Latin Wave 8
May 2–5, 2013
The eighth edition of Latin Wave: New Films from Latin America takes place Thursday–Sunday, May 2–5, with a group of new films premiering at the MFAH.
► Scroll down for all films, showtimes, and tickets. Click here to download the 2013 brochure.
Admission
$10 General Admission
$8 MFAH Members
$8 Senior Adults
$8 Students with ID Complimentary admission for students with ID on Sunday, May 5, only.
Latin Wave 8 from Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Vimeo.
Organized by the MFAH in association with the creative partner Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires.
Sponsored by Tenaris.
Past Films in This Series
Following the success and international recognition of The Milk of Sorrow and Undertow, October is yet another marker of a very exciting, creative time for Peruvian cinema. Brothers Daniel and Diego Vega austerely frame this absurd and charming tale of two misfits who come together around a rather strange circumstance. Clemente, a taciturn, lower-middle-class money lender, has his world turned upside down when a prostitute he frequented leaves a baby in a basket at his door. But for neighbor Sofia, ... more info
Asalto al cine
The Cinema Hold-Up
2011, Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Iria Gómez Concheiro
Filmmaker Iria Gómez in attendance Negus, Chale, Sapo, and Chata are four typical, bored, apathetic teenagers from one of the most dangerous areas in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico’s Colonia Guerrero. But unlike most teens, they have decided to do something about their situation: hold up a megaplex cinema. First-time filmmaker Iria Gómez Concheiro moves the film forward beautifully—from establishing the aimless day-to-day lives of the main characters, through the planning of the heist, to the actual crime—with confident and ... more info
With a remarkable group of child actors, first-time writer/director Carlos César Arbeláez narrates a beautiful tale of lost innocence set in the guerilla-military conflict of Colombia. Nine-year-old Manuel (Hernán Maricio Ocampo) lives in a remote farming village and dreams of becoming a great soccer player. When he receives the treasured gift of a new soccer ball, his dreams seem closer than ever—until he and his friends accidentally kick the ball into a mine field. Arbeláez expertly weaves the humor and ... more info
Celebrated Chilean director Pablo Larraín offers a powerful follow up to his highly acclaimed Tony Manero with Post mortem. Larraín, a master of creating atmosphere, again transports us to 1970s Chile and the territory of Pinochet’s dictatorship, while frequent collaborator Alfredo Castro delivers another commanding portrayal of a deeply disturbing character. But this time, Larraín finds an undeniably unique perspective from which to observe history. The film takes place during one of the most tragically iconic moments in 20th-century Latin ... more info
Filmmaker Gustavo Pizzi in attendance With the expressiveness of a golden-age Hollywood star, Karine Teles gives a tour-de-force performance as a talented actress who struggles through life with small, humiliating jobs to make ends meet, until she gets what may be her big break. Director Gustavo Pizzi, who co-wrote the script with Teles (his real-life wife), says that Craft is a film about “searching for the sky that is melting outside while we are sweeping the floor.” Pizzi portrays the ... more info
Filmmaker Carlos Moreno in attendance Carlos Moreno follows his powerful debut Dog Eat Dog (which premiered in 2008 at Sundance) with this scathing satire about impunity in Colombia. After discovering of a pile of dead bodies, a naive farmer—ironically named Salvador—becomes ensnared in a sinister plot of corrupt politicians, abusive police, and worthless bureaucrats. Salvador’s simple reporting of the dead bodies draws him into an absurd and frightening waiting game as the mayor figures out how to handle the situation ... more info
Dedicated housewife and mother María del Carmen receives a strange yet compelling gift for her 50th birthday: a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the bust of Nefertiti. So taken is María with the image of the queen of ancient Egypt that she spends the whole night putting the puzzle together, and in doing so discovers a great talent and passion that brings her to question how she wants to live the rest of her life. Considered by many to be the ... more info
Gatos viejos ("Old Cats")
2010, Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Pedro Peirano and Sebastián Silva
Filmmaker Pedro Peirano in attendance Sebastián Silva—best known for his sophomore work, The Maid (Latin Wave 2009), which won Sundance’s World Cinema Competition in 2009—has returned with a film that masterfully moves from farce to black comedy to melodrama. Co-directed with his writing partner Pedro Peirano, Old Cats portrays a seriously dysfunctional relationship between an octogenarian mother (played by master actor Belgica Castro, who turns 90 this year) who is free-falling into senility and her greedy, drug-addicted daughter who wants ... more info
