LibGuides: Latin American Cinema: Recommended Films

Recommended Films

Indianara (2019) Dir. Marcelo Barbosa, Aude Chevalier-Beaumel
Indianara, a bigger-than-life revolutionary character, and her group, who lead a fight for the survival of transgender people in Brazil. Shot during tumultuous times in Brazil while Michel Temer is president, while the Marielle Franco is killed in cold blood, Indianara is an incredible woman, a Gena Rowlands of sort who doesn't take no for an answer. She cares about humanity and decency for all. In the shelter she founded, in the streets and during demonstrations, she fights for her ideals, including her relationship with Maurice, her husband. Nearing fifty, facing political attacks and the advance of totalitarianism, she commits a real act of resistance.
The Second Mother (2015) Dir. Anna Muylaert
Val spends 13 years working as nanny to Fabinho in Sao Paulo. She is financially stable but has to live with the guilt of having left her daughter Jessica, in Pernambuco, in the north of Brazil, raised by relatives. As college entrance exams roll around, Jessica wants to come to Sao Paulo to take her college entrance exams too. When Jessica arrives, cohabitation is not easy. Everyone will be affected by the personality and candor of the girl and Val finds herself right in the middle of it.
Temporada (2019) Dir. André Novais Oliveira
Juliana is moving from Itaúna, in the interior of the state, to the outskirts of Contagem, in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, to work in the fight against endemic diseases in the region. In her new job, she meets people and experiences unusual situations that start to change her life. At the same time, she faces difficulties in her relationship with her husband, who is also about to move to the big city.
Invisible Life (Original title: A vida Invisível) (2019) Dir. Karim Aïnouz
Two sisters born in Rio de Janeiro make their way through life, each mistakenly believing the other is living out her dreams half a world away. **Cannes Film Festival** winner. Official Selection at the **Toronto International Film Festival**.
Bacurau (2019) Dir. Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho
A few years from now... BACURAU, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants (among them Sônia Braga) notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrive in town picking off the inhabitants one by one. A fierce confrontation takes place when the townspeople turn the tables on the villainous outsiders, banding together by any means necessary to protect and maintain their remote community. The mercenaries just may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little BACURAU. Official Selection at the **Cannes Film Festival** and **Toronto International Film Festival**.
Tava, The House of Stone. Directed by Vincent Carelli, Patricia Ferreira (Yxapy), Ariel Duarte Ortega, and Ernesto Ignacio de Carvalho, Vídeo nas Aldeias, 2012
Mythical interpretation of religion by Mbya-Guarani on the seventeenth-century Jesuit missions in Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina.
Martírio. Directed by Vincent Carelli, Vídeo nas Aldeias, 2016
Tropicália 2012 Dir. Marcelo Machado
Tropicalia brings a contemporary look into this important cultural movement, which exploded in Brazil in the late 1960s. It mixes valuable archive material especially recovered for the production and encounters with the icons of the movement such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, among others.
Barravento 1962 Dir. Glauber Rocha
Directed by Glauber Rocha. In the State of Bahia, Brazil, an educated black man returns to his home fishing village to try and free people from mysticism, in particular the Candomblé religion, which he considers a factor of political and social oppression, with tragic outcome.
Praça Paris
Paris Square is a thriller that shows the conflict between a Portuguese psychoanalyst, Camila, who came to Brazil to develop a research on violence, and her patient, Gloria, in a Therapy Center of a Brazilian university (UERJ). Gloria is an elevator attendant at the university and has a very difficult history of violence: raped by her father, she has only one brother, who always protected her, but was also drug lord at the slum. The film shows a transfer relationship to the reverse, where the fear of the other ends up dominating the plot.
Splendor
Esplendor was the place where the Krenak Reformatory, the indigenous prison of the Brazilian military dictatorship, was built to imprison indigenous rebels. It was built within the Krenak Indian territory. Hundreds of Indians were imprisoned and tortured, especially the leaders who were fighting for their land. The military also banned indigenous cultural practices, such as ancestral rituals. These facts were unknown until the investigation carried out by the Brazilian Truth Commission (CNV) that revealed serious human rights violations perpetrated by the Brazilian dictatorship. When addressing the militarization of Brazilian indigenous politics, the documentary makes visible the return of the same anti-indigenous ideology with the rise of the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro and its attacks on the rights of indigenous peoples. History repeats itself.

