This is the Opening Night of the 39th Chicago Latino Film Festival. Price includes food and drink reception prior to film showing of Love & Mathematics (Amor y Matemáticas) at 7pm. Cocktail/Evening attire is strongly recommended.
Eleven-year-old Lucía’s family lives a precarious life in Lake Coatepeque in El Salvador. Includes Short Film Silences of Childhood.
After not speaking to each other in years, siblings Mateo, Belén and María José meet to sign the sale documents of their childhood home in western Uruguay. But when Mateo’s car breaks down in the middle of the night, the trio have no choice but to stay at a cozy country hotel where old disagreements and conflicts come to the surface. Includes Short Film All in Favor.
Told in real time, "The Punishment" opens with two parents searching for their missing boy in a Chilean forest. Minutes earlier, Ana (Antonia Zegers) and Mateo (Néstor Cantillana) had left their 7-year-old son alone by the side of the road for misbehaving. As they look for him with the help of a local police officer, the couple will face some uncomfortable truths about their relationship and their role as parents.
The town 65-year-old Domingo calls home is being threatened by developers who want to construct a highway that will cross right through it. Most of the residents have left, but Domingo refuses to sell his land. The recent widower believes his wife visits him regularly in the shape of a mist. He will resort to any means necessary to protect his home. Escalante Meza’s third feature film was Costa Rica’s official entry for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
Héctor returns to his village after working abroad for years to discover that it is now under the control of an evangelical preacher and that there is a lack of job opportunities. His wife despises him for having abandoned her for so long and his young child doesn’t recognize him. Héctor has become an outcast. He decides to reclaim his life even if it means burning down anything or anyone tied to his past.
Inspired by real events, Chile’s official selection for the Academy Award for Best International Feature centers on Blanquita, an 18-year-old single mother who, encouraged by Manuel (Alejandro Goic), the priest who runs the foster home she lives in, becomes a key witness in the case against a child prostitution and pedophilia network run by a well-known businessman. Includes Short Film Baby (Colombia).
The first Puerto Rican-produced film to premiere at Sundance, Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Marrero Sánchez’s feature debut follows ailing artist Noelia who, after learning that her cancer has metastasized, leaves her partner behind in San Juan and moves in with her mother on the island municipality of Vieques. She keeps secret her condition so she can live life on her own terms, including joining in the efforts to document the toxic legacy of the U.S. military exercises in the island.
Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize in the Cannes Film Festival and nominated to a Goya for Best Iberoamerican Film, Ramírez Pulido’s feature debut begins with a murder: best friends Eliú and Mono have killed a man they mistake for Eliú’s father. Eliú is sent to an experimental institution deep in the heart of Colombia’s tropical forests, where he performs manual labor and endures group therapy under the watchful eye of guard Godoy. Includes Short Film - One Way Journey (Dominican Republic).
Six Cuban filmmakers, under the editorial guidance of Fernando Pérez ("Suite Havana"), craft seven stories about Cuba in the time of COVID: A little girl tries to protect one of her two great possessions: a dove; Paloma arrives at the decaying house that someone, upon departing, left her, the pattern of the walls telling as many stories as the poultry farm in an inner room; after being released from prison, Ernesto begins to work at a cinema shuttered by the pandemic; Mara delivers drinks to people’s homes; Gaby spends the lockdown taking photographs from her balcony; Gallo, a temperamental trumpeter, disturbs his neighbors with his playing.
Belmonte’s "Rashomon"-like thriller finds newly appointed police chief Josué (Lázaro Ramos, "Madame Sata") investigating the murder of a local politician in a coastal town of Bahía. Includes Short Film - Bedwetter (Peru)
Set in the Spanish-speaking black enclaves of Miami, Gispert’s feature debut follows Tomás, an immigrant laborer with a murky past who fled his country by shipping himself in a crate. Tomás is living off the grid, performing odd-jobs for an upper-middle class family, saving money in the hopes of eventually buying a home for his estranged family that he left behind. A series of events forces Tomás out of his solitary life to engage with people in his community in search of something lost.
Guatemala’s official selection for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, Anaïs Taracena’s documentary tells the daring story of journalist Elías Barahona, "El topo", who in the 1970s infiltrated General Romeo García’s dictatorship posing as a press officer for the Ministry of the Interior. As such, he was able to retrieve and release information about human rights abuses even as his closest friends were convinced that he was a traitor. Includes Short Film - Fifth of June.
