Brazil

Director Niccoló Bruna Attending
Dust: The Great Asbestos Trial documents how asbestos use has been steadily increasing, despite a large majority of developed countries banning the known carcinogen.

Violeta Went To Heaven, a biopic of popular Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra, combines an unconventional structure with visceral storytelling to provide a new perspective on the artist’s infamous life. The film places heavy emphasis on Parra’s childhood, her journey through Europe, and her failed relationship with Swiss musician Gilbert Favre, to create a near complete understanding of Parra’s ascendency to national prominence, and her tragic fall from grace. The film won the World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize at Sundance.

In this gorgeously dreamlike and mysterious tale, a young woman named Clarice gives birth on her deathbed to a baby girl also christened Clarice by the bruxa (or witch) attending the nearly simultaneous moments of death and birth. Spirited away to a remote lakeside village, baby Clarice lives her whole life in the span of twenty-four hours, and yet even so compressed a lifetime remains impossible to fully grasp or contain.

Director Ávila’s semi-autobiographical drama is not your average coming-of-age story. Growing up in Argentina in the 1970s meant living under military rule–and for 12-year-old Juan, whose parents are radical freedom fighters, it means living with a secret identity. Juan is in a new city, with a new name, and he is just adjusting to new friends and a budding romance when it appears he will be uprooted yet again. With its confident period setting and powerful animated interludes, this is a stylish and truthful story about clandestine life and love.