La niña santa [videorecording] = The holy girl by Lucrecia Martel
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F67 H65 2005
ISBN: 9780783134918
Publication Date: 2005

The Secret in their Eyes (2009) Dir. Juan José Campanella
In 1999, retired Argentinian federal justice agent Benjamín Espósito is writing a novel, using an old closed case as the source material. That case is the brutal rape and murder of Liliana Coloto. In addition to seeing the extreme grief of the victim s husband Ricardo Morales, Benjamín, his assistant Pablo Sandoval, and newly hired department chief Irene Menéndez-Hastings were personally affected by the case as Benjamín and Pablo tracked the killer, hence the reason why the unsatisfactory ending to the case has always bothered him. Despite the department already having two other suspects, Benjamín and Pablo ultimately were certain that a man named Isidoro Gómez is the real killer. Although he is aware that historical accuracy is not paramount for the novel, the process of revisiting the case is more an issue of closure for him. He tries to speak to the key players in the case, most specifically Irene, who still works in the justice department and who he has always been attracted to but never pursued due to the differences in their ages and social classes. The other issue is that Gómez is still at large, no one aware if he is alive or dead. But as Pablo at the time mentioned that passion is one thing that cannot be changed in behavior, Benjamín learns now that that premise still holds true.
Hain
HAIN is a video based on a single photograph made by the anthropologist Martin Gusinde, who witnessed the ritual ceremony practiced by the Selk`nam, inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. The men embody spirits, using masks and paints in a ritual that leads to the initiation ceremony. The Selk'nam people were massacred to extinction in the mid-20th century. Their spirits are still living among the plants and animals of the area, resisting through songs, shouts and powerful images.
Canchira, the mark of Comechingón
Canchira, the mark of Comechingón, is a documentary that tells the current situation of the original peoples of Córdoba and their historical claims based on the testimonies of members of some of the Comechingona communities of the Province.
This documentary accompanies the protagonists in talks and community spaces in which the history of their town is reconstructed and vindicates its existence continuously from ancient times to the present, where the mountain landscape and the city become the setting for a story. that is opposed to the official memory, where these organized and struggling communities dispute their place in today's society. In first person, members of the Comechingona communities of: La Toma –from the city of Córdoba–,
The documentary also portrays the current debates based on the struggle for territory and covers various instances where the sense of identity and land is disputed.
Canchira, the mark of Comechingón, was carried out by the Audiovisual Area of the Institutional Communication Prosecretariat of the UNC and had the support of a subsidy for Projects for the Transfer of Research Results and Public Communication of Science (Protri) from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Province of Córdoba.

A Fantastic Woman (2017) Dir. Sebastián Lelio
A FANTASTIC WOMAN is the story of Marina, a waitress and singer, and Orlando, an older man, who are in love and planning for the future. After Orlando suddenly falls ill and dies, Marina is forced to confront his family and society, and to fight again to show them who she is: complex, strong, forthright, fantastic.
No (2012) Dir. Pablo Larraín
Military dictator Augusto Pinochet calls for a referendum to decide his permanence in power in 1988, the leaders of the opposition persuade a young daring advertising executive - René Saavedra - to head their campaign. With limited resources and under the constant scrutiny of the despot s watchmen, Saavedra and his team conceive of a bold plan to win the election and free their country from oppression.
Quilama, between the Sky and the Sea
In the Ventanas cove, central Chile, lives Luis Galdames (Quilama), a traditional fisherman and lieutenant of the Chinese dances. Through him, this documentary tells us about the relationship between fishermen and the sea, the problems that traditional fishing is currently experiencing and the pollution suffered by the place.
On the other hand, it shows us the strength of the tradition of the Chinese Dances and the role of the lieutenant, mediator between men and divinities, and bearer of healing power through singing.
The Queen of Aconcagua
The tradition of the Chinese dances of the Aconcagua Valley, in central Chile, has its origins in the indigenous populations that inhabited the area before the arrival of the Spanish. The current peasants and fishermen celebrate their ritual calendar by holding Chinese festivals, which are attended by dances from different towns. The Virgen del Carmen de Petorquita attends, among other dances, the dance of Pucalán.
The strength of the ritual and the power of sound and dance are intertwined with the experiences of the Chinese, their motivations, their problems. The filmmakers' years-long friendship with the Chinese means that this documentary brings us closer to a very intimate part of these men.
Chino is a Quechua word that means server.
Konün Wenu
Akun, a Pehuenche boy lives with his grandparents in the middle of the mountains in Alto Bío Bío, while they walk to the summer pasture with their animals, as they pass at the foot of the Kallaquen volcano, the grandfather tells them that Chaw Genechen rides through that place on his horse and that on the top of the volcano is the "Konün Wenu, the entrance to heaven". One day Akun gets lost in the forest and decides to go in search of the Konün Wenu to see his mother who died a few years ago.

