Heddy Honigmann
Netherlands - Germany
93 min.
El olvido (Oblivion) is about a forgotten city (Lima), a forgotten people (the Peruvians) and a forgotten history (that of Peru). These people, for whom irony is a weapon of survival, have to forget, in order not to give way to cynicism, hatred and grief. The film is also about those who try to remember the old days when life - despite class differences, corruption and violence - was still good: old waiters, bartenders and shopkeepers who are fighting a losing battle, who?ve lost everything, including their rights. Finally, El olvido is about the children who manage to survive by mastering the art of street life and who reveal the country in it?s true colours. Just like the dogs they share the streets with, they have no good memories to forget.
Federico Veiroj
Uruguay-Argentina-Mexico-Spain
87 min.
Rafael Bregman, a 13-year-old teenager, has lost his virginity without ever having kissed a girl. To make his dream come true he'll have to do something about his acne, come to grips with his clumsiness, get over his shyness, and, in other words, deal with adolescence.
Alberto Cortés
In La Esperanza de San Pedro, Chiapas, amid the Zapatista struggle, Sonia, a member of the community, is about to marry. A cow has already been received as dowry, and talks have been held with the groom-to-be's family... But Sonia loves another man, one of the insurgents. Now the EZLN has a problem and has to solve it with the entire community so that the voice of its members can be heard and respected; and so that the heart can triumph over obligation.
Josué Méndez
Peru-Argentina-France-Germany
91 min.
Diego is in love with his sister Andrea, and confronts the guilt and pleasure he gets from it. Andrea, however, keeps busy with other things: she?s got her own secrets to hide. Agustín, their father, has brought his new girlfriend Elisa home to live with them; she?s twenty years younger than him and comes from a lower social and economic class. Elisa will have to learn fast if she wants to be the social high-flyer she?s always dreamt of becoming. A family trapped in the rigid social mechanisms of the Peruvian upper class. A chronicle of decadence, hypocrisy and conformism in a frivolous and secretive environment, where people act like gods, above rules, above morality, and above credibility.
Julio Hernández Cordón
Three teenagers, Gerardo, Nano and Raymundo, rob petrol so that they can spend their nights driving around aimlessly. Thus, we find ourselves drawn into a story where our heroes speed around in mummy?s car for kicks, and where each stop is a run-in with reality sorely testing their friendship, demonstrating that adolescent camaradarie often draws a thin line between betrayal, deception and kamikaze-type solidarity. This is also an intimate tale in which moments of sincerity and nervous strain define a group of youngsters, portray a country and give us an indication of their future.
Yulene Olaizola
The lodging house owned by Rosa Carbajal at the corner of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo streets in Mexico City conceals an intimate, passionate story. Twenty years ago, Rosa met Jorge Riosse, a young tenant who became her closest friend. For 8 years, his stay in the house left indelible marks on those who knew him. But it wasn?t until his sudden death that the darkest features of his personality came to light. A profound biological sketch of two people, lonely in their own way or in spite of themselves, strongly and strangely interwoven with one another.
Pablo Trapero
Argentina-South Korea-Brazil
113 min.
Julia wakes up in her apartment, surrounded by the bloody bodies of Ramiro and Nahuel. Ramiro is still alive. Both have been, obscure and simultaneously, her lovers, and one made Julia pregnant. Julia is sent to a prison for mothers and pregnant inmates. There she spends her first days absorbed and aloof. She hates to be a mother in this situation. The child is born, a baby boy. Bringing up a child in prison is difficult and annoying. This just happened against her will. But more and more, Julia feels the boy is the only valuable thing she has left. Julia visits Ramiro in the Men?s prison. The events of the night of the crime remain muddled for both, just like their feelings towards each other.
