Two Chileans films playing at San Diego’s Digital Gym through June 8.

Chile ’76

Set during the early days of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chile ‘76 builds from quiet character study to gripping suspense thriller as it explores one woman’s precarious flirtation with political engagement. 

Director: Manuela Martelli

Run Time: 95 min.

Language: Spanish w/ English subtitles

Starring: Alejandro Goic, Aline Küppenheim, Antonia Zegers, Hugo Medina, Nicolás Sepúlveda

The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future

A choir of creatures introduces a world delicately constructed by fantasy, mystery, and magical realism in Francisca Alegría’s poignant and stunning debut feature. 

Director: Francisca Alegría

Run Time: 99 min.

Language: Spanish

Starring: Alfredo Castro, Leonor Varela, Luis Dubó, Marcial Tagle, Mía Maestro

In 1970s Colombia, a narco-trafficking era known as “la Bonanza Marimbera” pulls an indigenous Wayuu family into the fray as they enter the booming business of selling marijuana to Americans. Led by matriarch Ursula Pushaina, the “Birds of Passage”—drug runners—face the constant risk of violence and incarceration from the outsiders in Northern Colombia. The cultural differences between the native population and the newcomers begin a brutal war that threatens to destroy the Wayuu way of life. The strong and impulsive women and men must fight to maintain their livelihoods, culture, and traditions.

To be released February 2019.

Gloria (Gina Rodriguez) finds a power she never knew she had when she is drawn into a dangerous world of cross-border crime. Surviving will require all of her cunning, inventiveness, and strength.

Nationwide: Opens Feb. 1. More information here.

A circle of friends decide to lay bare all their secrets at a dinner, placing their smartphones on the table to share any incoming messages or calls that evening. What starts as a parlor game takes an unexpected, disastrous turn.

Cities nationwide: opens Jan. 11.

The reckless air of a border town gives extra flavor to a Mexican New Year’s Eve when the night urges Latin American Studies professor Alejandro (Deveze) into the waiting arms of temptation. A missed flight to his home in León strands the cautious middle-aged professor in Tijuana, where the town’s seedy air suggests danger, but the energy in the streets issues an irresistible invitation. After an unexpected encounter with pretty blonde former student Ana (Veta), an American, he joins a party of reveling academics. It’s the first course in an evening laced with comic undertones that will evolve into a tangled odyssey of new sights, new emotions, and a dangerous attraction. Director van Baal (LARGO) makes superb use of Tijuana’s colorful panorama of street action as Alejandro mixes with the vendors, mystery characters, sex workers, and would-be friends who will challenge his status quo.

Chicago: Opens Dec. 14 at Siskel Film Center.

The most personal project to date from Academy Award® winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá También), Roma follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young domestic worker for a family in Mexico City’s middle-class Roma neighborhood. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst Mexico’s political turmoil of the 1970s.

Worldwide: Releases in December. Check the website for details.

In an empty loft an unnamed young couple—a sculptor and a dancer—stick orange-colored tape to the floor to demarcate two identically sized areas: one space is to be her dance studio and the other his sculpture workshop. An open plan kitchen and a mattress turn the place into a home and we observe them engage in a sexual relationship, thereby setting the stage for a low-key psychosexual drama centered around the couple's erotic, artistic, and everyday rituals. Afterwards, they always retreat behind their dividing lines as a means to inspire their creativity. Before long, he begins to use her space for his large sculptures, and she uses them for her choreography. This interplay between intimacy and rivalry is designed to empower their mutual goal of constantly exploring themselves anew. However, the man begins to experience a growing desire to have a child with her, as they slowly lose their capacity of distinguishing between their artistic projects, their past and their romantic relationship. Filmmaker Júlia Murat playfully explores their yearning to belong, as they begin to challenge both their artistic identities as well as their identity as a couple.

Chicago: Opens Nov. 30 at Facets.

The border that divides storybooks from everyday life dissolves in Colombian writer-director Marcela Rincón González’s marvelous animated adventure about a very special girl trying to find her way home.

