Mercedes Gaviria

God is now a Power Plant. On a misty night cows escape, a child is chosen, and a girl tries to find freedom.

Three women meet by chance at the end of the world, in Argentinian Patagonia, and set out on a polyamorous journey, caught up in the search for new kinds of relationships, far from possession and pain. They become the Daughters of Fire, a band dedicated to helping those women who look for their own path to erotica.

By chance, Martin and Laura travel to Villa Gesell at the same time. They are not together anymore but 18 years ago they conceived their son, Pablo, there. Soon, situations as absurd as they are touching will arise from their encounter. Juan Villegas ventures into comedy and is back at Bafici with a nostalgic, intimate film.

An investigation about a transmission parallel to that of man’s arrival to the Moon, captured by a radio ham from Avellaneda, confronts the director of Channel 54 with a series of conspiracy theories and mysterious figures. Doing so also means questioning the nature of the images.

In home-movies shot in the ‘90s by her father, the filmmaker discovers in these inherited images powerful fictions of the Argentinian middle class and the country’s recent history.

Mudos testigos is a cinematographic collage made from all the surviving material of Colombian silent films, re-editing the images in such a way as to create a single imaginary film: the impossible love story of Efraín and Alicia that traces the convulsive first half of the twentieth century in Colombia. Compiled by the late Luis Ospina and finished posthumously by Jeronimo Atehortúa.

Eight years after having been raped at a beach near Santiago, a young filmmaker tells the story of the assault, the revictimizing judicial processes, and the friendship that helps her heal, in dozens of video-diary entries that comprise an artfully crafted, intimate documentary. A question remains: What is a rape, really, and when does it end?

1980s' Argentina. Four young men decide to avoid being drafted to military service by staying in a car smoking cigarettes all night long.

With the strange disappearance of Laura, two colleagues, her older boyfriend, Rafael, and Ezequiel, learn of their recent discoveries, which may help them locate her. However, the story is bigger and stranger than they could imagine.

After the death of her grandfather, Antonio Bonino, Toia found six negatives proving that he was a member of the Fascist Party and an aide to Benito Mussolini. Influenced by this discovery, the director sets out to trace her male family lineage, whom the end of World War II brought to Argentina. Instead of a clarification, however, the past crumbles and disintegrates into a mosaic of archival material, family films, excerpts from personal diaries and fragments of the works of Roberto Rossellini or Luchino Visconti. But it is the meanings that emerge from the combination of disparate images that offer answers and fill the information vacuum that has shaped generations of the family. The dynamics of the Bonino family's male-female relationships have a much darker basis than the social context of the time. In the story of grandfather, father, cousins and sons, Toia also finds a story of identity and of the role of wives, mothers, grandmothers and daughters in a history shaped by men.

In his second feature film, Leandro Listorti establishes a parallel between two worlds he seems to know well: that of plants and that of cinema. This delicate cinematographic work, full of beautiful images—both archival and current—gives an account of the immense work of classification and preservation, and generously invites us to think about forms of representation and memory.

Yamel, a Mexican cinema student in Cuba, is randomly filming a stormy afternoon in Havana when Jans, an 18-year-old fisherman, walks across her frame and captures her attention.

Renzo tries to get close to the universe of family and football, which has always seemed alien to him. He wanders between his current life and the one he could have had.

Emilia arrives at her Aunt Ines’ hostel at the Argentina-Brazil border looking for her long lost brother. In this luxuriant jungle, a dangerous beast believed to be the spirit of an evil man taking the form of different animals seems to be roaming around. On a journey to sexual awakening, Emilia will have to confront her past in order to kill the beast.

On the outskirts of an isolated mining town, Lázaro discovers a dead body. He thinks he has a respiratory illness and doesn’t want to go back to the mine. Rumours, suspicion and desire surround him.

Argentina, late 19th century. Sergeant Cruz is wounded and walks lost through a forest in Patagonia. After a long walk, he finally reaches the shores of a lake where he sits waiting for the inevitable. However, the encounter with a mysterious character will confront him with his past and his true destiny

Agatha and Leonidas have a somewhat absorbing mother-child relationship: Agatha never fell in love again, and Leonidas doesn't know what love is. From one day to the next, Agatha wakes up in the body of a seven-year-old girl.

Drifting between moving-image formats and collaging local textures and bygone voices, Oscar Ruiz Navia’s film reflects on loss and mourning as experiences of temporal dislocation.

Like a word about to be discovered but never heard, Jeròmino Atehortùa's Una película (secreta) peels back the layers of a moving archive of silent Colombian cinema. A kind of mystery seems to live under each of the images, and as the film progresses, a secret language draws a labyrinth: each sequence is a distorted repetition of the previous one, a deformed extremity of a hidden language that unveils those drives and manias of the archive.

On a bustling footbridge separating Argentina and Paraguay, where people traffic all kinds of things in a mix of Guarani and Spanish, we meet Angel. Over the course of the next ten years, Angel will have to make decisive choices for his future.

It is no coincidence that the second feature by Argentinian Melisa Liebenthal begins with a quote from “Duino Elegies” by Rilke, who was concerned with existential angst. And, more prosaically, Marina, the film’s young protagonist, is faced with similar anxiety. In fact, her problem is her face. One morning, she discovers her face has changed, and she can no longer recognise herself. Not even her mother can, who bumps into her on the street and says hello to her like she would to any stranger (deadpan, surreal humor is part of the film’s recipe). Marina is thus forced to confront her identity: who is she? Is she determined by her parent’s DNA or by her ID card? Can she be identified by a family portrait, by biometrics or the love of those around her, including her Colombian boyfriend? Is she prettier now?

In the Argentinian prison where he's serving a sentence, Marcos cherishes his smartphone, which he uses to keep in touch with family and loved ones. It's also the device with which, at the request of filmmaker Toia Bonino, he documents his daily life. His video recordings and back-and-forth voice messages with Bonino form a precious link to the outside world.

Three sisters entering old age. Three sisters that are very knit together but have opposing views, that are very close but live far apart, one in Tel Aviv, one in Paris and one in Bogotá. A film about how the passage of time affects us, about death, both our own and that of those who shared their lives with us. Director Joyce Ventura films herself and her two sisters over many years, reflecting on the aging process, acceptance of one's own death and that of our loved ones, and exposing the anxieties that come with facing the end of life. The three very different sisters, each living in different cities, contrast their opposite existential perspectives and personalities. Old age, a life stage that we often choose to ignore but inevitably concerns us all, is narrated in first person with humor and sensitivity.