Nothing comes easily to Santiago teen Jesús. His group has just lost the local battle of the boy bands, he can’t seem to finish high school or keep track of money, and his widower father is fed up with his inertia. Uncertain what path to take, Jesús is trapped in a dead-end cycle of getting wasted with his buddies and looking for trouble.

One night, the boys are partying in a cemetery when things get out of hand. The boys gang up on a defenseless kid, beating him badly. The next day, Jesús learns that the kid’s in a coma, and the police are searching for those responsible. Desperate to avoid both the authorities and his friends, he has no choice but to turn to his father for help. But how far should a father be expected to go to protect a child when that child is as lost as Jesús?

JESUS is loosely inspired by true events that occurred in Santiago, Chile, where Daniel Mauricio Zamudio, a gay man, was beaten and tortured for several hours in a park in downtown Santiago. After being attacked by four men, Zamudio died 25 days later after being in a coma. Zamudio has become a symbol against homophobic violence in Chile.

Hola Mexico Distribution has announced the U.S. theatrical release of the screwball comedy Tales of an Immoral Couple (La vida inmoral de la pareja ideal), the fifth feature film by writer-director Manolo Caro. The film opens Friday, August 25 in screens across the country including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and San Diego, among other cities. This marks the first U.S. theatrical distribution by the young yet accomplished Mexican film and theater director, whose deft comedies have enjoyed significant box office success at home, making him the only filmmaker in Mexico to have scored a top ten highest-grossing movie in the past three consecutive years.  

Tales of an Immoral Couple centers on Lucio and Martina, two former lovers whose passionate romance began while attending a strict Catholic high school in Mexico. Twenty-five five years later, they unexpectedly run into each other in the city of San Miguel de Allende and despite still sharing an undiminished love for one another they both pretend to be in happy marriages––even if it’s all lies. As they try to maintain their facades, a comedy of errors ensues that reveals the true reasons why the couple ended up separating in the first place.    

Emmy-nominated actress and Caro regular Cecilia Suárez plays the role of Martina, while Manuel García Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven and the upcoming Soldado) plays the role of Lucio. They are joined by a cast of established as well as up-and-coming actors including Sebastián Aguirre (Güeros and A Monster with a Thousand Heads), Andrés Almeida (You’re Killing Me Susana and Y Tu Mamá También), and Spain’s Paz Vega (Lucía and Sex, and Almodóvar’s Talk to Her and I’m So Excited). 

Shot on location in Mexico’s picturesque San Miguel de Allende, Tales of an Immoral Couple premiered on Mexican screens in November of last year and became one of the top-grossing Mexican films of 2016. With a charming vivacity and a talented cast with impeccable comedic timing, the film offers U.S. audiences a great introduction to Caro, a director who deftly combines his artistry with comedy.

Opens Friday, August 25 at the following theaters:
Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills, CA
Laemmle Playhouse, Pasadena, CA
Cinepolis Pico Rivera, Pico Rivera, CA
Digital Gym, San Diego CA
Regal Ontario Palace, Ontario, CA
Regal Rancho Del Rey, San Diego, CA
Regal Edwards South Gate, South Gate, CA
Regal Texas Station, Las Vegas, NV
Cine Latino Aurora, Aurora, CO
Cine Latino Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ
Cine Latino Pasadena, Pasadena, TX
AMC Gulf Pointe 30, Houston, TX
AMC Studio 30, Houston, TX
AMC Mesquite 30, Dallas, TX
AMC Parks @ Arlington, Dallas, TX
AMC Cicero 14, Chicago IL
AMC Ford City 14, Chicago, IL
AMC East Ridge, San Jose, CA
AMC Mercado 20, San Jose, CA
AMC Edinburg 18, Edinburg, TX
AMC Orange 30, OC, CA
AMC Jersey Gardens 20, NJ
AMC Empire 25, New York, NY
AMC Westgate 20, Phenix, AZ
AMC Palm Promenade 14, San Diego, CA
Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT
Cobb Dolphin Mall, Miami, FL
Maya Cinemas, Pittsburg, CA
Maya Cinemas, Fresno, CA
Maya Cinemas, Salinas, CA
Maya Cinemas, Bakersfield, CA

“A dark journey of the soul…one of the more understated and yet compelling evocations of life under the junta.” — Jay Weissberg, Variety