Winner of both the Camera d’Or and the Young Critics’ Award, Las Acacias was truly the crown jewel of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival selections. Rubén (Germán de Silva)—an unshaven, middle-aged truck driver for lumber companies—keeps to himself. He agrees to take a young woman, Jacinta (Hebe Duarte), along on his route from Paraguay to Buenos Aires but is dismayed when she arrives with her 5-month-old baby. Less than happy with the situation but unable to escape his obligation, he begins the ... more info
Gordo, calvo y bajito
Fat, Bald, Short Man
2011, in Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Carlos Osuna
Filmmaker Carlos Osuna in attendance Antonio—the fat, bald, and short man of the title—is a functionary in a notary office in Bogota, Colombia, a middle-aged virgin whose life has become a pitiable routine. As alone as a character in an Edward Hopper painting, Antonio suffers the indifference of society and the abusive, macho humor of his co-workers, until the day a new executive director comes to run the office. Señor Enriquez is as short, fat, and bald as Antonio, but clearly ... more info
Found Memories
Historias que so existem quando lembradas
2011, in Potuguese with English subtitles
Directed by Julia Murat
While filming in a small town in the southwest of Brazil, director Julia Murat stumbled upon a strange fact: the local cemetery had closed, and when the inhabitants died, their bodies had to be sent on a seven-hour boat ride to another city for burial. Combining her documentary work on the province of Mato Grosso—once the richest region in Brazil, now a decadent shell of its past glory—with this stranger-than-fiction story of the cemetery, Murat wrote and filmed Found Memories, ... more info
Following its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Miss Bala became the most talked-about Mexican film of the past year. It tells the story of Laura (model/actress Stephanie Sigman), a Tijuana beauty pageant contestant who is delivered into the hands of a gang that is terrorizing northern Mexico. Although Laura succeeds in winning the crown, her experiences as an unwilling participant in Mexico’s violent war leave her shaken and transformed. Inspired by a true story, Miss Bala avoids docudrama ... more info
Filmmaker Santiago Mitre in attendance Hands down the most brilliant discovery of last year’s Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI), Santiago Mitre’s debut feature is a taut, fast-moving drama about the intriguing world of Argentine university politics. Bright and good-looking Roque (Esteban Lamothe) arrives from a small town to study social sciences in the big city of Buenos Aires. But he stumbles upon his calling when he falls for one of the leaders of a campus political group, a striking ... more info
Las Malas Intenciones
Bad Intentions
2011, in Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Rosario Garcia-Montero
Actress Katerina D’Onofrio in attendance An amazing debut from Rosario García-Montero—named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine—Las Malas Intenciones is a truly original coming-of-age story. Cayetana, played with startling naturalism by Fatima Buntix, is a nine-year-old girl from a wealthy family living outside the city of Lima whose life is about to be turned upside down. Both sweet and dark—imagine an underplayed Wednesday Addams with a delicate voice—Cayetana spends her days floating between the ... more info
Based on the simplest of premises—if you could dig straight through to the other side of the Earth, where would you end up?—¡Vivan las Antípodas! may be the most visually ravishing film you will ever see. The film screened at this year's SXSW film festival. Director/cameraman/editor Victor Kossakovsky presents an unforgettable film portrait of Earth, exploring four pairs of antipodes (places that are on the exact opposite side of the planet from each other). While a pair of toll collectors talks geopolitics and women by ... more info
Filmmaker Cristián Jiménez in attendance Chilean director Cristián Jiménez pulls off a delicately beautiful high-wire act with his second feature film, Bonsái. He opens by letting us know the ending—“Emilia dies but Julio doesn’t. The rest is all fiction.”—compelling us to watch as he gracefully unfolds the tragic romance of a young man whose past is catching up with him. Julio and Emilia meet and fall in love, tenderly and awkwardly, as students of literature at the university. Eight years ... more info
