The American Film Institute’s 30^th annual Latin American Film Festival concluded last week. Fifty-three new movies. Twenty-three countries represented (throughout Central and South America, as well as entries from Spain and Portugal). It is always one of the highlights of the year for foreign film lovers in the DC area. I was only able to catch a couple of the documentaries this year, but I did see more than half of the features, and as such, I offer this definitively incomplete recap of this year’s fest.

ARGENTINA

An Unexpected Love (Juan Vera)

Ricardo Darin and Mercedes Moran are typically charming in this rom-com about a married couple who grow bored with each other after their adult son leaves home, only to find things could be far worse out on their own. Pleasant enough, though its thin premise runs stale after a while. Features a great, albeit brief, comic turn from Juan Minujin as one of Moran’s paramours.

Murder Me, Monster (Alejandro Fadel)

Atmospheric and gruesome horror has several good moments, including an excellent opening and a solid monster reveal. But its story is largely indecipherable, and none of its characters are particularly compelling.

The Quietude (Pablo Trapero)

Trapero is a filmmaker of little restraint, and that is on display in this sex-soaked melodrama. A father’s illness brings a prodigal daughter home and plenty of past infidelities and transgressions are uncovered as a result. Trapero has a tendency to extend shots, moments and songs well past their expiration date, which results in an overwrought mess at times, despite strong work from leads Martina Gusman and Berenice Bejo.

BOLIVIA

Tu Me Manques (Rodrigo Bellot)

Bellot adapted his stage production about a conservative Bolivian father travelling to New York in search of answers after his homosexual son commits suicide. He meets his son’s lover, who introduces the father to his son’s hidden life, while simultaneously staging a theatrical production about the entire experience. The combination of the two elements can get confusing at times, and much of it has an overly theatrical flair, but it remains consistently energetic and features a fine performance by Oscar Martinez as the father. It also has a clever twist ending, that helps explain away some of the overt theatricality.

CHILE

Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor Castillo)

Subdued and often confusing glimpse of life in a would-be commune outside of Santiago. There are moments of transcendent beauty captured by the great Inti Briones, including two beautiful shots of a dog running through dust and smoke, which serve as bookends to the story. But few of the jumbled mass of characters register, and the whole thing lacks any kind of context to interpret who they are and what they want.

COLOMBIA

Monos

Monos (Alejandro Landes)

One of the most anticipated of this year’s movies, this cryptic reimagining of Lord of the Flies follows a group of eight young adults serving as a makeshift militia in the jungles of Colombia, tasked with guarding a kidnapped American engineer. Most details are left unexplained as we watch the devolution of the group into chaos. Equally energetic and maddening.

Days of the Whale (Catalina Arroyave Restrepo)

Similar in substance to last year’s Los Nadie, this drama examines Medellin’s young artists who struggle to find a space to create amid the dominant drug-cartel culture. Restrepo captures the nature of her young lovers relationship nicely, but fills her story with so much “how you doing?”-style small talk that narrative momentum is constantly subverted. It makes a rather small story seem even smaller.

COSTA RICA

Helmet Heads (Ernesto Villalobos)

Good-hearted but largely negligible comedy about a ragtag group of bike messengers offers a quirky sense of humor, but takes so long to get to its central plot question that it more or less fades into the ether. Still, managed one of the most striking scenes of the fest – as a couple makes love on a motorcycle amid an interested group of stray dogs.

The Awakening of the Ants (Antonella Sudasassi)

One of the highlights of the fest. Despite a title that the director says makes the movie sound like a horror film when translated, this is a beautifully rendered portrait of one young mother’s struggle to exert some control over her own life, and perhaps pave an easier path for her young daughters. Outstanding performances from all the principals, including the kids.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

The Projectionist (Jose Maria Cabral)

Psychological suspense story about a solitary film projectionist who lives a fantasy life by watching old film clips of a mystery woman. When many of his films are destroyed in a fire, it leads him on a journey in search of answers as to her identity. Felix German is excellent in the lead, and he is ably supported by Cindy Galan as the reckless young woman he picks up along the way.

De Lo Mio (Diana Peralta)

Small family drama about two sisters returning from the USA to help their brother sell the family home after the death of their grandmother. If this sounds a bit like The Quietude mentioned above, it is similar only in premise. Whereas the Argentine films dives into excess, this is very restrained and personal. Strong performances from all three siblings carry the slight narrative along, and Peralta frequently devotes time to showing us the surroundings, so that the trees and mountains become another character. Small, but effective filmmaking.

GUATAMALA

Jose (Li Cheng)

Low-key, episodic love story about 19 year old Jose who lives with his mother eking out a living in Guatamala City, while sneaking off for midday trysts with the handsome construction worker he has fallen for. Both Jose and the movie itself seem to float about aimlessly for long stretches, yet Cheng manages to capture a poignant situation that will stay with you.

MEXICO

The Chambermaid (Lila Aviles)

Beautifully crafted, delicate portrait of a quiet young woman who logs long hours at a nice hotel while rarely getting to see her own son back home. Filmed in 20 days on a shoestring budget, this is an episodic journey through the minor trials and tribulations that Eve (a deeply textured performance from Gabriela Cartol) encounters. But those episodes carry so much warmth, pathos, humor and despair, that the movie never seems minor. With excellent support from her boisterous friend Minitoy, played by Teresa Sanchez.