Enrique Rivero
Beto is the caretaker of a house in Mexico City which has been empty for years. The loneliness of the last years, combined with the routine and monotony of his work have made him withdraw into a life which most people would find asphyxiating; but he finds that it gives him the security and stability which the threatening outside world is unable to offer him. News that the house is to go on sale causes a dilemma for Beto, who doesn't know whether to dare to set forth and live or to seek a way of remaining in his confinement.
Carlos Moreno
El Orejón is a violent and agoraphobic crime boss who lives surrounded by telescopes in a luxury high-rise apartment in the centre of Cali, Colombia. When his godson is killed he commissions a voodoo priestess to avenge the murder by casting a deadly spell on the killer; Eusebio. Miles away, Víctor is hired by El Orejón to collect money from a slippery pair of twins, making the disastrous decision to break the sacred law of the crime world and keep the cash for himself. Víctor and Eusebio meet for the first time in a room at a central hotel while waiting for a phone call with instructions. Neither of them suspects what?s about to hit them...
Albertina Carri
Poldo, a farmer in the Argentine pampas, breaks off all contact with Pichón because he believes that he has insulted little Nati, his mute daughter. Poldo also forbids his wife to see Pichón, not suspecting that she and the man are carrying on a passionate affair behind his back. Nati knows what?s going on, as does Pichón?s son, her only friend. Things come to a head when Poldo finds some drawings by Nati describing what she has seen, mistaking it for something infinitely worse. The only thing left to do is take revenge on Pichón. But events take an unexpected turn when the explosion of rage is no more than the prelude to an even greater tragedy from which no-one will escape.
Pablo Fendrik
Argentina-France-Germany
100 min.
Arturo, a peaceful 60 year-old taxi driver, has to find $2,000 in less than 24 hours. His eldest son, Ramiro, who ran away from home four years ago, has just called from Houston urgently asking him for help. His wife Irene jealously guards the savings she has no intention of parting with to succour Ramiro. That same day, Leandro, the younger son who still lives with them, plans to steal the savings, invest them in a batch of drugs and sell it at nightclubs on the coast so that he can buy a plane ticket and set out to find his brother. But when father and son confront each other for the money, Arturo once again becomes the man who forced Ramiro to scarper four years earlier.
Alex Rivera
Sleep Dealer is set in a near future; the world is divided by closed borders and workers connect their nervous systems to a digital network through which they control the robots who do their work. Memo Cruz is a young peasant who lives with his parents in the small, dusty village of Santa Ana del Rio in Oaxaca. Memo loves technology, and dreams of leaving his village to find work in the hi-tech factories in the big cities of the north. Using his home-made radio, he unwittingly stumbles upon some communications, arousing suspicion. His house is destroyed by a remote-controlled bombing and he has to flee. On the way to Tijuana, Memo meets Luz, a journalist disposed to change the world, and together they try to establish a relationship beyond the technology.
Pablo Larraín
Santiago de Chile, 1978. 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. His urge to reproduce his idol's likeness and his dream of being recognized as a successful showbiz star at a national television contest of Tony Manero impersonators, drive him to commit a series of crimes and thefts.
Christian Poveda
Spain-France-Mexico
91 min.
Documentary about Mara 18 and, collaterally, about its bitter rival, Mara Salvatrucha, gangs created on the basis of their earlier Los Angeles counterparts, who spread terror in El Salvador. A detailed and precise tale of the contemporary imagery created in a globalized world describing the origins of one of the probable founding myths of organised crime.
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Sergio, a Cuban bourgeois dilettante, refuses to accompany his family to exile in the USA. His inconsistent ideology keeps him on the sidelines of a convulsive society; having lost his former world, he can?t find his place in the new revolutionary process.
Mirtha Ibarra
Titón, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (1928-1996), remarkable filmmaker and one of film history's paramount names. From his birth at Havana and up to Guantamera, his last movie, this documentary broadly traces Titón's work, his outlook and vital engagement as reflected in his own words and in the opinions of family members and professionals. An essential and touching thread is provided by the account of actress Mirtha Ibarra, the director of the documentary and Titón's lifelong companion.