Lila is a character from a children’s book who accidentally winds up caught in the world of her readers. The only person who can help Lila return to her rightful place is Ramón, the book’s owner, but he’s grown up now, has stopped reading and, most problematic of all, has lost his sense of wonder. Lila and her new pal Manuela are determined to convince Ramón of Lila’s plight, but in order to retrieve Lila’s book they must traverse the treacherous Desert of Lost Memories.

Miami: Nov. 24, Dec. 2 & 8 at Tower Theater.

Set in Chile’s Atacama Desert, CIELO explores the sublime night sky, employing an elegant, unusual use of time-lapse photography to capture the movements of a breathtaking astronomical tableau. Filmmaker Alison McAlpine’s thoughtful narration and the ambient sounds of the desert are blended with otherworldly music and affecting moments of deep silence. The resulting meditation on the heavens is a mystical paean to the beauty of the sky and an inspiring vision of a universe that we both see and cannot see. The Atacama – with its high-altitude setting (between the Andes and Chilean Coast Mountains), aridity (the driest non-polar place in the world, receiving an average of only .6 inches of rain per year), and near-complete lack of cloud cover and light pollution – is an ideal place to appreciate the firmament. CIELO is a distinctively cinematic reverie on these night skies, as experienced by astronomers at the La Silla, Paranal, and Las Campanas observatories, as well as local farmers, cowboys, and miners.

Chicago: Opens Nov. 23 at the Siskel Film Center.

Heroines of Nicaragua's 1979 Sandinista Revolution get their due in this documentary that underlines for posterity the leading role of women in the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) through present-day encounters with the female leaders who made it happen. First-person accounts by key women, including former commander Dora Maria Téllez, reveal how thousands of sheltered country girls and home-bound wives and mothers answered the call of the nation's struggle for social and economic justice to become warriors who shattered gender barriers and matched or bested the men in combat against the troops of the totalitarian Somosa regime in the U.S.-backed Contra War. Compelling historical interviews and combat footage serve to create then-and-now portraits of the film's featured interview subjects, who ushered in a new era of equality, only to see their place in history gradually diminished and erased under the administration of Nicaragua's current president Daniel Ortega.

Chicago: Opens Nov. 30 at the Siskel Film Center.
New York: Opens Nov. 21 at Film Forum.

Sofía Gala stars in ALANIS, a clear-eyed and unsentimental film about  a young Buenos Aires mother who finds employment as a sex worker and struggles to live under the same laws that are supposed to protect her. Winner of Best Actress and Best Director at San Sebastián Film Festival.

San Diego: Opens Nov. 16 at Digital Gym.

Buenos Aires, 1971. Carlitos (Lorenzo Ferro) is a seventeen-year-old with movie star swagger, blond curls and a baby face. As a young boy, he coveted other people’s things, but it wasn’t until his early adolescence that his true calling—to be a thief—manifested itself. When he meets Ramon (Chino Darín) at his new school, Carlitos is immediately drawn to him and starts showing off to get his attention. Together they will embark on a journey of discovery, love and crime; killing is just a random offshoot  of the violence, which continues  to escalate until Carlitos is finally  apprehended. Because of his angelic appearance,  the press dubs Carlitos "The Angel of Death." Showered  with attention because of his beauty, he becomes an overnight celebrity.

Cities Nationwide: Playing now. Check here for a theater near you.

When Ignacio manages to secure a highly-respectable position at the local religious guild, Carmen, a devout Catholic woman who was confidently pursuing the same title, refuses to concede gracefully. Her scheme to overthrow him, however, ultimately leads to chain of hysterical and comically inconvenient events that often include an eccentric mix of characters. Marta Diaz De Lope Diaz’s first feature film playfully challenges conventional norms in this screwball comedy where chaos ensues in every corner.

Miami: Playing now at Tower Theater Miami.

Set in São Paulo, the film follows Clara, a lonely nurse from the outskirts of the city who is hired by mysterious and wealthy Ana to be the nanny of her soon to be born child. Against all odds, the two women develop a strong bond. But a fateful night marked by a full moon changes their plans. With powerful visuals and an impecable cinematography (by Zama’s Rui Poças), Good Manners is Disney meets Jacques Tourneur. The film becomes an unexpected and wild werewolf movie unlike any other, and a poignant social and racial allegory on modern-day Brazilian society.

Nationwide: Playing now. 

