Past Events

Daniel is an exceptional footballer, a striker. Julio is the team’s captain, a born leader. They were raised as brothers and play football in their slum, La Ceniza, in Caracas. Daniel dreams to play professional football while Julio feeds the family with dirty money: he has no time to dream. The opportunity of their lives arrives when a football scout invites them to try out with the city’s best team: Caracas Football Club. But tragedy strikes them. They must choose, on a dirty football pitch, what is more important: family, revenge or the dream of their lives. On this pitch, life is on the line…

Note: Marcel Rasquin’s 2010 debut feature has made the rounds in the international film circuit and was selected as the Venezuelan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Gabino is a 24-year old man who still lives with his mother and works as a moving truck driver in Mexico City. He constantly witnesses the perils and distress that others have to endure as they move out of their homes and out of other people’s lives. Gabino and his mother have a distant relationship that comes to a climax when they stumble upon an unexpected discovery.

Note: Nicolás Pereda was born in Mexico City in 1982. In 2007 he earned a Masters in Fine Arts from York University in Toronto. His award-winning first feature film ¿Dónde están sus historias? has screened at festivals around the world, and his subsequent films have all garnered critical acclaim. Perpetuum Mobile won best Mexican film at the Guadalajara Film Festival.

Psychological thriller and political drama, Port mortem tells the story of 55 year-old Mario, a clerk at the city’s morgue who makes a living typing autopsy reports. He daydreams of his neighbour Nancy, a cabaret dancer, who disappears mysteriously on September 11, 1973, the fateful day Pinochet staged his coup d’état. Following a violent search of her house by the army, he learns that they have arrested Nancy’s brother and father, a staunch Communist and supporter of Salvador Allende. Beside himself with worry over the disappearance of his would-be lover, Mario searches frantically for Nancy.

Note: Port Mortem is Pablo Larraín’s third feature film (his second film, Tony Manero, was featured at the 2008 Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes). Port Mortem had its world premiere at the 2010 Venice Film Festival.

Aby (Gloria Pires), a chain-smoking guitar teacher in her forties, craves for a romantic relationship. When musician Max (Paulo Miklos) moves into the apartment next door, she sees the possibility of turning her lonely life around. Instead, she unexpectedly finds herself involved in a love triangle leading to a terrible jealous rage. A bad time to give up smoking! A story of love, sex, agony and death, Anna Muylaert’s Smoke Gets in your Eyes balances the fine line between comedy and tragedy, taking its characters on a journey to and from the dark side. As in life, they end up bruised, but perhaps better human beings in the long run.

Note: Smoke Gets in your Eyes won 10 awards at the Brazilia Film Festival including Best Film and Best Actor.

Sins of my Father tells the story of Pablo Escobar, head of the prominent Medellín drug cartel in the 1980s, narrated by his son, Sebastian Marroquín. Sebastian recounts the extraordinary tale of his childhood, living with his beloved father, who was also Colombia’s enemy number one. This outstanding documentary takes a look at Colombia’s recent political past, and includes a narrative of two victims killed by Escobar: Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, a Court Justice, and Luis Carlos Galán, a popular presidential candidate, told by their sons. The film displays Sebastian’s desire to break the cycle of vengeance and assassinations, by means of reconciliation with the descendants of his father’s victims.

Note: Sins of my Father played at Sundance and won the audience award at the Miami International Film Festival.

Leonardo, a successful industrial designer, lives with his family in an architectural wonder, a mid-century Le Corbusier home in the city of La Plata, Argentina. One morning, he wakes to an irksome noise and is appalled to discover that workmen next door are building a large window that faces directly into his home. Victor, the neighbor, is a weird, extroverted character, both friendly and threatening. The small incident escalates and starts to take over Leonardo’s life, until it leads to an unexpected outcome.

Note: The Man Next Door (2009) won Best Argentine Feature Film at the 24th Mar del Plata Film Festival and Best Cinematography in the World Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010.

Costa and Sebastian arrive in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to shoot a period film about Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. They’re on the tightest of budgets, but the shoot gets off to a smooth start. Things get complicated when the extras and the main actor, locals to Cochabamba, rise up against the privatization of their city’s drinking water. The battle to get the film made intertwines with the fight of their Bolivian crewmembers, deprived of their most basic rights, prohibited from collecting even the rain.

Note: Featuring noted actors Gael García Bernal and Luis Tosar, Icíar Bollaín’s film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year and was Spain’s Official Selection for the Oscar Academy Awards.