New Releases for the 12th Cine Las Americas FIlm Festival
All Inclusive
Filmed in the idyllic Mayan Riviera, All Inclusive follows the story of a Chilean-Mexican family during their summer vacation. Facing the imminent arrival of a storm, each of the characters goes through unexpected situations that cause deep changes in their lives, and they have to deal with their innermost fears, conflicts and secrets. The trip will be unforgettable, but it will remind every member of the family of the ups and the downs that make up life. With a stellar cast featuring Jesús Ochoa, Valentina Vargas, Ana Serradilla, Martha Higareda, Jesús Zavala, Leonor Varela, Jaime Camil, Maya Zapata, Mónica Cruz and Edgar Vívar, All Inclusive is an appealing movie that talks about the search of happiness, the things we don’t say, tolerance and family love.
Arráncame la vida
Arráncame la vida begins its journey during a transformative period in Mexican history. The Revolution of 1910 is over and the country’s rule is open to whatever politician had the audacity to grab it. Dominating men fight ruthlessly for control, manipulating and exploiting others to gain power. Growing up in 1930s Mexico, Catalina Guzmán knows little of the world beyond her father’s house, unaware of the political storm that looming over the whole country.
Conozca la cabeza de Juan Pérez
Away from its body, the cut-off head of Juan Pérez The Great (a fifth class magician from a small circus), starts remembering how he lost his head to a guillotine. After a terrible six year crisis, the Circo Aztlán (where our magician has lived for so many years), had started cutting acts out. In order not to lose his job, Juan Pérez promised to stage a sensational decapitation act, which could return the circus to its glory days. Running out of time, and without a penny to build the machinery needed for his act, Juan Pérez was forced to steal an original Guillotine from a museum, unaware of its terrible curse.
Diário de Sintra - The Diary from Sintra
Using home movies and other media, Diário de Sintra documents director Paula Gaitán’s return to the Portuguese city of Sintra, to search for memories of her late husband, Brazilian cinema novo pioneer Glauber Rocha. Gaitán and Rocha lived exiled in Portugal in 1981 with their two children, Eryk and Ava, before his untimely death. The filmmaker’s layered experimental work creates an impression of the past through its rich accumulation of images, meditations, and reminiscences.
El baño del Papa (The Pope’s Toilet)
It’s 1988, and Melo, an Uruguayan town on the Brazilian border, awaits the visit of Pope John Paul II. Fifty thousand people are expected to attend, and the most humble locals believe that selling food and drink to the multitude will just about make them rich. Petty smuggler Beto thinks he has the best idea of all when he decides to build a bathroom in front of his house and charge for its use. His efforts bring about unexpected consequences, and the final results will surprise everyone.
El nido vacío (Empty Nest)
Cultured, prosperous, blessed with three children and many friends, Leonardo and Martha are a truly enviable example of the species “married couple.” Leonardo is an author of considerable repute; Martha, a hyperactive housewife with academic interests. Leonardo sits back and observes; Martha forges ahead and acts. An enviable couple?
La buena vida (The Good Life)
La buena vida tells the story of four characters that, while strangers to each other, live in the same bustling city. All of them chase after their dreams: Teresa tries to rescue lives as a psychologist; Edmundo is a hairdresser who dreams of owning a car; Mario wishes to join the Philharmonic; and Patricia works on surviving daily life. As they chase after their dreams, but struggle with misfortune, all of the characters will be surprised by where life takes them.
La mujer sin cabeza (The Headless Woman)
A bourgeois woman driving alone on a dirt road becomes distracted and accidentally runs over something. In the days following this jarring incident, she feels dazed and emotionally disconnected from the people and events in her life as she becomes obsessed with the possibility that she may have killed someone. The police confirm that there were no accidents reported in the area and everything returns to normal until a gruesome discovery is made. Lucrecia Martel’s third feature examines the intricacies of class status and the role of women in a male-dominated society.
La ventana (The Window)
It is a significant day for 80-year-old Antonio—after an absence of many years, his estranged son is coming to visit. All must be perfect. There will be a toast with special champagne, an embrace, warm words that may finally bridge the gap between them…but before all that, Antonio must wait. Bedridden, he looks out his window at the Patagonian landscape and sees light and life, the past and the present, while sensing the future. He decides to secretly leave the house, unseen by his faithful caretakers, to take what might be a last walk in his fields, breathing the air, treading the earth, inhaling the scent of the land that had been his life. What might otherwise seem like insignificant memories or moments in one’s life take a special, beautiful meaning and weight in this poetic, humanistic film.
Lake Tahoe
Teenager Juan crashes his family’s car into a telegraph pole on the outskirts of town and then scours the streets searching for someone to help him fix it. His quest leads him to Don Heber, an old, paranoid mechanic whose only companion is his dog Sica; to Lucía, a young mother who is convinced that her real place in life is as a lead singer in a punk band; and to “The One Who Knows,” a teenage mechanic obsessed with martial arts and Kung Fu philosophy. The absurd and bewildering worlds of these characters engage Juan in a one-day journey during which he will come to accept what he was escaping from in the first place—an event both as natural and inexplicable as a loved one’s death.