The Good Girls (Alejandra Marquez Abella)

Having a good understanding of the effects of reforms to Mexico’s banking system in the early 1980s may help audiences appreciate this satire about the fall of queen bee Sofia as her husband loses power and favor. But it is hard to get past the fact that this essentially comes down to a bunch of entitled rich people whining about what they don’t have. Ilse Salas’ lead performance is very good, but it remains hard to really invest very much in her, or in anyone else.

Tigers are Not Afraid (Issa Lopez)

Stand-out blend of brutal action, humor, and fantasy. Lopez’ work recalls a somewhat less grandiose version of Pan’s Labyrinth (Indeed, Guillermo del Toro is a big fan of the movie). Centered on children orphaned by drug wars, it follows a resilient group of kids led by alpha boy El Shine (a magnetic Juan Roman Lopez) when a girl, the equally tough Estrella (Paola Lara) joins their group. Estrella is haunted by visions and voices of the dead and damned, which are never far removed from these kids’ lives. Despite the hardships, they find ways to be kids … to laugh and play and survive in the worst of conditions.

Chicuatores (Gael Garcia Bernal)

Bernal’s second feature as director, focuses, as do many of this year’s films, on young people stuck in an untenable situation, searching for escape. Unfortunately, most of his characters are boorish clods. This is especially true of his nominal hero Cagalera, a young man who is equal parts entitled, cruel, and obnoxious. He is also brave, but that positive trait is revealed in bullying and bravado as often as it is in anything remotely laudatory. Bernal tries to blend humor and brutality, and despite occasional success, it mostly falls flat. Perhaps if there were anyone to actually care about, it all may have worked better.

PERU

Song Without a Name (Melina Leon)

Gorgeous black and white photography from Inti Briones dominates this agonizing story of babies stolen from poor women and put up for international adoption in Peru in the 1980s. Director Leon’s father was the reporter (played in the movie by Tommy Parraga) who helped break the story, and when it focuses on his investigation, or on Pamela Mendoza’s anguish as the Quechua woman at the heart of the drama, the movie is searing. Leon allows several obscure subplots to emerge in the second half and the movie doesn’t end particularly well, but the inherent power of the story and Briones’ imagery has lasting impact.

VENEZUELA

The Lake Vampire (Carl Zittelman)

Good-natured, if somewhat confusing, murder thriller loosely based on the real life killer Zacarias Ortega. Zittelman jumps around in time, employing flashbacks within flashbacks, to cover the many years that this undead killer has been in operation. The crazy plotting is part of the fun, as a novelist in search of his next subject, and a retired police detective try to hunt down the mysterious killer.

CO PRODUCTION

Days of Light (Costa Rica & Panama, with support from Guatamala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua)

An ambitious epic, six years in the making, tells six different stories about the dramas that unfold when all electricity mysteriously goes out in Central America for five days. Six directors (Mauro Borges, Enrique Perez Him, Gloria Carrion, Enrique Medrano, Julio Lopez, and Sergio Ramirez) each scripted and helmed their own piece of the story, then Borges and Perez Him put it together in a coherent whole. As with any project like this, there are strengths and weaknesses. Editing can feel abrupt, with some storylines abandoned for long stretches. Yet the entire film has remarkable power and a sort of unified variation. Stand-out segments include Borges’ comic story of a desperate holy man who finds salvation, Perez Him’s satiric look at the relationship between a spoiled rich woman and her maid, and especially, Lopez’s poignant take of a boy and his grandmother trying to make it to the city in order to visit his ailing mother. A very fine film, and an even better sign of good things to come from the Central American film community.

BEST OF THE FEST

I didn’t see everything, but as regular readers will attest, that has never stopped me from handing out awards.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Inti Briones captured some beautiful imagery in Too Late to Die Young, but really knocked it out of the park in Song Without a Name.

SCREENPLAY

For those who believe screenplays are all about clever plotting and quotable dialogue, one look at Antonella Sudasassi’s magnificently understated collection of moments in The Awakening of the Ants should let you see the craft of screenwriting in a new light.

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Juan Roman Lopez may have been a child when he filmed Tigers are Not Afraid, but he gives a man-sized performance.

SUPORTING ACTRESS

Tie: I can’t choose between Teresa Sanchez’s whirlwind of energy Minitoy in The Chambermaid and Graciela Borges’s shamelessly bad mother in The Quietude.

ACTOR

Felix German gets to play every emotion under the sun as Eliseo, the title character in The Projectionist. From petulant and tough to tender and romantic, pathetic, funny, afraid. And not a single note ever feels false.

ACTRESS

There were many powerful performances by lead actresses in this year’s fest, but Daniela Valenciano surpasses them all. Her Isabel in The Awakening of the Antsinitially seems to be a submissive wife dreaming of more autonomy, but she gradually reveals depths of power, sexuality, and humor that make her one of the best characters of the year.

DIRECTOR

She blended gritty drama and fantasy. She got great performances out of a group of young kids. She kept a potentially heavy and confusing story moving and engrossing throughout. And as mentioned, she won great praise from Guillermo del Toro. That’s good enough for me to choose Issa Lopez for Tigers are Not Afraid.

FILM

Days of Light, The Awakening of the Ants and Tigers are Not Afraid all get strong consideration, but in the end, Mexico’s The Chambermaid gets my vote.

Can’t wait for next year’s fest.