Mexico

Ivan’s Dream is every kid’s soccer fantasy--and a fun family comedy to boot! For the first time, a team of the biggest stars on the planet will play against an international selection of hand-picked children! Representing Spain, Ivan travels with the team to Mexico for the heavily televised charity match. Light romantic comedy and drama on and off the field at Aztec Stadium ensues amongst Ivan, his best friend Paula, the class bully, a FIFA representative, and the team’s coaches.

*Director Emilio Maillé Attending*
Multiple Visions (The Crazy Machine) documents the work of one of the keenest eyes in film history, Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, who’s responsible for many of the lasting images from Mexico’s golden age of cinema. From 1932 through 1983, Figueroa worked for such greats as John Ford, Howard Hawks and Luis Buñuel. While many cinematographers of today appear to praise the master, Multiple Visions works best when it lets Figueroa’s films play for long stretches uninterrupted, allowing the work to speak for itself.

A dream-like elegy about a war-torn part of Colombia as well as a nicely underplayed coming-of-age story, Towrope centers on 19-year-old Alicia. Traumatizing memories invade her mind like a ceaseless storm. Uprooted from her destroyed village by the armed conflict, Alicia tries to start a new life in La Sirga, a decadent hostel on the shores of a great lake in the highlands of the Andes. The house belongs to solitary Oscar, her only family member still living.

Move over Ed Wood! Mexico’s half-forgotten B-movie master, “involuntary surrealist” Juan Orol, receives a pitch-perfect tribute in this irresistible love letter to a self-made man of showbiz. In glorious black-and-white flashback mingling movie-tainted memories of his Galician childhood, Cuban exile “Juanito“ pursues failed careers as baseball player, boxer, bullfighter and gangster before landing in the movies.

Winning the top prize in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes, filmmaker Michael Franco’s emotionally charged drama explores the after effects of extreme loss, and the challenges of huge live changes. When Roberto’s wife dies in a car accident, he moves to a new city with his teenage daughter Alejandra, only to find the new city comes with an entirely new set of problems. Emotionally dethatched, Robert is unable to offer support to Alejandra, who becomes the target of intense bullying at her new school.

An epic and emotional history of the events leading up to the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when the small, poorly equipped Mexican army stunned its French occupiers with a decisive victory. Immortalized for the past 150 years in Cinco de Mayo celebrations, Rafa Lara’s war film brings to life the dramas of the politicians, the generals, and the soldiers on the ground, as well as their wives waiting back at home. Utilizing hundreds of extras, this is a grand, classical war film rarely seen from Latin America.