A victim of sex trafficking and rape, Johana is forced to leave her family and friends behind in her native Colombia for Argentina. Alone in a strange land, she earns a living as a bicycle delivery person, barely making enough money to pay the rent and send back home. Throughout the film, as we watch her go on with her daily routine and try to find a space for herself as a Black woman in Buenos Aires, we hear her reminisce about her life back home as she shares her fears, disappointments and hopes.
Emilio and Rosa (Ariadna Gil) have lived what they consider a perfect life with their five daughters in a remote place in the Canary Islands until one of their daughters dies. Their period of grieving is short lived as they return to their routine: buying and selling goods at the local market and the daughters’ homeschooling by a teacher…But something’s amiss: one of their twin daughters is asked to hide in her room every time they receive a visitor, including the teacher. Emilio and Rosa’s secret will be unveiled when a tourist walks up the road asking for directions.
Claudia Sainte-Luce ("The Amazing Catfish") delivers a droll, offbeat and sometimes darkly funny comedy about glories past, consumerism and breaking away from social norms. Back in the day Billy Lozano used to be a member of the one-hit boy band Equinoccio.
Cancer-stricken Gabriel returns to his grandparents’ hometown to spend his final days. He arrives just as the town prepares for its annual religious celebration. He is in no mood to make friends; he prefers to face death alone. His demeanor changes when he meets Gladys who the townsfolk believe has the power to cure any disease.
Winner of the Best Director, Best Actress and Best Actor Award at the Locarno International Film Festival and the Horizon Awards at San Sebastian, Valentina Maurel’s feature debut focuses on Eva, a strong-willed and restless 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother, her younger sister and their cat, who desperately wants to move in with her estranged father. Clinging onto him as he goes through a second adolescence, she balances between the tenderness and sensitivity of teenage life and the ruthlessness of the adult world.
Best friends and hedonists Lolo, Cacá, Eli and Alain live a life full of drugs, games and sex until one of them is brutally murdered. Sixteen years later, the memory of that tragic act haunts Alain as he learns that Eli’s murderer is not the one everybody assumed at first. In this erotically charged psychological thriller, Hernán Jabes explores the cyclical nature of violence, abuse of power and impunity.
As the city of Quito prepares to celebrate another Good Friday, two construction workers find a dead man crucified in the courtyard of the house they are renovating. Nearby, a man in a blood-stained shirt sits in his car. His name is Antanacio, a scammer who has turned a young girl who claims to have visions of the Virgin Mary into a profitable business. But things have gotten out of hand
Humberto’s greatest desire, after his recent release from prison, is to rebuild his relationship with his estranged daughter and provide her with a decent life. But her grandparents—wealthy Evangelical pastors—are not willing to give up custody. Bullied into a corner financially and ideologically, Humberto is forced to face his own demons while simultaneously fighting a powerful ecclesiastical institution to which he once belonged. Set in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, "The Visitor" is a somber meditation on class, family relationships, and the increasing power of Evangelism in Latin America.
Eleven-year-old Lucía’s family lives a precarious life in Lake Coatepeque in El Salvador. Includes Short Film Silences of Childhood.
After not speaking to each other in years, siblings Mateo, Belén and María José meet to sign the sale documents of their childhood home in western Uruguay. But when Mateo’s car breaks down in the middle of the night, the trio have no choice but to stay at a cozy country hotel where old disagreements and conflicts come to the surface. Includes Short Film All in Favor.
Gerardo Chijona ("Adorable Lies", "A Paradise Under the Stars") intertwines three very different stories about love, obsession and crime that converge in the end. Ricky travels back to Cuba to visit his family and his old girlfriend who has put on significant weight since he last saw her. Celina, a necrophiliac, steals a corpse who turns out to be incredibly loquacious. Claudia tries to con a drug dealer in a desperate search for money. Featuring Enrique Molina in one of his last roles for the big screen before his death two years ago.
Set in the Spanish-speaking black enclaves of Miami, Gispert’s feature debut follows Tomás, an immigrant laborer with a murky past who fled his country by shipping himself in a crate. Tomás is living off the grid, performing odd-jobs for an upper-middle class family, saving money in the hopes of eventually buying a home for his estranged family that he left behind. A series of events forces Tomás out of his solitary life to engage with people in his community in search of something lost.
Told in real time, "The Punishment" opens with two parents searching for their missing boy in a Chilean forest. Minutes earlier, Ana (Antonia Zegers) and Mateo (Néstor Cantillana) had left their 7-year-old son alone by the side of the road for misbehaving. As they look for him with the help of a local police officer, the couple will face some uncomfortable truths about their relationship and their role as parents.
