The 38th Annual International Film Festival is presenting a Hispanic Film Showcase with films from all over Latin America and Spain. Five Oscar submissions will be screened: Cuba's Coducta, Spain's Vivir es facil con ojos cerrados, Uruguay's Mr. Kaplan, Venezuela's Liberatador, and Argentina's Relatos Salvajes, which will open the festival.
A couple highlights:
YVY MARAEY, LAND WITHOUT EVIL
Valdivia’s lyrical and philosophical road movie provides a journey not to a destination, but to a deeper understanding of memory and identity. Using a 1911 Swedish ethnographic film as a starting point, a Bolivian filmmaker (Valdivia) and a Guaraní guide travel together through the forests of southeastern Bolivia to make a film about the Guaraní people. Each man creates and interprets his own character, walking the thin line between documentary, fiction, and performance. The journey not only takes them to the interior of the country, but to their own inner selves, as they seek to define their identities within a country undergoing enormous social, political, and historical change framed by colonial legacy and the epic history of an indigenous people.
(LA TERCERA ORILLA) THE THIRD SIDE OF THE RIVER
Seventeen-year-old Nicholas’s father is a respected doctor, but he lives a double life: one, seemingly harmonious, with Nico and his mother and siblings; and the other, mere blocks away, with his second family—with whom he spends most of his time and the bulk of his money. The titular third side of the river refers to a sort of purgatory or limbo, effective imagery for Nicholas, who, torn between protecting the family he loves and choosing his own future, becomes tormented by a tension so tightly wound it threatens to become explosive. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese and winner of the Special Prize of the Jury at the Cartagena Film Festival, The Third Side of the River is a devastating drama of family duty and duplicity.
