The 31^st Annual American Film Institute Latin American Film Festival concluded on October 7. Due to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s festival was about half its usual size and went virtual, making films available to viewers through a streaming platform. Despite less than optimum conditions, there were still a number of outstanding films. Here is a brief rundown of this year’s dramatic (non-documentary) features.

In all, the Fest presented 19 films from 14 different Central and South American countries.

MEXICO

Fauna (Nicolas Pereda)

Pereda has a funny concept to explore, using some of television’s Narcos cast to take a satiric look at the tropes of popular serial programs. His simple set-up has Paco (Francisco Barreiro) traveling with his girlfriend Luisa (Luisa Pardo) to visit her family. After some low-key and very funny awkward moments, the movie shifts into a story-within-the-story, spoofing the Narcos ethos. That second story isn’t especially good, which tends to undermine the movie as a whole, and leaving the impression that this is more of a clever concept than a good movie.

Kokoloko (Gerardo Naranjo)

Naranjo attempts to distinguish his mostly redundant tale of a violent love triangle with intentional photographic glitches and awkward lighting and framing. The haphazard quality may recall non-professional cell phone footage of real-life interactions. But at a little under two hours, this becomes a cumbersome and often pretentious affect. There is plenty of unpleasantness, with constant profanity and brutality, and it is very difficult to develop much interest in any of the characters. The plot begins by focusing on the relationship between Mundo (Noe Hernandez) and Marisol (Alejandra Herrera), whose idyllic love affair is threatened by her brother Mauro (Eduardo Mandizabal). Mauro and Mundo are involved in some vaguely defined gun running operation, and in the middle of the story, Mundo goes away for a while, removing much of the developing narrative momentum. Then he comes back, and extreme violence and more cluttered imagery returns as well. Fans of Gaspar Noe might be inclined to appreciate this more than I did.

Identifying Features (Fernanda Valadez)

One of this year’s best and most poignant movies, Valadez’s debut feature traces the journey of a mother, Magdalena (Mercedes Hernandez), as she attempts to discover what happened to her teenage son who has disappeared during an attempt to reach the USA. His travelling companion has turned up dead, and the poor, illiterate Magdalena is resolute in her efforts to learn her own son’s fate. She meets several intriguing characters along the way, but it is Hernandez’s quiet intensity and humanity that raises this small road story to enormous heights. Highly personal, without a trace of political commentary, and highly effective as a result.

ARGENTINA

The Heist of the Century (Ariel Winograd)

Winograd’s smartly comic caper film was the Fest’s Opening Night selection. It uses the 2006 real-life robbery of the Banco Rio in Buenos Aires as its base, focusing on the relationship between the brilliant dreamer Fernando (Diego Peretti) who masterminded the plan, and weary professional thief Mario (Guillermo Francella) who brings his common sense know-how to the operation. Slickly filmed and paced, it is fairly standard fare, but very well-executed. The resolution is abrupt, but most of the ride is great fun.

The Weasel’s Tale (Juan Jose Campanella)

Cleverly scripted dark comedy about an aging actress, her actor husband, as well as her writer and her director, all sharing a Sunset Boulevard-style mansion. When two young developers pose as the actress’ fans in order to get her to sell the house, it kicks off a battle of wits between several well-matched factions. Bolstered by excellent performances from veterans the likes of Graciela Borges and Oscar Martinez, as well as younger performers Clara Lago and Nicolas Francella (Guillermo’s son), this treads in very similar territory as the 2019 American favorite, Knives Out.

CHILE

Blanco en Blanco (Theo Court)

A photographer has been summoned by a wealthy landowner to the remote Tierra del Fuego to photograph his very young fiancé just before their wedding. It is the early 1900s, and this never-seen landowner is wreaking havoc on the indigenous population. The photographer – a brilliantly haggard Alfredo Castro – sinks deeper and deeper into an isolated madness as he tries to understand his role in this beautiful and bizarre place. In concept, not unlike 2019’s brilliant French film Portrait of a Woman on Fire, but with a vibe much closer to slow-burn nightmares like Wake in Fright or The Wicker Man. Lars Rudolph matches Castro as the slightly manic foreman of the estate.

Ema (Pablo Larrain)

Among the most highly-anticipated selections this year, Chilean master Larrain has Gael Garcia Bernal on board to lend support in this wild tale of motherhood, abandonment, and arson. Mariana DiGirolamo stars as Ema, a childlike dancer, who along with her choreographer husband (Bernal) has given up her adopted son when his arsonist tendencies result in tragedy. But Ema remains bothered by the decision and plots a way to reunite. DiGirolamo is excellent, imbuing an initially selfish and unlikeable character with surprising depth. But the story spins off the rails at times, in an apparent effort to shock and surprise. There is plenty of good material, but it is also a bit of a mess.