Héctor returns to his village after working abroad for years to discover that it is now under the control of an evangelical preacher and that there is a lack of job opportunities. His wife despises him for having abandoned her for so long and his young child doesn’t recognize him. Héctor has become an outcast. He decides to reclaim his life even if it means burning down anything or anyone tied to his past.
Confined to his Tahitian hut by the French colonial authorities in 1903, the painter Paul Gauguin is forced to paint a new masterpiece to save his five-year-old native son, while battling illness and torn between madness and sanity. In the course of these events, memories of the past, especially of his life and work at the Panama Canal, the place where his artistic career began and his guilt at abandoning his family in Paris, begin to haunt him.
Grumpy 60-year-old José has led an apparently happy life with his wife Elena. José can’t bear living without her after she unexpectedly dies of a heart attack during his birthday celebration. But when he finds Elena’s diaries where she writes about her dalliances with three different lovers, José decides to confront all three in an attempt to make sense of his relationship with Elena.
The first Puerto Rican-produced film to premiere at Sundance, Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Marrero Sánchez’s feature debut follows ailing artist Noelia who, after learning that her cancer has metastasized, leaves her partner behind in San Juan and moves in with her mother on the island municipality of Vieques. She keeps secret her condition so she can live life on her own terms, including joining in the efforts to document the toxic legacy of the U.S. military exercises in the island.
Belmonte’s "Rashomon"-like thriller finds newly appointed police chief Josué (Lázaro Ramos, "Madame Sata") investigating the murder of a local politician in a coastal town of Bahía. Includes Short Film - Bedwetter (Peru)
A victim of sex trafficking and rape, Johana is forced to leave her family and friends behind in her native Colombia for Argentina. Alone in a strange land, she earns a living as a bicycle delivery person, barely making enough money to pay the rent and send back home. Throughout the film, as we watch her go on with her daily routine and try to find a space for herself as a Black woman in Buenos Aires, we hear her reminisce about her life back home as she shares her fears, disappointments and hopes.
Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize in the Cannes Film Festival and nominated to a Goya for Best Iberoamerican Film, Ramírez Pulido’s feature debut begins with a murder: best friends Eliú and Mono have killed a man they mistake for Eliú’s father. Eliú is sent to an experimental institution deep in the heart of Colombia’s tropical forests, where he performs manual labor and endures group therapy under the watchful eye of guard Godoy. Includes Short Film - One Way Journey (Dominican Republic).
Colonia Dignidad, the isolated German colony at the heart of Pinochet’s torture machine and multiple accusations of sexual and child abuse, has been the subject of several films and even a Netflix documentary mini-series. Rojas Valencia’s tells the story from the point of view of 12-year-old Pablo who has received a scholarship to attend the colony’s school. As one of “Uncle” Paul’s favorites, he becomes an eyewitness to the terrifying actions of its leader.
Best friends and hedonists Lolo, Cacá, Eli and Alain live a life full of drugs, games and sex until one of them is brutally murdered. Sixteen years later, the memory of that tragic act haunts Alain as he learns that Eli’s murderer is not the one everybody assumed at first. In this erotically charged psychological thriller, Hernán Jabes explores the cyclical nature of violence, abuse of power and impunity.
Six Cuban filmmakers, under the editorial guidance of Fernando Pérez ("Suite Havana"), craft seven stories about Cuba in the time of COVID: A little girl tries to protect one of her two great possessions: a dove; Paloma arrives at the decaying house that someone, upon departing, left her, the pattern of the walls telling as many stories as the poultry farm in an inner room; after being released from prison, Ernesto begins to work at a cinema shuttered by the pandemic; Mara delivers drinks to people’s homes; Gaby spends the lockdown taking photographs from her balcony; Gallo, a temperamental trumpeter, disturbs his neighbors with his playing.
V. Checa’s feature debut takes place in a dystopian Peruvian city that could very well be Lima and where 12-year-old Teo helps his father work on a machine that can actually make rain in a place that has never seen it. To help his father find the parts that he needs, Teo becomes involved with a gang of young spies with whom he embarks on a series of adventures which will make him question his father’s obsession.
Sixteen-year-old Manuel loves to play bass in a local band, wander around the streets of the coastal town he calls home and boast about his sexual experiences. But just as he is about to make love to his girlfriend, Manuel feels a sudden yearning for his childhood friend, Felipe. Manuel struggles with his feelings as he watches Felipe flirt with different girls. Mariano Biasin has crafted an empathetic, intimate coming-of-age story in his feature debut.
