Vancouver Latin American Film Festival to spotlight Cuba's Pavel Giroud, Argentina’s Santiago Mitre, and more, September 7 to 17
Event kicks off with Brazil’s provocative Rule 34 and closes with Pinochet-era-set Chile ‘76
15 Ways to Kill Your Neighbour
Chile ‘76
Playing Lecuona
THE 21st ANNUAL Vancouver Latin American Film Festival has announced its programming for September 7 to 17, complete with 75-plus films from 16 countries and spotlights on Cuban and Argentine directors.
Always at the cutting-edge, the fest kicks off at SFU Woodward’s on opening night with Rule 34, a provocative film from Brazilian director Júlia Murat—a sexually frank character study of a woman in Rio, and a winner of the Golden Leopard award at last year’s Locarno Film Festival. Actor Sol Miranda will be on hand to present the film on September 7.
The closing night film is Chile ‘76, by actor-director Manuela Martelli. As the title suggests, the film is a historical noir about Pinochet’s rein, seen through the eyes of a bourgeois woman who dares to take a stand. Its star, Aline Küppenheum, is on hand for a special presentation to commemorate 20 years of the release of the iconic Chilean film Machuca (which also starred Küppenheim and Martelli).
The fest continues its long tradition of celebrating the work of Latin-Canadian filmmakers. Montreal-based, Peruvian-Canadian director Carlos Ferrand is here to present two experimental short films: Cimarrones and Pirate Mechanics of Lima. His 2007 feature documentary Americano, tracking a road trip he took from Patagonia to Nunavut over the course of four years, will also screen. Elsewhere Colombian-Canadian director German Gutiérrez will be in attendance to screen the BC premiere of History Will Judge, a documentary that follows the members of one of the last guerrilla camps in the mountains as the Colombian government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) come close to signing a peace agreement after 52 years of civil war. And finally Edgardo Moreno, a Chilean-Canadian composer and musician based in Hamilton, will present his Firefly Project, a solo multimedia performance that blends visual poetry, storytelling, and live electronic sound manipulation.
VLAFF will screen twelve short films by other Latin-Canadian filmmakers, including Vancouver-based Dora Prieto, Dani Rodríguez, Ana Tonso, Pablo García García, and Isabella Dagnino. Another shorts program, Made by Us: Rethinking Indigenous Films, includes Manitushiss by director Réal Junior Leblanc (Innu – Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam/Quebec) and Məca by directors Ritchie Hemphill (Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw/BC) and Ryan Haché (BC/Canada).
VLAFF dedicates a retrospective to Cuban director and screenwriter Pavel Giroud, who will be in Vancouver for the event. Watch for screenings of his Latin jazz documentary Playing Lecuona, the disgraced-boxer-meets-HIV-patient story The Companion, and his most recent feature documentary, The Padilla Affair, with its never-before-seen footage of a mea culpa of the poet Heberto Padilla, with interventions from Gabriel García Marquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, among others)
Elsewhere in the spotlight on Cuba is Sara Gómex: Rethinking Revolution about the only Black woman filmmaker of the 1960s era in that country.
Another spotlight series is dedicated to Argentina’s Santiago Mitre, whose Argentina, 1985 won the 2023 Golden Globe for Best Picture (non-English language) and was nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards. It screens here in collaboration with the Consulate General of Argentina to kick off its cycle of films recognizing the 40th anniversary of the return of democracy in Argentina, continuing until December. The fest also boasts the Canadian premiere of Mitre’s newest film, 15 Ways to Kill Your Neighbour.
There is much more, including a program of music nights and a series of queer Latinx films.
The festival will take place at three different venues: SFU Woodward’s, The Cinematheque, and for the first time, we Cineworks (in the same building as The Cinematheque). Find the full program and more information here.
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