stories about acts of extreme violence often end up fixated on the perpetrators. Not so with Night Vision. Provoking the viewer with a sustained and risky aesthetic, Carolina Moscoso takes on highly personal material, showing the universe of complicities and contradictions that swirl around the difficult topic of rape. In Night Shot—winner of the Grand Prix at last year’s FIDMarseille and the Cinema Tropical Award for Best First Film—the transitions of light and chiaroscuro accompany the courage, honesty, and even delicacy with which a harrowing event is excavated.
THE HOWLS / SE ESCUCHAN AULLIDOS
A film by Julio Hernández Cordón
(Mexico, 2020, 68 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Julio Hernández Cordón (Buy Me a Gun, I Promise You Anarchy), one of the most original and prolific directors of his generation, returns in his latest film to Texcoco, the town on the outskirts of Mexico City where he grew up, and recently the site of a canceled new international airport. Accompanied by his teenage daughter, Fabiana, and the actor Francisco Barreiro—who plays nine different characters—the director creates a whimsical, subversive, and genre-bending family portrait in which father and daughter tour the playground of his childhood while in search of a vanished lake, Aztec rulers, and werewolves.