Patricio’s (Bruno Bichir) wife has asked for a divorce, he can’t see his daughter and he has lost millions of dollars. Talk about a streak of bad luck! His eccentric friend offers him a room in a mansion that houses resident artists. There he meets Natalia (Karla Coronado), a young woman in charge of the mansion’s organic garden, with whom he establishes a relationship. A video installation about nuclear war will help him find his way again.
Every moment is precious for 16-year-old Genoveva; so much so that she counts every moment in her life in seconds. She is devoted to her newborn brother Nacho and to her ailing and colorful grandmother Clara Luz (Geraldine Chaplin). She also puts up with the bullying and strict mores at her all-girl Catholic school. The arrival of Hernán, her catatonic mother’s spiritual guru, may actually offer a way out from her small, parochial, increasingly violent town in this quirky and sometimes surreal coming-of-age story.
As the city of Quito prepares to celebrate another Good Friday, two construction workers find a dead man crucified in the courtyard of the house they are renovating. Nearby, a man in a blood-stained shirt sits in his car. His name is Antanacio, a scammer who has turned a young girl who claims to have visions of the Virgin Mary into a profitable business. But things have gotten out of hand
From Santiago Mitre, the director of "Argentina, 1985," comes this deliciously twisted dark comedy about a man who refuses to die. José (Daniel Hendler) has moved to France with his partner and daughter. Unemployed, José refuses to learn French. One day, this stay-at-home dad knocks on his neighbor’s door to borrow a shovel; he is welcomed in by Jean-Claude (Melvil Poupaud), a bon-vivant. Jean-Claude rubs him the wrong way and José impulsively kills him with the shovel. Much to his chagrin, he discovers his new neighbor alive and well the following morning. Now he must kill him again…and again…and…
Emilio and Rosa (Ariadna Gil) have lived what they consider a perfect life with their five daughters in a remote place in the Canary Islands until one of their daughters dies. Their period of grieving is short lived as they return to their routine: buying and selling goods at the local market and the daughters’ homeschooling by a teacher…But something’s amiss: one of their twin daughters is asked to hide in her room every time they receive a visitor, including the teacher. Emilio and Rosa’s secret will be unveiled when a tourist walks up the road asking for directions.
Gerardo Chijona ("Adorable Lies", "A Paradise Under the Stars") intertwines three very different stories about love, obsession and crime that converge in the end. Ricky travels back to Cuba to visit his family and his old girlfriend who has put on significant weight since he last saw her. Celina, a necrophiliac, steals a corpse who turns out to be incredibly loquacious. Claudia tries to con a drug dealer in a desperate search for money. Featuring Enrique Molina in one of his last roles for the big screen before his death two years ago.
Grumpy 60-year-old José has led an apparently happy life with his wife Elena. José can’t bear living without her after she unexpectedly dies of a heart attack during his birthday celebration. But when he finds Elena’s diaries where she writes about her dalliances with three different lovers, José decides to confront all three in an attempt to make sense of his relationship with Elena.
V. Checa’s feature debut takes place in a dystopian Peruvian city that could very well be Lima and where 12-year-old Teo helps his father work on a machine that can actually make rain in a place that has never seen it. To help his father find the parts that he needs, Teo becomes involved with a gang of young spies with whom he embarks on a series of adventures which will make him question his father’s obsession.
Acclaimed flamenco choreographer and dancer Fuensanta "La Monet"a is working on a new show when one of her students gives her a copy of Félix Grande’s poetry collection "La cabellera de la Shoá." Written by Grande after his visit to Auschwitz, Fuensanta can’t stop thinking about those women —Jewish and Gypsy alike— who lost their lives in the concentration camp. The poems inspire her to create a piece that remembers these women through music, dance and poetry.
Shot in the Chilean Andes in the middle of the pandemic, Duplaquet’s latest film tells the story of a mother and son who have survived a planetary health catastrophe and subsist by hunting and selling rabbits. The appearance of Rena, a mysterious woman trying to cross into Argentina who tries to steal their jeep, exposes the fragile balance between mother and son and awakens a series of feelings which seemed to have been lost due to the loneliness and precariousness of their lives.
Bia fell into a coma twenty years ago after giving birth to her daughter. She has been a fixed but silent presence in her family until she finally wakes up. Now, not only does Bia have to relearn how to speak and move; she has to do so in a household where her now ex-husband is married to another woman and her daughter has to figure out how to relate to this complete stranger. This touching, heartbreaking film shows how we readapt to new circumstances and overcome the challenges they bring.