Maluala 1979 Dir. Sergio Giral, Alabbá 2010 Dir. Eliezer Pérez Angueira
Maluala takes us into a palenque, a settlement of escaped slaves hidden somewhere in Cuba's eastern mountains, where discord is sown between black "kings" by clever subversives working for the Spanish government. Grand Coral - First Prize, Havana Film Festival, 1979. C.I.D.A.L.C. Award, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 1980. In Spanish with English subtitles. Directed by Sergio Giral. Cuba. Some World Cinema titles may contain mature themes or content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Canción sin nombre (Eng. Song Without a Name) (2019) Dir. Melina León

Georgina's newborn daughter is stolen at a fake health clinic. Her desperate search for the child leads her to the headquarters of a major newspaper, where she meets a lonely journalist who takes on the investigation.

La teta asustada (2009) Dir. Claudia Llosa

Fausta is suffering from a rare disease called the Milk of Sorrow, which is transmitted through the breast milk of pregnant women who were abused or raped during or soon after pregnancy. While living in constant fear and confusion due to this disease, she must face the sudden death of her mother. She chooses to take drastic measures to not follow in her mother's footsteps.

Madeinusa (2006) Dir. Claudia Llosa

14-year-old Madeinusa comes of age during the Easter festivities of her tiny, isolated village.

Lina from Lima (2019) Dir. María Paz González

A woman travels from Peru to work as a housekeeper in Chile.

Retablo (2017) Dir. Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio

Segundo Paucar, wants to become a master story-box maker just like his father to carry on with the family legacy.

Wiñaypacha (2017) Dir. Óscar Catacora

A couple of elderlies try to survive in Los Andes of Peru while they wait for their son.

Atawallpa and Waskar. This is not a game
San Pedro de Tongos is a small town in the province of Huaura, in the Peruvian highlands, located at an altitude of 3,400 meters. Every year the festival of San Pedro is celebrated, which includes a collective play in which the death of the Inka kings at the hands of the Spanish conquerors is remembered. For seven days the town becomes the stage for this play, which has its own particular interpretations of history. This film records the party held in 2018.

Utama (2022) Dir. Alejandro Loayza Grisi

In the Bolivian highlands, an elderly Quechua couple has been living the same daily life for years. During an uncommonly long drought, Virginio and Sisa face a dilemma: resist or be defeated by the environment and time itself.

Yawar Malku: La Sangre del Condor 1969 (Eng. Yawar Malku: Blood of the Condor). Dir. Jorge Sanjínes

The reaction of an indigenous community against a group of foreigners who under the guise of development assistance are forcibly sterilizing the peasant women.

Pacha 2012 Dir. Hector Ferreiro

Tito is one of the shoeshine boys who works in La Paz. The city is being shaken by a strong social outbreak and someone steals from Tito his little box of work tools.

quillpa
In the highlands of Bolivia, in the Nor Lipéz province of the department of Potosí, in a Quechua community, the Floreado de llamas is a pre-Columbian cultural tradition that they refuse to lose. A rite close to carnival that reflects the flowering of the fields, a thank you to mother earth for life and reciprocal relationships.
ikuimbae
After the clearing of the lands of the Guaraní people in the Bolivian Chaco, the relations with the bosses and landowners are woven in a new context, which requires new readings and actions to avoid re-empowerment by the landowners who try to control the production in various ways. This documentary testifies to this history and new context.

El Abrazo de la Serpiente (Eng. Embrace of the Serpent) 2015 Dir. Ciro Guerra

The story of the relationship between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his people, and two scientists who work together over the course of forty years to search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant.

