Past Events

The Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is one of the most acclaimed artists working today. His pieces wouldn’t exist without public participation. Shot over 10 years in 30 cities around the world, including Mexico City, Vancouver and New York. Megalodemocrat provides intimate access to his large-scale interactive creations and follows Rafael’s breakout career creating large-scale works that entice an increasingly isolated public into transforming their cities and reconnecting with one another.

Chela and Chiquita live in Asunción, Paraguay, and have been together for over 30 years. Recently their financial situation has worsened and they begin selling off their inherited possessions. When their debts lead to Chiquita being imprisoned on fraud charges, Chela is forced to face a new reality. Driving for the first time in years, she begins to provide a local taxi service to a group of elderly wealthy ladies. As Chela settles into her new life, she encounters the much younger Angy, forging an invigorating new connection. Chela finally begins to break out of her shell and engage with the world, embarking on her own personal, intimate revolution. The Heiresses was selected to compete for the Golden Bear in the main competition section at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival, where Ana Brun won the Silver Bear for Best Actress.

Fernando Solanas’ film opens with a series of startling images: in the province of Salta in northern Argentina, centuries-old forests are being cleared to make way for huge soy plantations. Indigenous farmers are being driven out of their villages and are no longer allowed to use the access roads that have now been privatized. Herbicides are being sprayed and diseases are spreading. These images are the starting point for this doyen of investigative documentary’s condemnation of state-sanctioned environmental crimes committed by industrial agriculture. Solanas’ film investigates the social aftermath of mono-culture and the uncontrolled use of weed killers and other chemical substances. At the same time, he explores ways in which we can break out of the vicious circle of a corrupt system in which consumers are deceived and regulation is eliminated. Do ecological alternatives have a chance? The film was featured in the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.

This musical documentary follows Spanish flamenco singer Diego El Cigala as he embarks on a journey to make a salsa record. It is a bewitching musical odyssey that takes us from Madrid to various locales all over the Americas in search of the sundry sources of that very special tradition we call Salsa. With stops in Cali, Havana, Punta Cana, San Juan, Miami and New York, Indestructible is a musical tour-de-force, enlisting the iconic figures of Omara Portuondo, Larry Harlow, Oscar d’León and the Fania All-Stars as our guides. Their stories are fascinating, but the backbone of this documentary voyage is the music itself, played in studios, on stages and in streets by El Cigala and some of the world’s finest practitioners.

After 19 years without seeing each other, two former “guerrilleros” reunite to sign their divorce papers. As they catch up with their lives and revisit their shared romantic and political past, they unveil intimate secrets to finally discover who they truly are and how much their country and convictions still hurt them. One Last Afternoon transcends its time and place, capturing the sentiment of a whole generation, who during the 1970s and ’80s believed that insurgency was the path to social justice. The film won the Audience Award and Best Actor Award for Lucho Cáceres in the 20th Lima Film Festival 2016, and Best Director in the Ibero-American Competition at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in 2017.

El Reino (The Realm) is a political thriller depicting the reality of our current world and portraying a segment of society, the political elite, seen through the eyes of a corrupt politician trapped in a struggle for survival after having let his party’s and his own interests take him too far. Manuel (Antonio de la Torre), an influential regional vice-secretary who had everything in his favour to take the leap into national politics, becomes trapped in a struggle for survival after a leak involves him in a corruption scandal. This year The Realm was awarded seven Goyas, Spain’s highest film honour, including best director and best male protagonist.