Confined to his Tahitian hut by the French colonial authorities in 1903, the painter Paul Gauguin is forced to paint a new masterpiece to save his five-year-old native son, while battling illness and torn between madness and sanity. In the course of these events, memories of the past, especially of his life and work at the Panama Canal, the place where his artistic career began and his guilt at abandoning his family in Paris, begin to haunt him.
Guatemala’s official selection for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, Anaïs Taracena’s documentary tells the daring story of journalist Elías Barahona, "El topo", who in the 1970s infiltrated General Romeo García’s dictatorship posing as a press officer for the Ministry of the Interior. As such, he was able to retrieve and release information about human rights abuses even as his closest friends were convinced that he was a traitor. Includes Short Film - Fifth of June.
From Santiago Mitre, the director of "Argentina, 1985," comes this deliciously twisted dark comedy about a man who refuses to die. José (Daniel Hendler) has moved to France with his partner and daughter. Unemployed, José refuses to learn French. One day, this stay-at-home dad knocks on his neighbor’s door to borrow a shovel; he is welcomed in by Jean-Claude (Melvil Poupaud), a bon-vivant. Jean-Claude rubs him the wrong way and José impulsively kills him with the shovel. Much to his chagrin, he discovers his new neighbor alive and well the following morning. Now he must kill him again…and again…and…
Colonia Dignidad, the isolated German colony at the heart of Pinochet’s torture machine and multiple accusations of sexual and child abuse, has been the subject of several films and even a Netflix documentary mini-series. Rojas Valencia’s tells the story from the point of view of 12-year-old Pablo who has received a scholarship to attend the colony’s school. As one of “Uncle” Paul’s favorites, he becomes an eyewitness to the terrifying actions of its leader.
Sixteen-year-old Manuel loves to play bass in a local band, wander around the streets of the coastal town he calls home and boast about his sexual experiences. But just as he is about to make love to his girlfriend, Manuel feels a sudden yearning for his childhood friend, Felipe. Manuel struggles with his feelings as he watches Felipe flirt with different girls. Mariano Biasin has crafted an empathetic, intimate coming-of-age story in his feature debut.
Two women meet by chance on a pilgrimage to visit La Virgen de Juquila. Both have reached emotional crossroads in their lives and are now overburdened by their own personal pain and fear. Hope, a college student, tries to find a sense of self in her mother’s land after being displaced from her home in the United States. Soledad struggles to free herself from the ghost of her deceased lover and to once and for all bring an end to the relationship with her husband who lives in the U.S.. Together, they walk in communion with pilgrims as they deal with their struggles.
Patricio’s (Bruno Bichir) wife has asked for a divorce, he can’t see his daughter and he has lost millions of dollars. Talk about a streak of bad luck! His eccentric friend offers him a room in a mansion that houses resident artists. There he meets Natalia (Karla Coronado), a young woman in charge of the mansion’s organic garden, with whom he establishes a relationship. A video installation about nuclear war will help him find his way again.
According to Taíno legend, the jupía are spirits who live on our earthly plane and who can adopt any form, usually female. They only go out at night to feed on guava and visit those places they once used to call home. But be careful how you invoke them. Police detective Tomás will learn how as he investigates his wife’s murder and daughter’s disappearance. All roads lead to a dilapidated nursing home on the outskirts of the city, where he’ll be confronted by Atabey, an enigmatic nurse with mysterious powers.
Set against the backdrop of protests criticizing the government’s decision to privatize the waste services, Baumeister’s powerful feature debut tells the story of a mother and a daughter who live near Nicaragua's largest landfill.
Ana Cristina Barragán’s sensuous and enigmatic follow-up to her critically acclaimed "Alba," focuses on 17-year-old twins Iris and Ariel who live a semi-idyllic life on an island with their older sister and mother. Isolated from the mainland, their mother’s sudden departure creates a rift between the three siblings. Iris leaves for the city in search for the truth behind her mother’s decision to keep them apart from that world.
Forlorn after his girlfriend dumps him and tired of the Basque Country’s non stop rain, Mikel packs his bags and heads to Argentina where a distant uncle he met through Facebook promises him a job in his business. Mikel finds himself in a town founded by Basque emigres whose descendants are far much prouder of being Basque than the Basques themselves. And if this life without prospects wasn’t enough, Mikel now has to pretend to be somebody else when his Grandma Dolores, his uncle’s mom, wakes up from her lethargy after hearing him sing a lullaby in Basque.