GUATEMALA

La Llorona (Jayro Bustamonte)

In the early 1980s, a war that had been raging in Guatemala between guerrilla insurgents and the government reached genocidal proportions. Government military forces tortured, raped and murdered thousands of indigenous tribe members in a campaign of terror. It is a history that the country has been sorting out since the late 1990s, through a series a high-profile trials. Some of the most recent trials led to the production of at least two major films this year. La Llorona takes a fascinating look at this history, using a mythic character and the form of a horror film to tell its story. When a general is absolved of his crimes by the government, the spirit of La Llorona visits him to exact justice. This is not so much a horror film as a low-key thriller which maintains excellent tension throughout. The main focus of the story is the general’s family, who though supportive, must themselves come to terms with what he oversaw. A powerful flashback to the actual atrocities demonstrates that real life is far more cruel and violent than any ghost story.

Our Mothers (Cesar Diaz)

Diaz’s story covers very similar ground, though in a much more traditional manner. Ernesto (Armando Espitia) is a young forensic anthropologist who is working his way through the municipal cemetery, identifying victims of the past genocide, and reconstructing their remains so that their families can provide a proper burial. When he hears a story from an old provincial woman about her husband’s death, he suspects he may have discovered a clue to finding his own father, who fought with the guerillas many years before. He risks his job by pursuing his quest. The story shifts in the middle away from the old woman and her village to the young man and his relationship with his mother, who has always refused to tell him anything about his father. This is a bit of an awkward transition, though both pieces of the story are strong. As happens in La Llorona, the movie makes powerful use of the simple unadorned testimony of the survivors.

BOLIVIA

Chaco (Diego Mondaca)

For his feature debut, Mondaca has chosen an often-forgotten piece of violent history from Bolivia’s bitter border war with Paraguay in the 1930s. A nameless German captain leads a small contingent of Aymaran and Quichuan soldiers deep into the jungle. They encounter death and madness but never come upon the enemy. Mondaca focuses on several soldiers who trudge on, trying to maintain their hope and humor in the face of the devastating beauty and indifference of the jungle around them. Mondaca seems inspired by Werner Herzog, and the insanity of this bloodless war film has definite echoes of low volume versions of Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo.

BRAZIL

The Fever (Maya Da-Rin)

Da-Rin is a documentarian making her first narrative feature. Along with cinematographer Barbara Alvarez, she frames a beautiful and mysterious story about Justino (Regis Myrupu), who has come from his native Desana tribe to the city in order to find a decent job. Now 20 years into life as a security guard at a shipping dock, Justino finds himself being drawn back in spirit to the rainforest. A measured, methodical, day-to-day pace, reminiscent of movies like Chantelle Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman… and Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Da-Rin is able to evoke another world without ever actually going there. It may be a little slow for some tastes, but a gorgeous and powerful work.

COLOMBIA

Valley of Souls (Nicolas Rincon Gille)

Another documentarian making his narrative feature debut, Rincon Gille maintains the languid pace and reserved, observational tone of his documentaries. Jose, a fisherman, returns home after a night on the water to discover that his two sons have been murdered by the revolutionary group controlling the area. Their bodies have been thrown into the river. What follows is the polar opposite of Laszlo Nemes’ Son of Saul, with a similar premise. Jose (a gaunt and haunted Arley De Jesus Carvallido Lobo) travels the river in search of his boys so that he may give them proper burials. He encounters danger and frustration at every turn but remains steadfast. Lyrical where Saul was frenetic, Rincon Silva may rely a bit too much on the majesty of the river’s imagery, but the story has definite power.

COSTA RICA

Land of Ashes (Sofia Quiros)

Quiros expands her award-winning short film Selva into a strong coming-of-age feature about a 13-year old girl growing up with her grandfather, and juggling the mysteries of the natural world with the equally mysterious world of school and boys and adolescence. Quiros is fortunate to have the dynamic young actress Smachleen Gutierrez reprising her role from Selva. She carries the story through some slow patches and her warm relationship with her grandfather, as well as her love/hate relationship with his girlfriend, form the spine of this portrait. A feeling for the natural world and the natural rhythms of life that feels very much like Dovzhenko, without the politics.

CUBA

August (Armando Capo Ramos)

A bit of a darker Summer of ’42 has Capo Ramos reliving a crucial time from his teen years, when Cuba was faced with dire economic problems and many attempted to flee the country. Teenager Carlos (Damian Gonzalez Guerrero) is more concerned with enjoying his Summer vacation with his friend and potential love interest when the story begins. But he gradually becomes aware of the bigger world around him and the tragedy that he is living through. The story has good moments, but it is a very loose and at times meandering narrative that rarely manages to generate much in the way of momentum.

ECUADOR

Sumergible (Alfredo Leon Leon)

Leon Leon’s taut thriller closed the Fest. It borrows a lot from formulaic Hollywood thrillers, but manages to add some nice touches. Based on the real-life phenomenon of drug smugglers using homemade submarines to transport their product, this claustrophobic story takes place almost entirely on one such sub. Three men are struggling to keep the ship going while avoiding detection and finding their rendezvous point. There is a lot of yelling and close quarters action throughout, and it can be hard to understand some of the details of the story and the characters. But Leon Leon has a good twist or two up his sleeve and the tension builds nicely throughout. One of the few clear genre pictures in a Fest filled with personal stories and character studies.

