Maleza

In a timeless México where women are disappearing, a girl helps her dad, a tormented addict, to take care of an abandoned baseball camp where the narcos gather to play.

Three middle-class teenagers out on a high-octane ride to hell outside the safety of their "colonia"

Miguel and Johnny know each other since childhood. They are dedicated to skate and have fun. To earn easy money and continue skating, they sell their own blood to a clandestine contact in a hospital. The activity becomes business until a large transaction is not as they imagined.

Ignacio is shooting a documentary on the people who disappeared in 1982 during the armed conflict in an indigenous Guatemalan village. Amongst the families are Delfina and her son Juan. Delfina still hopes to find her husband, but Juan knows who was responsible for the disappearance of his father: someone who still lives in the same village.

Pepe Moco, a mentally handicapped boy, who makes an advert for one of the presidential candidates who promises to organise the first World Cup in Guatemala. Beto is a kid who scales a town drawn in chalk, venting his spleen on its walls, threatening passersby with balls. The two of them soon become very close evoking the past and present of a country that does harm.

Don Alfonso plays marimbas, the traditional Guatemalan instrument. Facing extortion and without work due to the population's lack of interest for his instrument, he seeks refuge with his godson Chiquilín. Blacko is a pioneer of the Heavy Metal Guatemalan underground stage. He is also a doctor in the public hospital but nobody wants to be treated by him because of his long hair and his tattoos. Chiquilín makes connections for Don Alfonso and Blacko to combine their talents and create a brand new band called Marimbas from Hell.

Domingo’s house in the Costa Rican mountains is about to be expropriated for the construction of a highway. But his land hides a secret: the ghost of his deceased wife visits him within the mist. Domingo is sure he will never give up his land, even if that means resorting to violence.

Hernandez had already made films in Guatemala and Mexico and this time found inspiring locations, unusual atmosphere and enthusiastic young people in Costa Rica. In this consciously unpolished film, the rebellious girls Sole and Ana open the trunk of a car in grandma’s garden and find something they’d rather immediately forget.

A young girl goes on a journey to find the lake of Texcoco.

Minotaur takes place in a home of books, of readers, of artists. It’s also a home of soft light, of eternal afternoons, of sleepiness, of dreams. The home is impermeable to the world. Mexico is on fire, but the characters of Minotaur sleep soundly.

A Mexican movie director travels the world as a vampire, getting blood from wherever he can at local film festivals.

A portrait of Guatemala City and municipalities adjacent to the Pan-American Highway from the eyes of the stray dogs living there.

For this short, incisive opus, his starting point is a tree. A famous - and ailing - tree, which is said to have stood the test of time ever since Hernán Cortés, the conquistador, was said to have shed tears on it after his single but crushing defeat by the Aztecs in 1520 during the so-called Triste Nuit (Sad Night). Cordón, true to his style of taking his protagonists and us on unpredictable odysseys, invites us into the turmoil of this night with its multiple echoes. - N. Feodoroff