Every moment is precious for 16-year-old Genoveva; so much so that she counts every moment in her life in seconds. She is devoted to her newborn brother Nacho and to her ailing and colorful grandmother Clara Luz (Geraldine Chaplin). She also puts up with the bullying and strict mores at her all-girl Catholic school. The arrival of Hernán, her catatonic mother’s spiritual guru, may actually offer a way out from her small, parochial, increasingly violent town in this quirky and sometimes surreal coming-of-age story.
One of the world’s foremost exponents of Afro-Latin music, Santos, through his mixed Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean heritage, strives to unite and expand his kaleidoscopic audience. Kathryn Golden follows Santos from rehearsals in his garage studio in Oakland, California, to performances at local community centers, gigs with congueros in Peñuelas, San Germán and Guánica, Puerto Rico, and concert stages around the United States.
Lucas Bambozzi’s hybrid film follows Brazilian geographer Camila who, after decades in the United States, returns to her native state of Minas Gerais just as a dam bursts and floods several villages with highly toxic water. She embarks on a journey across the state to document how mining has shaped its history. She speaks to miners, activists and victims of the disaster. "Ironland" combines fact and fiction to present the devastation corporate greed has caused on the country’s environment and its people.
On March 2, 2016, environmental activist Berta Cáceres was gunned down by hired hitmen. She had led the Lenca people in their efforts to stop the construction of a hydroelectric plant on the Gualcarque River. Two nights before her assassination, Cáceres wrote down the names of the people and companies who wanted her dead. Katia Lara’s documentary traces the efforts of a local journalist and an international lawyer to solve Berta’s murder which led to the 2021 guilty verdict of those responsible.
Last year’s winner of the Audience Award for Narrative Feature Film at the Miami International Film Festival, Cabal’s ("Woodpeckers", "The Projectionist") new film takes place during the infamous 1937 massacre of Haitians ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. Marie, a Haitian woman expecting her first child with Dominican husband Frank, is forced into hiding when her village is attacked by the armed forces. She seeks refuge in the mountains, hoping that she will not turn into another victim of this brutal racist attack.
Inspired by the Biblical parable of the prodigal son, Fernández Engler’s thriller tells the story of Máximo, the youngest son of a powerful family in Argentina’s fishing industry who asks his father for his share of his inheritance so he can break out on his own. Máximo settles down in a fishing village in Patagonia where he establishes a business relationship with the enigmatic Caviedes and runs afoul of Coletto, a local fisherman who opposes the exploitation of these waters. Máximo becomes ensnared in a corrupt web of his own making.
Olivia has managed to keep her OCD at bay for a year. But that little voice in her head that compels her to brush her teeth over and over makes an unexpected visit in the middle of her family’s Christmas party. Unable to secure her prescription because of her insurance, she asks David, the local pharmacist’s son, to sell her some illegally. A nasty rainstorm traps both Olivia and David in his apartment. Winner of the Audience Award in the Global category in the 2022 SXSW Film Festival.
Bia fell into a coma twenty years ago after giving birth to her daughter. She has been a fixed but silent presence in her family until she finally wakes up. Now, not only does Bia have to relearn how to speak and move; she has to do so in a household where her now ex-husband is married to another woman and her daughter has to figure out how to relate to this complete stranger. This touching, heartbreaking film shows how we readapt to new circumstances and overcome the challenges they bring.
Winner of the Tiger Award at the 2022 Rotterdam International Film Festival and Paraguay’s official selection for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, Paz Encina’s sensorial documentary hybrid reveals the impact of deforestation over Paraguay’s Ayoreo Totobiegosode native people through their own mythology. The Asojá, the bird-god-woman, takes the form of 5-year-old Eami, who is in a trance after her village is destroyed. Her memories are the only way to keep her people alive.
Christian’s dreams of becoming a soccer superstar are about to collapse after a fight with a member of the Colombian national team. Besieged by fans and the press, Christian isolates himself as his father and manager tries to save his career and honor prior commitments. Christian’s budding relationship with next door neighbor Belén provides some comfort in this turbulent moment. 9 is a perceptive inquiry on the impact of fame, success and money on one’s happiness and freedom.
Shot in the Chilean Andes in the middle of the pandemic, Duplaquet’s latest film tells the story of a mother and son who have survived a planetary health catastrophe and subsist by hunting and selling rabbits. The appearance of Rena, a mysterious woman trying to cross into Argentina who tries to steal their jeep, exposes the fragile balance between mother and son and awakens a series of feelings which seemed to have been lost due to the loneliness and precariousness of their lives.