HONDURAS

90 Minutes (Aeden O’Connor Agurcia)

Agurcia has four separate stories to tell, all loosely built around football games. The tie-in never seems all that significant, but the stories are generally well executed. As with many such chapter film concepts, they are of varying degrees of interest, with only one of them – the last – really standing out. That story of an aging football star who is lamenting whether he wasted his life, has drama, humor, and a poignant quality all its own. The others range from a short Italian Western-style opening to a solid Narcos-style wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time suspense thriller. The weakest link is a rather maudlin tragic love story which comes second and runs too long.

PARAGUAY

Morgue (Hugo Cardoza)

Not a lot of new ground is broken in this simple suspense/horror, but Cardoza executes the basics effectively. Similar in concept to The Possession of Hannah Grace, but not nearly as convoluted, Cardoza has his hero, Diego (Pablo Martinez), working the graveyard shift in a morgue after fleeing from the scene of a hit and run. As expected, karma will catch up with him. Alternates between some nice stylish sequences and some others where the story gets a little slack, but a decent entry into the genre.

PERU

Lina from Lima (Maria Paz Gonzalez)

Lina from Lima plays like an extended version of My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, blending a straightforward story of Peruvian native Lina (and excellent Magaly Solier), who has been working as a maid for a wealthy family in Chile for a decade, with splashy musical fantasy sequences that hint at the life Lina wishes to be leading. The concept is engaging, but ultimately, those musical numbers begin to lose their freshness. Too many of them are merely OK, and the novelty begins to wear thin. Conversely, Lina’s rather simple story about planning a Christmas trip home to visit her teenage son, gains more and more prominence. Her plans are threatened by work-related responsibilities and as we watch her go through her workaday routine, we begin to realize the musical numbers are just window-dressing. Paz Gonzalez has a good story to tell with a strong actress playing it. Though the musical numbers are what probably lifted the movie off the ground, it’s almost as if they become an encumbrance by the end.

URUGUAY

The Moneychanger (Federico Veiroj)

The Moneychanger is an attempt at a big, Hollywood-style suspense story about a rather bland finance guy who gets involved with some very dangerous clients. Along the lines of Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant, Veiroj hits a lot of decent notes, but never really manages to inject enough energy and tension into the proceedings. He has the dull beauty of Daniel Hendler in the lead role, and there are moments of nice irony. But never enough. As with The Accountant, The Moneychanger is another feature film that falls well short of similarly-premised television programs like Breaking Bad or Ozark.

A note on documentaries

I was only able to screen two of the seven documentaries in this year’s fest, but both were quite good. Chile’s The Mole Agent (Audience Award Winner, 2^nd Place)is a charming, if somewhat contrived, story about an 83-year old man sent into a retirement home to investigate the living conditions. It is carried by the refreshing face of its hero Sergio, one of the most engaging characters to appear in a film this year. And Anabel Rodriguez Rios’ Once Upon a Time in Venezuela is one of the best documentaries I have seen this year. A portrait of Congo Mirador, a small village situated upon a lake just off Maricaibo, Rodriguez Rios spent years living with the villagers and chronicling the death of their way of life due to environmental destruction and governmental neglect. Full of life and sadness, and a number of memorable characters, this is a firsthand account of the real costs of environmental decline.

AWARDS

My own personal choices:

Screenplay: Juan Jose Campanella (The Weasel’s Tale)

Runners up: Sofia Quiros (Land of Ashes) and Hugo Cardoza (Morgue)

Cinematography: Barbara Alvarez (The Fever)

Runners up: Jose Angel Alayon (Blanco en Blanco) and Federico Lastra (Chaco)

Supporting Actress: Emma Dib (Our Mothers)

Runners up: Clara Lago (The Weasel’s Tale) and Margarita Kenefic (La Llorona)

Supporting Actor: Guillermo Francella (The Heist of the Century)

Runners up: Lars Rudolph (Blanco en Blanco) and Ricardo Letelier (90 Minutes)

Actress: Graciela Borges (The Weasel’s Tale)

Runners up: Smachleen Gutierrez (Land of Ashes) and Mercedes Hernandez (Identifying Features)

Actor: Alfredo Castro (Blanco en Blanco)

Runners up: Regis Myrupu (The Fever) and Diego Peretti (The Heist of the Century)

Director: Diego Mondaca (Chaco)

Runners up: Theo Court (Blanco en Blanco) and Fernanda Valadez (Identifying Features)

Top 5 Movies:

5. Chaco

4. The Heist of the Century

3. The Weasel’s Tale (Audience Award Winner, 1^st Place)

2. Identifying Features (Audience Award Winner, 3^rd Place)

1. Blanco en Blanco

More steaming festivals from AFI to come. We are currently in the middle of the Spooky Fest, with the signature AFIFest right around the corner.