“Keep[s] the viewer claustrophobically locked in Francisco’s experience of the city, a labyrinth of shadow in which any number of threats lurk just off camera.” — Erin Delaney, Film Comment

Set in 1977 Buenos Aires under Argentina’s military regime, this low-key but suspenseful thriller makes a middle-aged apolitical office worker the reluctant messenger in a precarious plot to prevent the political kidnapping of two strangers. Francisco (Velázquez), a sad-faced family man, receives a call from a woman he knew in college, with a seemingly benign request to publish his student poem. Directors Márquez and Testa keep the story simmering just below the surface, floating subtle suggestions of humor even as they trigger unease and launch the threat that forces Francisco into a life-and-death odyssey that evolves in the dark empty streets just blocks from his home. In Spanish with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

Kékszakállú
A film by Gastón Solnicki
(Argentina, 2016, 71 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

Hailed as "an eerie high-modernist fable... mightily minimalist, and drop-dead gorgeous" (Olaf Möller, Film Comment), Kékszakállú is an beguiling portrait of several young women at the threshold of adulthood, feeling their way through various crises born of the insular comforts of upper-middle-class life.

A playful tableau of spiritual seeking, the film is comprised of moments that seem to have been drawn from memory, with an elliptical musicality that moves according to forms, colors, sounds, and states of being. The status quo of boredom and leisure is challenged by the vicissitudes of Argentina’s economic malaise, forcing the offspring of this vanishing upper class to extricate themselves from the grips of familial privilege. 

True to Solnicki’s non-fiction roots, and with a painterly mise-en-scène, the film presents a documentary-like exposure of the quotidian while suggesting possibilities for redemption among this brood of the weary. There is no protagonist in Kékszakállú, rather several young women blanketed under layers of sunlit lassitude and politely tamped down discomfort. Yet, this is a joyful experience, moving inexorably toward liberation.

Partly inspired by Béla Bartók’s sole opera, Bluebeard’s Castle (vivid passages are heard throughout the film), Kékszakállú radically transposes the portent of Bluebeard’s Castle into something far less recognizable: a tale of generational inertia, situated between the alternating and precisely rendered tableaux of work and relaxation in Buenos Aires and Punta del Este. 

Named as one of the Best Undistributed Films of 2016 by Film Comment and IndieWire, selected as one of Artforum's ten best films of 2016 by James Quandt, and an official selection at the Venice, Toronto, and New York film festivals, Kékszakállú will open on Friday, August 25, at Facets Cinémathèque in Chicago. 

A film by Matías Piñeiro
(USA/Argentina, 2016, 87 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
A Kino Lorber release.

Now Playing!
Film Society of Lincoln Center — Buy Tickets in Advance

A favorite at the Locarno, New York, Toronto, and BFI London film festivals, Matías Piñeiro’s fourth installment in his celebrated series on William Shakespeare’s comedies also marks his first film shot in the United States.

In Hermia & Helena, Camila, a young Argentine theater director, travels from Buenos Aires to New York City to attend an artists’ residency to develop her new project: a new Spanish translation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Upon her arrival, Camila quickly realizes that her work doesn’t compensate for the absence of her friends and boyfriend she left behind. When she begins to receive a series of mysterious postcards from Danièle, a former participant in the same residency, Camila second-guesses her studies altogether.

The fifth feature film by the Argentine-born director includes understated and complex performances by an assorted cast featuring Piñeiro regulars Agustina Muñoz and María Villar (Viola, The Princess of France), with stalwarts of New York’s independent film scene such as Keith Poulson (Listen Up Philip), Mati Diop (Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum), filmmakers Dan Sallitt (The Unspeakable Act) and Dustin Guy Defa (the upcoming Human People).

In Hermia & Helena (named after two characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Piñeiro continues his exploration of female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies after Rosalinda (2010), Viola (2012), and The Princess of France (2014), and his most recent film is a welcome creative encounter between American independent filmmaking and Latin American cinema.   A valentine to New York City, Hermia & Helena is a film of delightful amorous detours, dead ends, and new beginnings, navigating different hemispheres and languages, where the written words of Shakespeare clash with the entanglements of modern, digital life.