Cruz (Kiti Manver, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown") is a religiously devout woman who seeks affection from her dull husband. Both are taking care of their precocious granddaughter Viki after her mother leaves for Vienna in pursuit of a career as a professional dancer. One night, Cruz accidentally clicks on a porn website. Mortified at first, she finds herself rediscovering her own desires and seeks the help of a local women’s sex therapy group. Patricia Ortega’s second feature (her first, "Yo imposible", was an Official Selection of the 35th Chicago Latino Film Festival) is a sensitive and nuanced portrait of sexual reawakening.
According to Taíno legend, the jupía are spirits who live on our earthly plane and who can adopt any form, usually female. They only go out at night to feed on guava and visit those places they once used to call home. But be careful how you invoke them. Police detective Tomás will learn how as he investigates his wife’s murder and daughter’s disappearance. All roads lead to a dilapidated nursing home on the outskirts of the city, where he’ll be confronted by Atabey, an enigmatic nurse with mysterious powers.
Forlorn after his girlfriend dumps him and tired of the Basque Country’s non stop rain, Mikel packs his bags and heads to Argentina where a distant uncle he met through Facebook promises him a job in his business. Mikel finds himself in a town founded by Basque emigres whose descendants are far much prouder of being Basque than the Basques themselves. And if this life without prospects wasn’t enough, Mikel now has to pretend to be somebody else when his Grandma Dolores, his uncle’s mom, wakes up from her lethargy after hearing him sing a lullaby in Basque.
One of the world’s foremost exponents of Afro-Latin music, Santos, through his mixed Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean heritage, strives to unite and expand his kaleidoscopic audience. Kathryn Golden follows Santos from rehearsals in his garage studio in Oakland, California, to performances at local community centers, gigs with congueros in Peñuelas, San Germán and Guánica, Puerto Rico, and concert stages around the United States.
Emiliana, a mother and university professor, goes through a difficult time in her life when her son Santiago suffers an accident. She receives great support from a man she met on the street, Daniel, and she begins to feel a deep appreciation for him. However, the situation with her son and the crisis in Venezuela forces her hand, embarking on a new path outside the country to rebuild her life despite having to get away from Daniel.
Galvão Teles’ devastating feature debut centers on a suicidal pact among three inseparable but alienated friends: Pedro, María and Paulo. Pedro shares his room with his grandfather who just moved from the country into his family’s small apartment. Pedro’s father is unemployed and his mother, the household's only income earner, is having an affair with her boss. The pact, once consummated, leaves Pedro’s father searching for answers.
Lucas Bambozzi’s hybrid film follows Brazilian geographer Camila who, after decades in the United States, returns to her native state of Minas Gerais just as a dam bursts and floods several villages with highly toxic water. She embarks on a journey across the state to document how mining has shaped its history. She speaks to miners, activists and victims of the disaster. "Ironland" combines fact and fiction to present the devastation corporate greed has caused on the country’s environment and its people.
Winner of the Best Director, Best Actress and Best Actor Award at the Locarno International Film Festival and the Horizon Awards at San Sebastian, Valentina Maurel’s feature debut focuses on Eva, a strong-willed and restless 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother, her younger sister and their cat, who desperately wants to move in with her estranged father. Clinging onto him as he goes through a second adolescence, she balances between the tenderness and sensitivity of teenage life and the ruthlessness of the adult world.
Stephanie, Ian and Alfredo are three young farmers who want to grow healthy produce for an island that imports most of its food, including fruits and vegetables. The farms they rent have been abandoned for decades. Their plans to rebuild these lands from the ground up are made that much more difficult by the devastation caused by Hurricanes Irma and María. Pagán Tetelbaum shows the protagonist’s grit as they attempt to carve out a living without land ownership or capital.
Set against the backdrop of protests criticizing the government’s decision to privatize the waste services, Baumeister’s powerful feature debut tells the story of a mother and a daughter who live near Nicaragua's largest landfill.
Juan Manuel Bernal stars in Arnaz’s 16mm feature debut as Fran, a freelance musician and single father who takes care of his 10-year-old autistic son. He hopes his son’s language therapy sessions will break the wall that stands between them. But when Mariana, Samuel’s mother, returns to their lives after abandoning them, Fran will have to decide what is best for his son.
Humberto’s greatest desire, after his recent release from prison, is to rebuild his relationship with his estranged daughter and provide her with a decent life. But her grandparents—wealthy Evangelical pastors—are not willing to give up custody. Bullied into a corner financially and ideologically, Humberto is forced to face his own demons while simultaneously fighting a powerful ecclesiastical institution to which he once belonged. Set in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, "The Visitor" is a somber meditation on class, family relationships, and the increasing power of Evangelism in Latin America.