La Playa D.C. (2012) Dir. Juan Andrés Arango Garcia

Tomas, an Afro-Colombian teenager who fled the country's Pacific coast pushed out by the war, faces the difficulties of growing up in a city of exclusion and racism. When Jairo, his younger brother and closest friend disappears, Tomas plunges in the streets of the city. His search becomes an initiatory journey that compels him to face his past and to leave aside the influence of his is brothers in order to find his own identity. Through this journey, Tomas reveals a unique perspective of a vibrant and unstable city that, like Tomas, stands on the threshold between what once was and what might be.

Choco (2012) Dir. Jhonny Hendrix

A young woman raising alone her children while her husband gets drunk but when she breaks free nothing will be the same.

La Llorona 2019 Jayro Bustamante

An aging paranoid war criminal, protected by his faithful wife, faces death while being haunted by the ghosts of his past.

Ixcanul 2016 Dir. Jayro Bustamante

On the slopes of an active volcano in Guatemala, a marriage is arranged for seventeen-year-old María by her Kaqchikel parents.

500 Years 2017 Dir. Pamela Yates

From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a President, 500 YEARS tells a sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala's recent history through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.

Tempestad (2016) Dir. Tatiana Huezo
A group of innocent people is charged with human trafficking and thrown into prison. The authorities announce they've dealt a blow to organised crime; the public is reassured. Tempestad is a road movie: 2000 kilometres by bus from Matamoros to Cancún, through a blustery, overcast, bleak country. In her second feature documentary, Tatiana Huezo has a young mother recount her journey through hell: innocent, robbed of her liberty, she's handed over to those for whom she's being made to atone - in a private prison controlled by the Gulf Cartel.
Rainy Weather
A powerful story of economic migration between rural and urban Mexico. Soledad is a matriarch and traditional healer whose daughter Adele left her town to work in Mexico City, leaving behind her youngest son. Years later, Soledad and her grandson José share a strong bond rooted in her love of culture and land. As she continues to pass on her knowledge and teachings to him, she receives an unexpected call that her daughter is getting married and she intends for José to join them in the city. Fearing an uncertain future for both of them, Soledad struggles to cope with her impending anguish as she awaits the return of her daughter.
Jvobtik-Our Music
In a Tsotsil community of San Andrés Larráinzar, in southern Mexico, where all sounds come to life, the musical tradition of a family of musicians is transmitted from one generation to the next: from the grandfather, who lives his latest melodies, to the son, who assumes the position of traditional musician, and the grandson who continues with the musical memory of the family.
The rebozo of my mother
Raised by a Mixtec mother and a Dutch father, the filmmaker undertakes a personal journey to her mother's indigenous village in Oaxaca. Through conversations with community members, she reflects on the changing landscape and documents her experience of migration and return. The documentary exposes a personal look at his homeland, Chalcatongo (Oaxaca, Mexico), a look that becomes an identity search that is built through dialogues with its inhabitants and the memory of an emigration that contrasts with the experience of a present return. The film was screened among others at the Morelia Film Festival, the Puebla International Film Festival, the Latin American Film Festival in the Netherlands, the Oaxaca Film Festival and the ForumDoc in Brazil.
the last tip
In the ceremony of change of authority of an indigenous town, where a council of elders transmits control to another of younger men, all the money that exists in the town's treasury is publicly counted. The next day the box is empty. Who stole the money?
Nukux K'áaxobo'ob, Big Trees
The knowledge of the Mayan people is concentrated in its adult people, it is the indissoluble bond that binds it to all the wisdom that emanates from the earth; collective memory that makes use of figurative language, form of expression and life at risk.
Grandmothers and grandfathers from San Diego share their experiences and thoughts about life, times and the future, coming from contact with natural resources and the milpa; resorting to the use of figurative language that has been inherited from their ancestors.

