Cine Latino

The program opens at the Palace Cinemas in Sydney before making its way to Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne, and boasts more than 30 films from across Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela. It’s a lot to take in, so we asked program coordinator Alex Castro to talk us through the highlights.

1. NERUDA

Multi-award-winning Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s latest film, Alex Castrois a lavishly mounted reimagining of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda’s pursuit into political exile, and notably marks his reunion with No star Gael García Bernal. Set in 1948, the Chilean Government sends bumbling police prefect Peluchonneau (Bernal) to arrest Neruda. He tries to flee the country, but they are forced into hiding. Yet the poet is somehow inspired by the dramatic events of his new life as a fugitive, and uses this struggle as an opportunity to reinvent his work and life, leaving clues for his nemesis designed to make their game of cat and mouse more dangerous, more intimate.

2. I PROMISE YOU ANARCHY

This vivid, pulsating vision of modern-day Mexico calls to mind Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2001 debut Amores Perros. Miguel and Johnny are young lovers and skateboarders who ride with their friends through Mexico City’s labyrinth of streets. Miguel earns money selling human blood on the black market, with paramedics as his most dependable clients. One day Miguel gets a hot tip: some wounded drug traffickers are willing to pay big money for urgently needed blood. He enlists Johnny’s help, and the boys start working towards fulfilling the massive order, assembling family, friends and strangers – until their plan goes horrifyingly wrong.

3. CLEVER

Still bitter from a recent divorce, martial arts instructor Clever (yes, that’s his name) is trying to get his life back together. His ex-wife thinks he’s a loser. His beloved car is a wreck. And his young son would rather eat junk food and play video games than share in his father’s passions. After a night out he comes across a car tricked out with flames and sets out on a single-minded quest: to find the artist who painted the flames and design his own car. His journey leads him to a secluded village full of odd characters, and to an enigmatic personality (the artist) who isn’t quite what he expects.

4. HOW TO WIN ENEMIES

Lucas, a young lawyer from an upright Jewish family who has a penchant for detective stories, is on the verge of moving into his own apartment. When he unexpectedly meets the stunning Bárbara, he thinks he has found the perfect woman. She is smart, has great taste in books, and she seems to like him, too. But after she goes home with Lucas, he wakes up to find the cash deposit for his new apartment missing, along with Bárbara. Determined to find her, and to solve this mystery, Lucas uses the detective skills gathered from his beloved books and finds himself in an intriguing, twisted plot that leads to an unexpected source.

5. 3 BEAUTIES

[pictured above]

This pitch-black comedy is a razor sharp satire on that most Latin American of obsessions – beauty queens – from Venezuela, the land of beauty queens. Single mother Perla is determined to turn her young daughters Carolina and Estefaníainto beauty queens. She drills them to practise the catwalk, parade swimwear and frilly gowns, and to diet endlessly. When Carolina fails to win her school’s fifth grade beauty pageant, Perla is outraged and the family turn to an evangelical Christian group as a form of solace. Years later, the now teenage girls try to win back their mother’s approval and enter themselves in the world of the adult pageants, complete with cosmetic surgery and other nasty surprises.

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