Mexico

Lately nothing has been going well for Silverio in Veracruz; his attempt to form a cooperative organization has utterly failed, and with this and other frustrations on his back, he decides to do what no Mexican he knows has ever done before: enter the United States as a Cuban refugee. His buddies help him turn his old VW Beetle into an improvised raft—which he names “el Acorazado Jarocho” (The Veracruzan Battleship)—and he sets sail for Miami. Once again, though, things don’t go quite his way.

Los últimos cristeros is a visually powerful, yet intimate exploration of a lesser known aspect of Mexican history—the dramatic war between Church and State in the 1920s and 1930s. It follows the valiant story of a small band of men who refuse to accept amnesty and instead, continue their fight against religious persecution and the prohibition of their right to practice their Catholic faith in public.

Created as a cinematographic diary for Zafirah, the directors’ three-year-old daughter, this documentary is a poignant testimony about the era of human migration in which we live. It records the faces and stories of the people who congregate around the train, which represents the symbolic vehicle of escape for the thousands who travel through Mexico to the United States each year. And, it captures the participation of people who voluntarily provide assistance to the migrants.

Between 1982 and 1996, the Ixil and K’iche’ people took refuge in the mountains as a last resort to save themselves from the massacres carried out by the Guatemalan army, which took the lives of more than 200,000 indigenous people. After those fourteen years, the communities ended up settling in the northeastern part of the range, an area currently under siege due to its wealth of natural resources. This evocative documentary is a celebration of the resilience of people preparing to defend themselves against another coming war. A chant of hope from a community that will not give up.

This is the inspiring story of Irina Layevska, the son of militant communists, who grew up defending socialism and the Cuban Revolution. Identifying with the ideologies of Che Guevara and even resembling Che physically, Irina worked tirelessly for the cause. However, as an adult Irina faced even greater challenges. Born into a male body that was suffering increasing physical disability, Irina took on a new revolution: to become a woman.

“In order to have a piece of land, you must suffer,” laments an old man in this poetic cinema verité film of a cattle-ranching community in Coahuila in northeastern Mexico. each year, the families must make an exodus during the dry season in search of water. During this time of exile, men and women, old and young await the first rains so that they can return to their lands. Stunningly photographed and delicately paced, Cuates de Australia is a frank, poignant portrait of a way of life on the verge of extinction.

In this off-the-wall macabre comedy, Ramona, a widow who becomes a compulsive wreck when her only son disappears, begins to frequent the morgue; the only clue she has to identify his body is a minor cut that she caused him when clipping his toenails. There she encounters Genaro, a handy-man who collects articles on crime, and she becomes obsessed with the idea that he is somehow connected to the disappearance of her son. The arrival of Mariana, an attractive young woman who appears to be fleeing from something, adds an unexpected twist to Ramona’s desperate search.

No one could ever have imagined that one day La Chingada Vieja would fall in love. Why? Because she’s always alone; because no one looks her way; because when they feel her approaching they cross themselves; but above all, because no one falls in love with Death. That is until El Hombre sin Nombre appears in her life. Only the confusion of an avenging town and the longing of four men to reach heaven could wrinkle the course of this True Love.

A deeply sensitive tale of a middle-aged autistic man named Francisco, who must live with his brother’s family because he is deemed unable to fend for himself. There he lives a solitary life, ignored and locked up. His only moments of freedom are his visits to the park where one day he finds a lost baby animal and secretly brings it home to look after it. However, its discovery will unleash a chain of events that will have Francisco struggling to regain the tiniest control over his destiny.