Leonera (Lion's Den)
After Julia is sent to jail for the murder of her lover, she gives birth to a son. Raising a child in prison is difficult, but the only thing that matters to Julia is this new being that accompanies her now. There is no life for her beyond that of her child. Her fellow inmate, Marta, becomes her ally; her mother Sofía, her opponent. While Marta attempts to teach her how to be a mother to her child in the least appropriate place; Sofía wishes to take over rearing the child, so that he can grow up free, outside the prison. The duel between mother and daughter reveals the dilemma facing Julia: is it better for her child to grow up next to his mother in prison, or without her, but in freedom?
Lo bueno de llorar (About Crying)
Lo bueno de llorar tells the story of a couple, Vera and Alejandro, in the midst of ending their relationship. They are faced with a long night of decisions, doubts, fears, lies, silences, reflections and arguments. In a style reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset (2004), Bize’s film ultimately explores the dissolution of the couple. Intent on exploring the hidden feelings involved in a relationship through its minimalist style, the film reveals the dishonesty that may exist in a relationship, but also great truths about human beings.
Náufragos: Vengo de un avión que cayó en las montañas
On October 13, 1972, a young rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, boarded a plane for a match in Chile—and then vanished into thin air. Two days before Christmas, 16 of the 45 passengers miraculously resurfaced. Thirty-five years later, the survivors returned to the crash site—known as the Valley of Tears—to recount their harrowing story of defiant endurance and indestructible friendship. Previously documented in the 1973 worldwide bestseller Alive (and the 1993 Ethan Hawke movie of the same name), this shocking true story finally gets the cinematic treatment it deserves. Visually breathtaking and crafted with riveting detail by documentary filmmaker Gonzalo Arijón with a masterful combination of on-location interviews, archival footage, and reenactments, Stranded is by turns hauntingly powerful and spiritually moving.
Read more: Náufragos: Vengo de un avión que cayó en las montañas
Parque vía
Beto is the custodian of a house in Mexico City, left empty for several years, in which he used to work as a domestic helper. The solitude of the last ten years coupled with the monotony and routine of his job have led him to develop a pathological fear of the world outside, to the point of limiting his contacts to only two people: the owner of the house, for whom he has a feeling of deep gratitude and respect that is translated into obedience; and Lupe, a friend, a confidante, and a lover. News that the house is to go on sale causes a dilemma for Beto, who doesn't know whether he should dare to set forth and live or seek a way of remaining in his confinement.
Perro come perro (Dog Eat Dog)
"El Orejón" is a violent and agoraphobic crime boss who lives surrounded by telescopes in a luxury high-rise apartment in the center of the city. When his godson William Medina is killed, he beseeches Iris, a voodoo priestess, to avenge the murder by casting a deadly spell on the shooter. While Iris conducts her black magic, miles away from her a small-town heavy named Victor Peñaranda is carrying out a job to collect money from a slippery pair of twins. He makes a disastrous decision to break the sacred law of the crime world—he keeps the cash for himself. His choice unwittingly sets off a domino effect that wreaks havoc through two cities and the realm of the netherworld. Marlon Moreno, who plays Victor Peñaranda, won Best Actor at the 2009 Guadalajara International Film Festival for this portrayal.
Santos
Salvador Santos—bald, obese, and 33—does not look the superhero type. But after a strange inter-dimensional traveler warns him that his best friend, multimillionaire Arturo Antares, is actually a tyrant from another dimension who has been hiding in Arturo’s body, he has no other choice but to accept the challenge. His years of experience as a comic book artist will come in handy, especially when it comes time to save the love of his life, Laura Luna, from the evil grip of Nova.
Solos (Descendents)
A ten-year-old girl awakes alone in the middle of a ravaged and abandoned territory. She begins to wander around the contaminated land in search of food and people, but she discovers that she is caught in the middle of a war where military officials, patrolling the land covered in gas masks, execute people in horrible ways. The girl realizes that the only people who survive the mass executions show severe infections on their bodies so she finds her only company in other small children who share with her the recurrent dream of going to the ocean. In search of their common objective the group of children embarks on a journey to the ocean, crossing a city in ruins followed by the dangerous armed military.
Tony Manero
In the midst of the tough social context of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Raúl Peralta, a man in his fifties, is obsessed with the idea of impersonating “Tony Manero,” John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever. He leads a small group of dancers regularly performing at a bar located in the outskirts of the city every Saturday. Beneath Raúl’s exterior of seeming indifference to anything except meticulous recreation of Tony Manero’s dance moves and the chance to compete in a nationally televised Tony Manero impersonating contest, lies a darker side of his personality driven to commit a bizarre series of violent crimes. Meanwhile, his dancing partners, who are involved in underground activities against the regime, are persecuted by the government’s secret police. Tony Manero is a story about the loss of identity and obsession in recent Chilean history.
