Playlist
The Chicago Latino Film Festival is a U.S. film festival, focusing on Latin America and Latinos. Held annually in Chicago since 1985, it is organized by the International Latino Cultural Center and sponsored by a number of national corporations as well as by the local Hispanic and Latino community. The science-based films at the festival range from comedic sci-fi shorts to documentaries about Peruvian agriculture. CLFF runs from April 8-18. Learn more here.
<p>Julio Lumbreras was one of the first patients to enter an ICU in Spain with Covid-19. Through the phone messages of his family, we follow his 57 days of fighting the coronavirus.</p>
<p>Days after moving in with his girlfriend, Jorge receives a visit from his future self, who claims to have traveled through time to warn him that his girlfriend is going to leave him for another man. As Jorge adjusts his actions to change the future, his future self’s warnings keep changing, and he wonders if his fate is so certain after all.</p>
<p>Rio de Janeiro, the near future: Brazil’s populist authoritarian government has issued an executive order that sends all of its Black citizens to Africa in response to their demands for reparations. Trapped in their apartment, their electricity and water cut, civil rights lawyer Antonio (Alfred Enoch, best known as Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter films) and his cousin, the rebellious, loudmouth blogger André (Seu Jorge) turn into a symbol of resistance thanks to a viral video, while Capitu (Tais Araujo, from the soap opera “Xica da Silva”) finds refuge underground as she tries to make her way back to Antonio. A brutal, unsparing critique of white privilege and racism, Lázaro Ramos’ feature directorial debut is also an exhilarating celebration of Afro-Brazilian identity and resilience.</p>
<p>In a post-apocalyptic future where oxygen is commodified, the innocence of a nine-year-old girl is reflected in a gesture of love and hope for the future.</p>
<p>A mysterious and deadly pink cloud appears across the globe, forcing everyone to stay home. Strangers at the outset, Giovana and Yago try to invent themselves as a couple as years of shared lockdown pass. While Yago is living in his own utopia, Giovana feels trapped deep inside.” Principal cast: Renata de Lélis, Eduardo Mendonça.</p> <p><em>Sundance Film Festival 2021 / Image courtesy of Sundance Institute</em></p>
<p><span style="font-size:18px">A woman who seems to have it all can't stop pathetically crying. A mysterious package claims to offer her reprieve from her melancholy, but its results are more sinister and permanent than she may think.</span></p>
<p>Just before the pandemic, the world experiences a phenomenon never seen before. Marilene looks for her daughter Roberta, a trans woman who went missing. While running out of time, she discovers a hope for the future.</p>
<p>Brothers Álvaro and Diego Sarmiento follow five women from the Andes highlands in their daily struggle to preserve traditional and organic methods of agriculture that are centuries old and are in danger of disappearing due to climate change. These women share their insights on the connections between plants and animals, between diseases and what we eat as well as the differences in taste between organically grown food and those following a more industrial method of growing and harvesting. The Sarmientos also join them in their travels, especially a poignant one to a global seed vault in Norway where the planet's seeds are being protected.</p>
<p>Known as the “Springboard of Death,” the single-lane unpaved road that connects the town of San Francisco to the city of Mocoa in Putumayo has been the site of hundreds of deaths caused by landslides, washouts, and all types of vehicular accidents. An unfinished bridge should have provided a bypass to this road, one designed to challenge the Amazonian jungle surrounding it. Tourists now wander through the bridge while workers futilely try to finish it. Simón Uribe’s documentary is an at times poetic, at times harrowing meditation on the never-ending struggle between man, his machines and nature.</p>
<p>On the shores of a desolate beach, the tide cycles through. A shark hunter, through the fishing ritual, experiences the harshest symptoms of his condition and nature.</p>
<p>Young Juan lives in a floating house on the Amazon River with his father, who sleeps during the day and fishes at night. Somewhere in between dreams and waking life, Juan begins an allegorical journey to learn about the power of their connection to the forest and the river.</p>
<p>Three musical instruments playing simultaneously converge in a cave.</p>