Maquilapolis: City of Factories (2006) Dir. Vicky Funari, Sergio de la Torre
Carmen Durán works the graveyard shift in one of Tijuana’s 800 maquiladoras; she is one of six million women around the world who labor for poverty wages in the factories of transnational corporations. After making television components all night, Carmen comes home to a dirt-floor shack she built out of cast-off garage doors from the U.S., in a neighborhood with no sewage lines or electricity. She suffers from on-the-job kidney damage and lead poisoning from her years of exposure to toxic chemicals. She earns six dollars a day on which she must support herself and her three children. Starting in the 1980s the U.S. and Mexican governments initiated a trade agreement allowing components for everything from batteries, IV tubes, toys to clothes to be imported duty-free into Mexico, assembled there and then exported back duty-free as finished consumer goods for sale in the U.S. Tijuana became known as the television capital of the world, ‘TV-juana.’ Globalization promised jobs, and working class Mexicans uprooted their lives to flock to the northern frontier in search of better paying work. After a decades long boom in 2001, Tijuana suffered a recession as corporations chased after even cheaper labor in Asia. While Maquilapolis shows that globalization gives corporations the freedom to move around the world seeking cheaper labor and more lax environmental regulations, it also demonstrates how organized workers can successfully demand that the laws be enforced. Thanks to her persistence in demanding severance pay, Carmen’s house now has concrete floors. And thanks to her new knowledge of labor rights, she has since taken another factory to the labor board for a violation similar to Sanyo’s; she hopes one day to go to school and become a labor lawyer. Globalization turns workers into a commodity which can be bought anywhere in the world for the lowest price. Yet they are more than a commodity; they are human beings who demand to be treated with dignity. As one of Carmen’s colleagues says, “I make objects and to the factory managers I myself am only an object, a replaceable part of a production process. I don’t want to be an object, I want to be a person, I want to realize my dreams.”

La jaula de oro / Sol y Luna Films ; escrita y dirigida por Diego Quemada-Diez ; productora, Inna Payán ; productores, Luis Salinas y Edher Campos.
Call Number: PN1995.9 .F67 J37 2016
Summary: Tres jóvenes de los barrios bajos de Guatemala viajan a los Estados Unidos en busca de una mejor vida. En el camino a través de México conocen a Chauk, un indígena de la sierra de Chiapas que no habla español. Viajando juntos en trenes de carga, caminando en las vías del tren, pronto tendrán que enfrentar una odisea que cambiará sus vidas para siempre.

Summary: Three teenagers from the slums of Guatemala travel to the United states in search of a better life. On their journey through Mexico, they meet Chauk, an Indian from Chiapas who doesn't speak Spanish. Travelling together in freight trains and walking on railroad tracks, they soon face an odyssey that will change their lives forever.

The Infiltrators (2019) Dir. Cristina Ibarra, Alex Rivera
Summary: THE INFILTRATORS is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young immigrants who are detained by Border Patrol and thrown into a shadowy for-profit detention center--on purpose. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical DREAMers who are on a mission to stop unjust deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri attempt a daring reverse 'prison break,' things don't go according to plan. By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, THE INFILTRATORS tells an incredible and thrilling true story in a genre-defying new cinematic language
Chicana (1979) Dir. Sylvia Morales
Summary: Chicana traces the history of Chicana and Mexican women from pre-Columbian times to the present. It covers women's role in Aztec society, their participation in the 1810 struggle for Mexican independence, their involvement in the US labor strikes in 1872, their contributions to the 1910 Mexican revolution and their leadership in contemporary civil rights causes. Using murals, engravings and historical footage, Chicana shows how women, despite their poverty, have become an active and vocal part of the political and work life in both Mexico and the United States.
Dolores (2017) Dir. Peter Bratt
Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century - and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one's life to social change.
Sleep Dealer (2008) Dir. Alex Rivera
Summary: Set in the future, a young man looks for a better life outside his small rural village in Mexico-- but finds himself facing a technological dystopia when he attempts to cross the border
El Norte 1983 Dir. Gregory Nava
Peasants, tired of beingnothing more than manual laborers, are discovered by the Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village, a brother and sister, decide they must flee el Norte. After receiving help from friends and advice from a veteran immigrant on strategies for traveling, they make their way to Los Angeles.
Sin Nombre 2009 Dir. Cary Fukunaga
Sin Nombre tells the story of Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a teenager living in Honduras, and hungering for a brighter future. A reunion with her long-estranged father gives Sayra her only real option - emigrating with her father and her uncle into Mexico and then the United States, where her father now has a new family. Meanwhile, Casper, a.k.a. Willy (Edgar Flores), is a teenager living in Tapachula, Mexico, and facing an uncertain future as a member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang brotherhood. Casper must navigate the psychological gauntlet of his violent existence and the physical one of the unforgiving Mara when Sayra bravely allies herself with him as a train they board journeys through the Mexican countryside towards the hope of new lives.