“(A) gloriously imaginative vision of youthful ardor in love and art alike.”
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker

(Julia Solomonoff, USA/Spain/Brazil/Argentina/Colombia, 2017, 102 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)

Nico is a famous actor in Argentina, but in New York, nobody takes notice. After giving up a successful career in his home country for a chance to make it in the Big Apple, he needs to juggle bartending, babysitting and odd jobs to keep himself afloat. Starting from square one is hard in the city of dreams. With each role Nico takes on, he puts on a new persona in order to fit in. He performs the ideal bartender, the up-and-coming actor, the friend, the father figure. But when old friends from Buenos Aires come to visit, he needs to juggle the image of his old life with the reality of the struggling actor in New York City. 

In a moving depiction of this vibrant city, director Julia Solomonoff’s touching feature presents a portrait of immigrant solitude. Nico faces the difficulty of finding not only a home, but himself amidst the indifferent metropolis. Nobody’s Watching questions how we adjust when we lose our audience.

—Frédéric Boyer

Cinema Tropical's popular film series Music+Film: Brazil is back, celebrating one of the world’s most vibrant musical cultures.  Programmed by Mary Jane Marcasiano.

TIM MAIA
(Mauro Lima, Brazil, 2014, 140 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Screening introduced by Denise Dummont, and co-presented with Luaka Bop Records.
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The life and work of Sebastião Rodrigues Maia, aka Tim Maia, a highly creative singer and composer also known for his explosive temper. Tim Maia revolutionized the Brazilian music introducing delicious shots of funk and soul to it. This film recreates his life, from his teen years till the peak of his career, when he scored dozens of top hits and achieved the status of one of the most popular and beloved stars of the Brazilian music scene.

Tuesday, April 4, 7pm

AXÉ: MUSIC OF A PEOPLE
(Axé: Canto do Povo de um Lugar, Chico Kertész, 2016, 107 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
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The history of axé music—the popular genre that originated in Salvador, Bahia in the 1980s, fusing different Afro-Caribbean genres, such as marcha, reggae, and calypso—revealed through interviews with Brazilian musical artists; Araketu, Asa de Águia, Banda Mel, Banda Reflexos, Bell Marques, Caetano Veloso, Carlinhos Brown, Chiclete com Banana, Claudia Leitte, Daniela Mercury, É o Tchan/Gera Samba, Gilberto Gil, Ivete Sangalo, Luis Caldas, Marcio Vitor, Netinho, Olodum, Ricardo Chaves, Sarajane, Saulo Fernandes, Psirico, Terrasamba, Timbalada e Xandy.

Sunday,  April 9, 5pm

O SAMBA
(Georges Gachot, Brazil, 2014, 82 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Introduced by director George Gachot
Presented with the support of the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York
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Seeking to identify the roots of rhythm that merge with Brazilian identity, director Georges Gachot investigates the importance of samba in the lives of so many people. Guided by the singer Martinho da Vila, who tells stories about his career and introduces the director to his samba school, Unidos de Vila Isabel, champion of the carnival in 2013 . With the participation of Mart’nália, Ney Matogrosso, Leci Brandão, Zeca Baleiro, Beth Carvalho and others from the same musical genre.

Sunday, April 9, 7:30pm

ANDRÉ MIDANI — AN INSIDER'S STORY OF BRAZILIAN MUSIC
(Andrucha Waddington & Mini Kerti, 2015, 120 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Introduced by Béco Dranoff
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Based on André Midani’s autobiography, this feature discusses crucial events in Brazilian music by telling about the life and relationships of this music industry executive who molded amazing careers and made the industry boom in Brazil between 1950 and 2000. His story is told through informal gatherings and jam sessions done at André’s house with artists, intellectuals and journalists who influenced him and who were influenced by him. These gatherings contributed many things, both material and immaterial, to the culture of the country.

Monday,  April 10, 7pm

NAKED EYE
(Olho Nu, Joel Pizzini, Brazil, 2013, Documentary, 101 min.)
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The life-work of Ney Matogrosso, portrayed through images and sounds with the artist today, archival material home and current performances. The film is a  synthesis of his musical career and the editing of the film evokes scenes and situations of Ney on stage and in everyday life. Avoiding a nostalgic tone, OLHO NU searches for the sensitive human dimension of a character whose history is intertwined with the best of the Latin American songbook. As its name suggests, the film dares to undress the man behind the fame, thus probing the motivations of his art, critical thinking, character and libertarian political ideology that permeates the repertoire of Ney, always guided by coherence and aesthetic quality.