In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Malin, a Russian literature professor at The University of Havana, is sent to translate between Cuban doctors and children sent from the USSR for medical treatment. Torn from the abstract world of academia and forced into the relentlessly real world of medicine, Malin becomes increasingly depressed. When he meets a child who tells him a story, Malin connects with the kids and finds his way through. Just as he adapts to his new job, the Berlin Wall falls and Cuba enters the deepest economic crisis the island has ever known. But Malin is now so entrenched in the lives of the Chernobyl Children that he doesn’t notice his young family suffering. He must find his way back to his wife and child through the lessons he learns at the hospital – and become a better person on the way.

Miami: Opens Oct. 19 at Tower Theater Miami.

This is the story of Julita, a matriarch whose three childhood wishes have been granted: lots of kids, a monkey and a Spanish castle. When she is 81 years old, her youngest child discovers that his mother lost the vertebra of his murdered great-grandmother among the exorbitant amount of weird objects she has hoarded throughout her life. During the exciting search for the vertebra, a very extraordinary family history is revealed. This unique old lady is about to find the meaning of life.

Los Angeles: Playing now at Music Hall.

Andre, a teenager, lives in an industrial town in Brazil near an old aluminum factory. One day, a factory worker, Cristiano, suffers an accident. Asked to go to Cristiano’s house to pick up clothes and documents, Andre stumbles on a notebook, and it’s here that Araby begins — or, rather, transforms. As Andre reads from the journal entries, we are plunged into Cristiano’s life, into stories of his wanderings, adventures, and loves. Beautifully written and filmed, Araby is a fable-like road movie about a young man who sets off on a twenty-year journey in search of a better life.

Nationwide: Playing now. Check for a theater near you.

Two Puerto Rican brothers, Ralphi Matas (Jorge Burgos) and Junior (Gilbert Saldivar), from New York's Spanish Harlem and the street’s best Salsa dancers, are separated after a tragedy only to reunite years later on opposing sides of gentrification.

Nationwide: Playing now.

Loving Pablo chronicles the rise and fall of the world’s most feared drug lord, Pablo Escobar (Javier Bardem), and his volatile love affair with Colombia’s most famous journalist, Virginia Vallejo (Penélope Cruz), throughout his reign of terror that tore a country apart.

Miami: Playing now at Tower Theater Miami.

At 306 Hollywood Avenue in Newark, former dress designer Annette Ontell lived for 71 years in a nondescript white house. After her death in 2011, her grandchildren Elan and Jonathan were left with her belongings, from toothbrushes to tax documents. Instead of throwing away this lifetime of detritus, Venezuelan-American filmmakers Elan and Jonathan began a meticulous process of cataloguing and archiving everything Annette left behind. The result is this magical documentary, an inspiring look at the extraordinary stories and histories hidden away in the everyday. 

Nationwide: Playing now. Check here for a theater near you.

Thirtysomethings Juan Núñez (Gael García Bernal) and Benjamín Wilson can’t seem to finish veterinary school or leave their parents’ homes in a Mexico City suburb. On a fateful Christmas Eve they decide time has come to distinguish themselves by executing the most infamous cultural artifacts heist in Mexican history, looting the iconic National Anthropology Museum. Inspired by true events and shot in never-before filmed locations, Museo is a sardonic cautionary tale that underscores the old adage: you don’t know what you have until you lose it.

Nationwide: Playing now. Check for a theater near you.

At 88, Abraham Bursztein is seeing his place in the world rapidly disappear. His kids have sold his Buenos Aires residence, set him up in a retirement home and are even trying to convince him to amputate his disabled limb. But Abraham survived the Holocaust, made a successful life in a foreign land, and isn’t about to quietly fade away. Instead, he’s planned a one-way trip to the other side of the world.

Nationwide: Playing now. Check here for a theater near you.