On March 2, 2016, environmental activist Berta Cáceres was gunned down by hired hitmen. She had led the Lenca people in their efforts to stop the construction of a hydroelectric plant on the Gualcarque River. Two nights before her assassination, Cáceres wrote down the names of the people and companies who wanted her dead. Katia Lara’s documentary traces the efforts of a local journalist and an international lawyer to solve Berta’s murder which led to the 2021 guilty verdict of those responsible.
Olivia has managed to keep her OCD at bay for a year. But that little voice in her head that compels her to brush her teeth over and over makes an unexpected visit in the middle of her family’s Christmas party. Unable to secure her prescription because of her insurance, she asks David, the local pharmacist’s son, to sell her some illegally. A nasty rainstorm traps both Olivia and David in his apartment. Winner of the Audience Award in the Global category in the 2022 SXSW Film Festival.
Stephanie, Ian and Alfredo are three young farmers who want to grow healthy produce for an island that imports most of its food, including fruits and vegetables. The farms they rent have been abandoned for decades. Their plans to rebuild these lands from the ground up are made that much more difficult by the devastation caused by Hurricanes Irma and María. Pagán Tetelbaum shows the protagonist’s grit as they attempt to carve out a living without land ownership or capital.
Winner of the Tiger Award at the 2022 Rotterdam International Film Festival and Paraguay’s official selection for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, Paz Encina’s sensorial documentary hybrid reveals the impact of deforestation over Paraguay’s Ayoreo Totobiegosode native people through their own mythology. The Asojá, the bird-god-woman, takes the form of 5-year-old Eami, who is in a trance after her village is destroyed. Her memories are the only way to keep her people alive.
Synopsis in English Galvão Teles’ devastating feature debut centers on a suicidal pact among three inseparable but alienated friends: Pedro, María and Paulo. Pedro shares his room with his grandfather who just moved from the country into his family’s small apartment. Pedro’s father is unemployed and his mother, the household's only income earner, is having […]
Last year’s winner of the Audience Award for Narrative Feature Film at the Miami International Film Festival, Cabal’s ("Woodpeckers", "The Projectionist") new film takes place during the infamous 1937 massacre of Haitians ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. Marie, a Haitian woman expecting her first child with Dominican husband Frank, is forced into hiding when her village is attacked by the armed forces. She seeks refuge in the mountains, hoping that she will not turn into another victim of this brutal racist attack.
Inspired by real events, Chile’s official selection for the Academy Award for Best International Feature centers on Blanquita, an 18-year-old single mother who, encouraged by Manuel (Alejandro Goic), the priest who runs the foster home she lives in, becomes a key witness in the case against a child prostitution and pedophilia network run by a well-known businessman. Includes Short Film Baby (Colombia).
Inspired by the Biblical parable of the prodigal son, Fernández Engler’s thriller tells the story of Máximo, the youngest son of a powerful family in Argentina’s fishing industry who asks his father for his share of his inheritance so he can break out on his own. Máximo settles down in a fishing village in Patagonia where he establishes a business relationship with the enigmatic Caviedes and runs afoul of Coletto, a local fisherman who opposes the exploitation of these waters. Máximo becomes ensnared in a corrupt web of his own making.
Christian’s dreams of becoming a soccer superstar are about to collapse after a fight with a member of the Colombian national team. Besieged by fans and the press, Christian isolates himself as his father and manager tries to save his career and honor prior commitments. Christian’s budding relationship with next door neighbor Belén provides some comfort in this turbulent moment. 9 is a perceptive inquiry on the impact of fame, success and money on one’s happiness and freedom.
Emiliana, a mother and university professor, goes through a difficult time in her life when her son Santiago suffers an accident. She receives great support from a man she met on the street, Daniel, and she begins to feel a deep appreciation for him. However, the situation with her son and the crisis in Venezuela forces her hand, embarking on a new path outside the country to rebuild her life despite having to get away from Daniel.
Cancer-stricken Gabriel returns to his grandparents’ hometown to spend his final days. He arrives just as the town prepares for its annual religious celebration. He is in no mood to make friends; he prefers to face death alone. His demeanor changes when he meets Gladys who the townsfolk believe has the power to cure any disease.
Juan Manuel Bernal stars in Arnaz’s 16mm feature debut as Fran, a freelance musician and single father who takes care of his 10-year-old autistic son. He hopes his son’s language therapy sessions will break the wall that stands between them. But when Mariana, Samuel’s mother, returns to their lives after abandoning them, Fran will have to decide what is best for his son.