Tuesday, April 11, 7pm

The Museum of Modern Art has announced the film series "Latin American Cinema: The State of the Art" to take place March 30–April 9, 2017 in New York City. This series features a selection of new films from Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Perú, and Venezuela, that were supported by the intergovernmental organization Ibermedia, which for two decades has advanced the making of fiction and nonfiction films in Latin America, Portugal, Spain, and, most recently, Italy.

A consortium with 20 member countries, Ibermedia has provided an invaluable platform for the exchange of resources and film professionals, resulting in a more collaborative, vibrant film scene. By supporting projects in various stages of the filmmaking process, from development and production to distribution, exhibition, and promotion, Ibermedia has been instrumental in elevating artistically significant works and nurturing emerging voices in cinema. Filmmakers who have been supported by Ibermedia include Manoel de Oliveira, Lucrecia Martel, Miguel Gomes, and many others.

Organized by La Frances Hui, Associate Curator, Department of Film, the series will screen Magallanes by Salvador del Solar from Peru, The Lost Brother / El otro hermano by Israel Adrián Caetano from Argentina, Alba by Ana Cristina Barragán from Ecuador,  Rara by Pepa San Martín from Chile, Elephant, the Horse / Un caballo llamado Elefante by Andrés Waissbluth from Chile, The Distinguished Citizen / El ciudadano ilustre by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn from Argentina, and Gone with the River / Dauna, Lo que lleva el río by Mario Crespo from Venezuela. 

WEDNESDAY MARCH 22, 6:30PM, Tucson Museum of Art Lobby
ARTIST/FILMMAKER TALK: MARÍA JOSÉ CUEVAS “HEROINES OF SIN AND PLEASURE”
Co-presented by Tucson Cine Mexico and the Tucson Museum of Art
The showgirls – the Bellas de Noche – of Mexico City in the 1970s and 80s were political and cultural icons. Mexico City-based director, writer, and cinematographer María José Cuevas spent ten years examining the rich photographic archive of these showgirls, five of whom are the subject of Tucson Cine Mexico's Opening Night Film. In this talk, featuring sensational magazine spreads and film excerpts from the archive, Cuevas will discuss the powerful emergence of the showgirls in an era of economic crisis and the growing wave of women’s liberation, the history of this erotic art form, and what has become of it today. In conversation with Laura Gutiérrez, Associate Professor, Latin American Performance Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

FRIDAY MARCH 24, 6:30PM, Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18
ARIZONA PREMIERE: BELLAS DE NOCHE / BEAUTIES OF THE NIGHT (Opening Night Film, with director in person)
María José Cuevas’ engrossing debut documentary feature offers a moving portrait of five of Mexico’s most popular showgirls of the late 1970s and 80s, almost forty years after they ruled Mexico’s entertainment world. With a keen eye and devoid of any sensationalism, Cuevas enters the fascinating world of these women who have struggled to reinvent themselves after the decline of the burlesque heyday era in Mexico. “A beautifully crafted exploration of ageism with a powerful vision, and an empowering take on what it means to grow old in a culture obsessed with youth and beauty.” (Palm Springs Film Festival)

FRIDAY MARCH 24, 9:00PM, Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18
ARIZONA PREMIERE: UN MONSTRUO DE MIL CABEZAS / A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS
When Sonia (Jana Raluy) receives the news that her husband’s cancer has progressed to a terminal stage, she races to secure the insurance company approval for the care that can help him. Met with indifference and negligence at every turn, Sonia’s desperation triggers a primal survival instinct as a series of increasingly violent confrontations unfolds. A sharp, urgent tale of a distraught woman intent on protecting her family at all costs, director Rodrigo Plá’s latest film is an engrossing combination of thriller, drama and timely socio-political commentary.

SATURDAY MARCH 25, 7:00PM, Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18
ARIZONA PREMIERE: CARMÍN TROPICAL
Set on the coast of Oaxaca, Carmín Tropical tells the story of Mabel (José Pescina), a muxe (Mexico’s third gender) who returns to her hometown to find the murderer of her friend Daniela. She finds herself on a journey that takes her through nostalgia, love, and betrayal in a town where transvestism takes on an unusual dimension. Rigoberto Perezcano’s second feature film has a “killer ending in store that’s a real nail-biter” (The Hollywood Reporter). 