It took a young Puerto Rican-born unknown from Harlem to bust open the stuffy world of post- WWII high fashion with new energy, color, and diversity, as seen in this vibrant profile of New York artist, photographer, and videographer Antonio Lopez and his collaborator/partner Juan Ramos. First known for his sinuous, boldly sexy fashion illustrations in publications including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and The New York Times, high-spirited pansexual Lopez quickly propelled himself to the heart of a new international fashion scene as discoverer of models and actresses including Jessica Lange, Jerry Hall, Tina Chow, and Grace Jones. As the ringleader of a good-time "gang" that included Bill Cunningham, Grace Coddington, Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint-Laurent, Patti D'Arbanville, Joan Juliet Buck, and more, he was both arbiter of taste and charismatic object of desire for both men in women in a hedonistic pre-AIDS era. Director Crump includes a wealth of Lopez's art, personal videos, and affectionate interviews with friends including Lange, Cunningham, and Coddington, in a film that moves to the beats of the time with music by the Temptations, Isaac Hayes, Donna Summer, and more.

Cities Nationwide: Playing now. Check here for a theater near you.

Contemplating suicide, an grief-stricken older man (Jorge Mota) and a young girl (Daniela Love) meet in a dense and remote forest where people go to end their lives. They decide to briefly postpone killing themselves in order to explore the forest and also to continue their conversation, finding themselves intrigued by one another. She appears to have all the answers that he has been seeking, and the two engage in a dialogue that almost seems to take on a patient/counselor relationship. She seems to know everything about suicide, ranging from statistics and Japanese hara-kiri techniques to suicidal rituals such as, for instance, carrying a notebook and a pen to write a farewell letter. As they spend their final hours together, it becomes clear that one person is not who they would have the other believe them to be, in this unique and disturbing modern take on the slasher film.

Chicago: Playing now at Facets.

The story of Santi, a preteen who is dealing with the recent separation of his parents Rodrigo and Alejandra. Despite their divorce, Santi's parents are both desperately devoted to their son. When the three learn that Santi has a medical condition that could jeopardize his eyesight, Santi's father encourages him to make a list of places and things he wants to see and do before losing his sight completely. Santi immediately obliges with an elaborate list but with one condition - the estranged couple must come together to help him fulfill his dreams. As the three embark on the amazing, sometimes wacky adventure, the couple must learn how to live together for the sake of their son. But will the adventure open their eyes and make separating impossible? We'll see....

Nationwide Playing now. Check here for a theater near you.

The much-honored Spanish restaurant elBulli, which closed in 2011, was once considered the best in the world, but this intriguing foodie documentary reveals a rival - a sibling rival, that is. While elBulli's head chef Ferran Adriá was proclaimed a genius, it seems that behind the scenes simmering wasn't confined to stockpots. Over a four-year period, filmmakers Collado and Loomis follow the story of Ferran's former partner and co-chef, younger brother Albert, as he steps out of the long shadow of elBulli's legacy and stakes his own claim to fame on an ambitious string of five restaurants in Barcelona's theater district, each featuring a different wildly innovative cuisine. Mouths will water as the film details the creation of Enigma, the seriously experimental eatery that Albert hopes will seal his place in gastronomic history.

Chicago: Opens Aug. 24 at the Siskel Film Center.

Maria Irene Fornes is one of America’s greatest playwrights and most influential teachers, but many only know her as the ex-lover of writer and social critic Susan Sontag. The visionary Cuban-American dramatist constructed astonishing worlds onstage and taught countless students how to connect with their imaginations. When she gradually stops writing due to dementia, an unexpected friendship with filmmaker Michelle Memran reignites her spontaneous creative spirit and triggers a decade-long collaboration that picks up where the pen left off. The duo travels from New York to Havana, Miami to Seattle, exploring the playwright’s remembered past and their shared present. Theater luminaries such as Edward Albee, Ellen Stewart, Lanford Wilson, and others weigh in on Fornes’s important contributions. What began as an accidental collaboration becomes a story of love, creativity, and connection that persists even in the face of forgetting.

New York: Aug. 23 - 29 at the Museum of Modern Art.

They were adolescent lovers. Lucía (Lucía Jiménez) became one half of a successful pop duo but is now settled into domestic life with a husband and two children. Fernando (Fernando Remallo) gets by selling organic cosmetics but seeks to rekindle Lucía’s career with a modest concert tour of the Spanish countryside. David Trueba’s film reunites the two principals of his first film, The Good Life (1996), two decades later, fast approaching middle age. What became of their dreams and aspirations? Has life changed them in significant ways? 

Coral Gables: Opens Aug. 17 at Gables Art Cinema.