Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico, 2018)
The life of a domestic worker in a middle-class house in Mexico City becomes pure poetry as the shifting fortunes of her life are mapped against the broader shifts in the family’s circumstances and the political waves rocking the city. Roma is the perfect way to immerse yourself in a Cuarón viewing fest. Start with his most recent film and move across one of the most adventurous and defiant trajectories in contemporary cinema. Marvel at the tracking shots, the ability to capture the interior life of his protagonists in a few quietly observed moments and the humour he finds in the everyday. Cuarón offers filmmaking that is bold, beautiful, epic and intimate. (Netflix)
Zama (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, 2017)
A political western-cum-existentialist epic from one of Latin America’s most imaginative filmmakers, Zama offers an incisive and visually arresting examination of the abuses of colonialism. Indeed, Martel’s extraordinary fourth feature — focusing the deteriorating mental state of a colonialist official requesting a reposting closer to his family — is wild, wonderful and beguiling, marked by the same attention to sound that so defined her first three features, The Swamp, The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman. Immerse yourself in Martel’s world and nothing in cinema will ever be quite the same again. (New Wave Films)
Rojo (Benjamín Naishtat, Argentina 2018)
This film didn’t get the attention it deserved on its release. I’ve seen it four times now and I am convinced it’s one of the best films of the past five years. Set in mid-1970s Argentina, it’s the menacing tale of a lawyer trying to erase all traces of what happened following an altercation with a disruptive stranger in a local restaurant. A tale about how a society disappears people without a trace, it beautifully performed — Alfredo Castro and Dario Grandinetti star. Rojo is both compelling noir thriller and a disarming allegory about middle class society turning a blind eye to the excesses committed in the name of so-called peace and stability. (Networkonair.com)
The Club (Pablo Larraín, Chile 2015)
Larraín’s latest film, Ema is due out in May and The Club serves as a reminder of just how good a filmmaker Larraín is. This is a chamber piece, made while he was working on Neruda, but I regard it as his finest work to date, a chilling tale of a group of priests holed up in a retreat where nothing is quite what it first seems. As an outsider arrives to work out what to do with the men, tensions mount, secrets and lies emerge and the carefully constructed edifice the men have built around them threatens to come crashing down. Almodóvar had this as the best film of 2015 and watching it again, it’s not difficult to understand why. (Networkonair.com)
Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, Chile 2013)
Sebastián Lelio won the Foreign-Language Oscar for A Fantastic Woman but Gloria was his breakthrough hit – a joyous portrait of a middle-aged woman out looking for love and adventure on the disco floor. Paulina García is radiant in the title role, working out what romance means with a man still tied to his ex-wife and daughters. Beautifully remade by Lelio with Julianne Moore as the title protagonist Gloria Bell, García, however, remains the earthier of the two protagonists and her journey in the film offers a remarkable portrait into the changing face of post-Pinochet Chile. The soundtrack to the film acts like a Greek chorus to the action (as well as the perfect accompaniment for an exercise workout while stuck at home!) (Network)
Monos (Alejandro Landes, Colombia 2019)
One of 2019’s most acclaimed films, Monos eschews both exposition and a concrete socio-political context (although the setting is most likely Colombia) in dramatizing the confusion and chaos experienced by a group of teenage soldiers marooned in an inhospitable terrain where the pack mentality soon prevails. There’s a good dose of morbid humour, as well as plot twists, as the adolescents struggle with the situation they find themselves in. This is film that prioritises mood and environment with devastating consequences. Look out for a reference to Golding’s 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies in a film which cunningly avoids judging its damaged protagonists. (Curzon)
The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, Brazil 2015)
A hugely sensitive portrait of class in Brazil, The Second Mother crafts a web of parallel situations between the different parent-child pairings in an affluent São Paulo home to show the disruption that ensues when housekeeper Val’s clever daughter Jéssica becomes a cuckoo in the middle-class family’s nest. This is smart, lean filmmaking with a sharp social edge. Look out for Brazilian star Regina Casé’s performance as Val – with her wide toothy smile, slightly hoarse voice, and good humour giving the film a wonderfully warm and funny edge. (New Wave Films)
Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor, Chile 2018)
Sotomayor is the first woman to pick up the Best Director Award at Locarno with her third third and most accomplished work to date —a coming of age tale set in an ecological commune outside Santiago. Sotomayor skilfully offers both an insight into three teenagers’ lives and a broader portrait of the Chilean nation negotiating a return to democracy in the aftermath of Pinochet’s dictatorship. Set in Christmas 1990, Too Young is a beautifully-handled narrative about different generations adapting to a changing landscape. Think Chekhov in Chile and that will give you some idea of the originality and atmosphere of this delicate feature. (Amazon prime)
The Chambermaid (Lila Avilés, Mexico 2018)
The routines of a maid working in one of Mexico City’s luxury hotels provide the narrative structure for actress Avilés’ debut feature. Rooted in Gabriela Cartol’s compelling performance as the professional, polite and largely unflappable Eve, this is a keenly socio-political work about the have and have nots in one of the world’s largest metropolitan cities. There’s wry humour, sharp commentary and a wonderful sense of complicity in the bustling downstairs world of the enterprising domestic staff. As in Roma, the director succeeds in giving cinematic form to the emotional life of an indigenous Mexican woman who is exploited by those who employ her. (New Wave)
A Twelve-Year Night (Álvaro Brechner, Uruguay 2018)
Set between 1973 and 1985, during Uruguay’s military dictatorship and focuses on the predicament of three of the nine prisoners from the Tupamaro Revolutionary movement who were placed in special conditions in a covert military operation. One of these is José Mujica (played by Antonio de la Torre) who later became Uruguay’ president and the film delineates – in great detail – the treatment he and his colleagues received during the 12 years that they were incarcerated. The film blends the past – how they got there – with the present – the material conditions of the punishments enacted on the men – and their imaginings. It’s a feverish film that tries to find a cinematic language to articulate the disorientating circumstances in which the men are placed. This is raw, visceral filmmaking (with moments of black humour) and sheds light on the Human Rights abuses of a dictatorship that has remained under the radar for too long. (Netflix)
Maria Delgado is a critic, curator and professor at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. She is co-editor of the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latin American Cinema (2017)