SATURDAY MARCH 25, 9:00PM, Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18
ARIZONA PREMIERE: LA CALLE DE LA AMARGURA / BLEAK STREET
Based on a true—yet bizarre—crime story, the latest film by veteran auteur Arturo Ripstein is a black-and-white lusciously shot noir melodrama that tells the story of two prostitutes (Patricia Reyes Spíndola and Nora Velásquez) who mistakenly kill two twin mini-luchadores in downtown Mexico City in a robbery attempt to make ends meet. “Ripstein plunges into a Mexico City demimonde of crime, prostitution, and wrestling… (and) imbues his Buñuelian tableaux with both empathy and dark humor” (Film Form).

SUNDAY MARCH 26, 2:00PM, Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18
ARIZONA PREMIERE: EL CHARRO DE TOLUQUILLA
The documentary profiles Jaime García—a mariachi singer and braggart who lives his life like a chauvinistic vintage Mexican movie character, but with one difference: he is HIV-positive. José Villalobos’ remarkable debut film offers a playful and incisive look at masculinity through the Mexican popular figure of the charro cantor (singing cowboy), as Jaime chooses between maintaining his reckless lifestyle or becoming a family man.
 

LAS LETRAS / THE LETTERS
(Pablo Chavarría Gutiérrez, Mexico, 2015, 77 min. In Spanish and Tzotzil with English subtitles. New York premiere)
Las Letras is an exercise in (and exorcism of) outrage, a performative representation of an indigenous Mexican professor’s random arrest and erroneous 13-year imprisonment for a brutal slaying. Gutiérrez’s camera stalks the countryside, ghostlike, observing wandering lost children and a woman’s balletic expression of grief, punctuated by Gómez’s proud, hopeful jailhouse letters to his family. Post-screening discussion with Gutiérrez.
Friday, February 24, 4:30pm T1, Saturday, February 25, 3pm T2

SOLAR
(Manuel Abramovich, Argentina, 2016, 76 min.North American premiere)
Flavio Cabobianco was 10 years old when his messianic message of self-salvation, I Come from the Sun, became a bestseller in Argentina. As Flavio releases a 20th-anniversary edition, first-time feature filmmaker Manuel Abramovich follows him and his family to try to understand the book’s origins and tangled authorship. But Flavio’s escalating attempts to control the film give rise to a compelling tale about the complexities of artistic collaboration. In Spanish; English subtitles. Post-screening discussion with Abramovich.
Friday, February 24, 7:30 pm T2, Sunday, February 26, 5pm T2

Now in its second year, Neighboring Scenes is the Film Society’s 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. Neighboring Scenes spans a wide geographic range, featuring established auteurs as well as fresh talent from the international festival scene. Presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Cinema Tropical.

Brooklyn-based Factory 25 has announced the theatrical release of Peru’s 2017 Academy Award Submission for Best Foreign-Language Film, Videofilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) by Juan Daniel F. Molero. Winner of the Tiger Award for Best Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival, the film opens on December 2 at Spectacle Theater in New York City, followed by week runs at Arena Cinema in Los Angeles starting December 7, and at The Roxie in San Francisco on January 6, with additional screenings across the country through winter. The film will also be available digitally in February via iTunes, Vimeo, Amazon, VUDU, X-Box, Sony Playstation and other many other digital outlets.

Videofilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) begins as a teenage misfit spends her first days out of school slacking and experimenting with drugs and cyberspace. She meets Junior online. He's an aspiring amateur porn dealer into conspiracy theories and is also convinced that the Mayan Apocalypse is happening. Once they meet in the 'real world,' a series of bizarre events unfold in this contemporary non-love story that portrays a post-modern Lima as an glitchy computer virus full of corruption, psychedelia and ancient ruins. 

Hailed as "purely psychedelic... mesmerizing, nearly horrifying" (John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter), Videofilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) is the second feature by Molero, his 2005 film, Reminiscencias was an international festival favorite.

(Papu Curotto, Argentina/Brazil, 2016, 83 min. In Spanish and Portuguese with English subtitles)

Matías and Jerónimo have known each other since childhood. During the holiday, before they begin high school, their friendship takes a new turn when they both experience their sexual awakening. However, Matias's father forces them apart when he takes a job far away. Ultimately, distance and family contempt for homosexuality leads Matias to deny his friend, and ultimately, himself.

More than ten years later, Matias returns to his old town for Carnival with his girlfriend, where he unexpectedly runs into Jerónimo. Feelings between the two men slowly reappear, leading to a long-repressed awakening. But at what cost?

Opens Friday, November 18
Arena Cinema
1625 North Las Palmas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA / (323) 306-0676