As a community grapples with the disappearance of one of their own, a young boy receives spiritual guidance from his grandfather. Hypnotic and profound, Lanawaru depicts one community’s bond with nature and their sacred spiritual practices.
This film screens as part of Shorts Program 7: Documentary.
In a remote, crumbling convent, young nun Rafaela has recurring, seemingly prophetic dreams. When rumor of a new archbishop in a nearby town reaches the small congregation, Rafaela is sent to find him with the mission of securing funds to save the convent and to ask for guidance regarding one particular mysterious dream that haunts her. Her journey finds her lost in a beautiful and perplexing landscape, guided only by her wavering faith. It is on this road, seemingly to nowhere, that her path intersects with other pilgrims and wayward souls who all seek the archbishop—and whose often questionable motivations unwittingly shape the course of Rafaela’s journey.
Director Karla Badillo’s home region—the sweeping, sparse landscape of San Luis Potosí—is a labyrinth for the spiritually adrift in their surreal, fraught pilgrimages. Oca, named for an ancient board game inspired by the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, is a contemplation on one’s journey through faith and its many detours on the shifting winds of destiny.
From acclaimed Argentine auteur Lucretia Martel, known for her poetic and dreamy class-conscious dramas (La Cienaga, The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman) comes a very different, but no less compelling, portrait of inequality. Martel chronicles the trial of three men who entered the Indigenous community of Chuschagasta in northern Argentina to take ownership of the land and then killed the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. Drawing on vivid archival video of the incident, caught on cellphone cameras, Martel closely follows the story of the crime, its punishment, and its far-reaching consequences.
Part courtroom drama and part lyrical look at the past, present, and future of the Chuschagasta people, Nuestra Tierra provides a broader context for the murderous act and offers a space for members of the community to reclaim their lives from a government that has long tried to deny not only their rights to the land but even their very existence. With a keen eye for symbolic details and for the tensions between tradition and modernity, nature and technology, Martel also tells a larger tale about the perennial struggles and injustices embedded in contemporary society.
After iconoclastic artist Leonora Carrington trades English life for 1930s Paris, she falls in with giants of the Surrealist movement, including Salvador Dalí and André Breton. But it’s her passionate love affair with German painter Max Ernst that affects her life and work in the most profound manner. Their turbulent relationship sends her on a journey of self-discovery that will eventually take her to Mexico, where she finds a true sense of freedom—and her own unique artistic voice.
Working from the novel by Mexican author and artist Elena Poniatowska, directors Lena Vurma and Thor Klein chronicle key chapters in Carrington’s singular life, depicting the evolution of an artist with nuance and subtlety. Actress Olivia Vinall delivers a perfectly pitched performance as the story’s central figure, portraying Carrington both in her youth and as a more mature woman working in Mexico, where she emerged alongside Frida Kahlo as one of the country’s preeminent creative figures. With its insightful observations of a multifaceted talent whose distaste for the conventional enabled her to live as a true original, Leonora in the Morning Light gives Carrington her due.
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Martín, a young linguist, travels into the jungles of Mexico in hopes of documenting Zikril, a language in peril. The language’s last two surviving speakers, Evaristo and Isauro, haven’t spoken to one another in over 50 years. As he attempts to reconcile the two in order to record their speech, Martín uncovers the heartbreaking history of their bitter feud.
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