Venezuela

Plot Summary
The film opens through the telescope lens of one of the city’s many colorful outcasts, as he watches a truck arriving carrying mattresses. We meet La Garza, the proprietor of The Smoking Fish nightclub and brothel and her current lover Dimas. Dimas, exuberant and yet full of suppressed dissatisfaction, is at his peak. We see him jubilant at the arrival of the fresh beds for the prostitutes and proud as he watches children celebrating round the burning pyres of old mattresses. But the ritual is tense and uneasy, foreshadowing the community’s easy embrace of substitutes.Read More »

In this film, Venezuelan director Diego Risquéz has focused on the life of South America’s famed libertador, Simón Bolívar. He explores the episodes in Bolívar’s life and tragic death by using images alone (no dialogue), a technique that makes his subject matter quite abstruse. Only viewers already familiar with the legend of the man and the early history of Venezuela will recognize many of the symbols and the storyline. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, RoviRead More »

The current wave of kidnappings in Latin America inspired this tense suspense drama. Martin (Jean Paul Leroux) and Carla (Mía Maestro) are a wealthy young couple who, after a night of club hopping, head back to their car to go home. However, three kidnappers — Bubu (Pedro Perez), Niga (Carlos Madera), and Trece (Carlos Julio Molina) — are waiting for them; seeing how free they are with their money, the men figure that Martin and Carla should fetch a decent ransom for their release. The kidnappers demand 20,000 dollars to set Martin and Carla free, and Carla’s father (Rubén Blades) struggles to raise the cash, with the criminals insisting upon payment in a mere two hours.Read More »

An alternative rock band’s singer-guitarist starts a solo career, seeking inspiration as Venezuela’s crisis roils, accompanied by The Beasts, two masked and mysterious beings.Read More »

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A Mexican teenager sets out to collect his fathers remains, only to be sucked into the underbelly of the manufacturing industry.Read More »

Well into middle-age, but still grasping at the reckless pleasures of his youth, Roque is locked in a pattern of self-destruction. His parents cast him out from their home in Caracas and Roque returns to the Amazon and the derelict tourist lodge he built and ran in a previous life. His aim is to rebuild both the lodge and himself, quitting alcohol for good in the process. But temptations are strong in the jungle. A feverish voyage of discovery through the hinterland between madness and salvation, La Fortaleza is a superb second feature from Venezuelan director Jorge Thielen Armand. What makes it all the more fascinating is the fact that Roque is played by Armand’s own father, Jorge Roque Thielen, and that the screenplay is inspired by his stories of building the lodge and battling alcoholism against a tinderbox backdrop of sparking violence and unrest. Wendy IdeRead More »

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In Paris, a young woman, Louise Haines Pearson, visits her disturbed friend Nena who tells her that she has just written a book on the history of a little girl troubled by her senses, perhaps because of the tyranny of his mother and the absence of her father. Louise recognizes the difficulties of this little girl, being herself deeply affected by the indifference of her husband.Read More »

Synopsis:
A story about a boy who gets into an adventure with a stranger hoping to meet his grandmother.Read More »

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The story of Diego, a young and successful photographer that lives in the glamorous world of fashion, shallowness and excess. A tragic accident turns his world around; his partner is now in a coma. Unexpectedly, and right at this terrible time, Diego must take care of his son, Armando. Now, both of them have to adapt to each other; Armando to the unknown, homosexual world of his father, and Diego to the closed attitude of his teenage son.Read More »