Spanish

A young man joins a feisty runaway as he flees from the noblewoman who won him in a wager.Read More »

Since their parents split up, Sara and her younger sister live with their mother, whose new partner is a woman. Everyday life for the four of them is very similar to that of other families. But not everyone sees it that way.Read More »

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Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s gutsy Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) is a difficult work of political activism. This stirring blend of narrative fiction, still photography and rare documentary footage catalogs the many intricacies and contradictions of a bourgeois Cuban intellectual’s loyalty to Castro’s revolution. Though Alea himself was devoted to the cause, his films forever scrutinized the self-devouring nature of Castro’s Cuba. (Alea died in 1996 shortly after the one-two success of the Oscar-nominated Strawberry and Chocolate and Guantanamera.) If Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba championed the need for revolution in the country, Memories contemplates the failure of the new government to recognize and negotiate the lingering bourgeois threat left in the wake of Fulgencio Batista’s fall.Read More »

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Above all, the two Argentinean filmmakers wanted their latest co-direction, the fourth since 2008, to reflect their vision of cinema: a way of reaching out to others, to touch them, to move them. Los Labios is a film about company, about the meaning of “being together”. “The camera approaches people. It moves towards their faces and bodies, discovering their spontaneity and truth. It’s a film that is alive, in the present moment.” they explain.Read More »

Ardiente Paciencia, or El Cartero De Neruda, is a 1983 film directed by Antonio Skármeta. It was remade in 1994 as Il postino. It tells the story of Mario Jiménez, a fictional postman in Allende’s revolutionary-era Chile, who befriends the real-life poet Pablo Neruda in the years before Neruda’s death.Read More »

Simon transports illegal immigrants to New York, leaving them to their fate. He is discovered by the coastguard and Andrés, a young sailor, saves his life. When he falls for a young protegée of Simon conflict erupts.Read More »

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Four actresses and a writer spend a summer week in an old mill to rehearse a play. During those days, the girls will get to know each other and measure themselves through the materials that the work presents.Read More »

Pachamama is another fine example of Peter Nestler’s extraordinary documentaries. He takes us on an expedition to Ecuador, to the heart of an ancient Indian culture. Although heavily damaged by the Spanish conquerors, many of the old treasures and, more remarkably, many of the old traditions and customs have survived and are still in practice today. It’s a film of quiet beauty and sadness, but of a sadness that is friendly and not bitter; a film about the cultural wealth of a fascinating country. (Ted Roth, -viennale.at)Read More »

On a dark night, the body of a well-known society woman is found; the investigators immediately suspect that the killer was the woman’s maid. For her part, the maid demands that the woman’s fiancé be brought in for questioning. Some journalists covering the story decide to follow up on the maid’s suggestion and gradually piece together the chain of events that led to the murder.

Suave and good-looking, the fiancé was taking advantage of the dead woman, his attentions more focused on a much tougher young lady. Yet just as the narrative of the crime starts to come together, sudden revelations challenge all the information already discovered by the journalists. As someone renowned for his own storytelling abilities, Edgar Neville used this philosophical thriller as way of meditating on how stories are created, as well as the complex relationship between a tale and its teller.Read More »