Latin American Showcase

Latin American short films stand out this year at Kinoforum for their originality and authorial perspective, while maintaining a connection with central issues important to filmmakers on the continent, such as resistance and ancestry, in stories of love, grief, struggle, and loneliness, told here through a sensitive and intimate lens.

Cultural clashes are a constant theme, provoking often conflicting dialogues that bring to light a forgotten humanity; generational, class, and nationality differences create sharp edges that move the world in unexpected directions. Death is another prominent focus, but viewed from diverse perspectives: clinical, celebratory, or ritualistic, the perspectives on life’s most inevitable fact intrigue and even entertain viewers.

The films traverse times and places: we confront the Catholic society of 19th-century Mexico, sing with children of the Emberá Chami ethnic group in Colombia, and dance with animated puppets in the Chilean Andes. In all these shorts beats an incredible pulse of life, reinventing our vision of the Latin American universe to the sound of the most surprising soundtracks, going through familiar sounds, but also trance, k-pop and traditional Polynesian music.