In Person: Actor Victor Prada A mysterious epidemic has Lima’s citizens dropping like flies. Forensic cleaner Eusebio’s (Victor Prada) job is to disinfect the homes of the recently dead. During a routine sterilization of what he believes to be an empty apartment, he is surprised to discover young Joaquin (Adrian Du Bois) hiding in the closet. When the city’s overcrowded orphanages refuse Joaquin, Eusebio decides to look after the boy himself. What ensues is a poignant and moving story of ... more info
In person: director Carlos Sorin Middle-aged Buenos Aires native Marcos Tucci (Alejandro Awada) is a recovering alcoholic on his way to Patagonia to try his hand at fishing for shark. Bonding with a number of offbeat strangers, Marcos’s true intentions begin to emerge: he longs to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ana (Victoria Almeida), who has settled with her husband and infant son in the nearby town of Jaramillo. Filmed on location on the glorious Patagonian coastline, and employing a ... more info
Once Upon a Time Was I, Verônica
ERA UMA VEZ EU, VERÔNICA
2012, in Portuguese with English subtitles
Directed by Marcelo Gomes
FOR MATURE AUDIENCES
Skype Q&A with filmmaker Marcelo Gomes follows the screening Fresh from medical school, Verônica (Hermila Guedes) is given a residency at a busy Recife hospital. What promises to be a fulfilling new career fails to provide the satisfaction and sense of purpose she had envisioned. As her patients come and go, all seemingly afflicted with psychosomatic maladies or physical manifestations of melancholy, Verônica’s mind flees to her own, unexplained ailment. With her life seemingly falling into place both professionally and ... more info
Due to the subject matter addressed in this film, there are scenes with intense content that may not be appropriate for more sensitive audience members. After her mother Lucía dies, teenager Ale (Tessa Ia) leaves the familiarity of Puerto Vallarta to accompany her father Roberto (Hernán Mendoza) for a new start in Mexico City. As Roberto immerses himself in opening his new restaurant, Ale settles in at a posh new school. She quickly makes friends, but a cell phone recording ... more info
7 Boxes
7 CAJAS
2012, in Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori
In person: producer Estefanía Ortiz Putting Paraguay on the cinematic map, 7 Boxes brings an inventive ingenuity to the traditional crime thriller. The setting is the country’s capital Asunción, a boiling urban hub that houses the infamous "municipal marketplaces”: a chaotic maze of vendors’ stalls hawking everything from produce and garments to pirated DVDs and cell phones. The film centers on Hollywood-obsessed wheelbarrow carter Victor (Celso Franco) whose greatest wish is for a camera cell phone to make a film. ... more info
Violeta Went to Heaven
VIOLETA SE FUE A LOS CIELOS
2011, in Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Andrés Wood
Famed Chilean singer/songwriter Violeta Parra is a household name throughout Latin America, known both for the power of her music as well as for her life dedicated to music, art, and love. Violeta’s vivid and fervent life comes alive onscreen with perceptive delicacy and nuance. Wood’s non-chronological approach to Violeta’s extraordinary biography moves from her early days travelling in the Andes, to time spent in Poland and France, chasing love and artistic greatness. Played with precision by Francisca Gavilán, the ... more info
Juan of the Dead
JUAN DE LOS MUERTOS
2011, in Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Alejandro Brugués
Zombies have overtaken the streets of Cuba’s capital city and Juan (Alexis Díaz de Villegas) doesn’t quite believe the newscasts that they are dissidents sent by the American government. This hilarious and totally unexpected Cuban comedy blends humor, horror, zombie lore, and the idiosyncrasies of being an isolated Communist outpost in the Caribbean. When friends Juan and Lazaro happen to spot (and slay) a zombie, they are nonchalant about the episode. But when they realize that this is not a ... more info
William Vega’s first feature travels to a fascinating, little-known area of Colombia—the remote, sparsely populated highlands of the Andes. The film chronicles how the destructive effects of Colombia’s long-standing civil war extend to this far-flung corner of the country through the story of nineteen-year-old Alicia. When her family is murdered and her village destroyed, she flees to her only surviving relative, Uncle Don Oscar, a taciturn man living in isolation and reluctant to take her in. Don Oscar lives in ... more info
María, a single mother of three, struggles to make ends meet as a seamstress. Circumstances force her to also care for her elderly father Agustin, who shows early signs of dementia. As the burden of caring for him increasingly weighs on María, she decides to take him to a home for the elderly, but she is turned away. Out of desperation, she commits an act that she soon regrets. Mexican/Uruguayan filmmaker Rodrigo Plá’s feature gives a sincere and nonjudgmental portrayal ... more info