Cinema Tropical Festival Features Six of the Past Year's Best Latin American Films

Museum of the Moving Image and Cinema Tropical, the acclaimed New York-based organization dedicated to promoting Latin American cinema in the United States, co-present the 2017 edition of the Cinema Tropical Festival, from February 24 through 26. This year's festival showcases six feature films-from Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and the United States-including winners and nominees from the 7th Annual Cinema Tropical Awards, which were announced in January.

Bringing the best of contemporary Latin American cinema to New York City audiences, the Cinema Tropical Festival offers a chance to experience the dynamic and inventive film productions from the region. Opening this year's festival is Tatiana Huezo's Tempestad, winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Documentary, with the director in person. "A rich and original piece of work" (IndieWire) and one of the best undistributed films of 2016 (Film Comment), Tempestad is a lyrical and powerful take on the paralyzing effect of fear and reflects the impact of the violence and impunity that afflict Mexico.

Screening over the weekend will be veteran Mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein's dark comedy Bleak Street, Sundance favorite Maya Goded's Plaza de Soledad, young and upcoming U.S. Latino filmmaker Bernardo Britto's Jaqueline (Argentine), and the impressive debut featureSanta Teresa & Other Stories by Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos. Filmmakers Goded and de los Santos will travel to New York to appear with their films.

Winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Fiction Film and one of the best films of 2016 according to New York Times critic Stephen Holden, Neon Bull by Gabriel Mascaro will close out the Festival. Winner of countless prizes and honors on the festival circuit, the Brazilian film is a bold and transgressive look at sexual identity within the context of the vaquejada, an exhibition sport in which cowboys try to pull bulls to the ground by their tails.

The full schedule with descriptions is included below. Tickets are $15 (with discounts for seniors and students / free for Museum members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels and above.) Advance tickets are available online at movingimage.us/cinematropical. Ticket purchase includes admission to the Museum's galleries.

SCHEDULE FOR 'CINEMA TROPICAL FESTIVAL,' FEB. 24-26, 2017

All screenings take place in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater or the Bartos Screening Room at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue in Astoria, Queens, New York.

Tempestad
With director Tatiana Huezo in person
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 7:00 P.M.
Winner, Best Documentary. Dir. Tatiana Huezo. Mexico, 2016, 105 min. DCP. In Spanish with English subtitles. Tatiana Huezo's second documentary feature (after her acclaimed debut The Tiniest Place) recounts the story of two women: Miriam, who was wrongly accused of human trafficking and imprisoned in a jail controlled by a drug cartel, and Adela, a circus performer who has been looking for her kidnapped daughter for over a decade. Through a subjective and emotional journey, and with striking cinematography by Ernesto Prado (who was nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers Award for his work in the film), Tempestad conveys the paralyzing power of fear and reflects the impact of the violence and impunity that afflict Mexico. Hailed as "a rich and original piece of work" (IndieWire), Tempestad was selected by Film Comment as one of the best undistributed films of 2016.

Jacqueline (Argentine)
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2:00 P.M.
Winner, Best U.S. Latino Film. Dir. Bernardo Britto. 2016, 87 mins. In English, Spanish, Arabic with English subtitles. In Bernardo Britto's "playful, lo-fi travelogue" (The New Yorker), a filmmaker receives a series of panicked emails and phone calls from a young French woman-Jacqueline Dumont. She implores him to travel to Argentina to document her self-imposed political exile after she supposedly leaks highly confidential government secrets detailing a planned assassination. Jacqueline expects severe fallout and wants the filmmaker recording everything in case anything happens to her. As soon as the filmmaker and his two interns arrive at Jacqueline's Argentine remote holistic center/safe haven, they begin to think she might be more interested in singing Britney Spears songs and hanging out with her new friend than helping the filmmakers unearth a huge government conspiracy. Nevertheless, they soldier on, desperately hoping they will somehow end up with some semblance of a worthwhile film and maybe-just maybe-find a kernel of truth in Jacqueline's paranoid ramblings.

Plaza de la Soledad
With director Maya Goded in person
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 4:30 P.M.
Winner, Best Director, Documentary. Dir. Maya Goded. Mexico, 2016, 84 min. Digital projection. In Spanish with English subtitles. Internationally acclaimed photographer Maya Goded makes a promising film debut with Plaza de la Soledad, a continuation of her photography work in La Merced neighborhood in Mexico City, where prostitution has been present since the days of the Aztecs. "Beautiful, respectful, and celebratory" (Film Comment), the film follows four strong women-middle-aged and older-who want to break a vicious circle that began with abuse and abandonment suffered from an early age. Carmen, Lety, Raquel, and Esther aspire for a better life, and Goded's poignant lens follows their quest to find true love, their capacity to transform themselves, and above all, their resilience and solidarity.

Santa Teresa & Other Stories (Santa Teresa y otras historias)
With director Nelson Carlo de los Santos in person
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 7:00 P.M.
Winner, Best First Fiction Film. Dir. Nelson Carlo de los Santos. 2015, Dominican Republic/USA/Mexico, 65 min. Digital projection. In Spanish with English subtitles. As stories of violence in Mexican border towns continue to make international headlines, alternative ways of making sense of this brutal reality are more vital than ever. In his auspicious debut fiction film, Dominican ?lmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos cleverly extrapolates from Chilean author Roberto Bolaño's un?nished, posthumously published novel 2666 to explore a multiplicity of perspectives and voices in a town riven by bloodshed. In the fictional town of Santa Teresa (a stand-in for Ciudad Juárez) on the border between Mexico and the United States, the researcher Juan de Dios Martínez straddles the line between journalism and detective work, investigating a handful of crimes and abuses perpetrated on women and workers of the zone. Mixing fiction, nonfiction, and essay, Santa Teresa & Other Stories is a lyrical, experimental take on the humanitarian crisis in Mexico brought on by the drug wars.

Bleak Street (La calle de la amargura)
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2:30 P.M.
Winner, Best Director, Fiction. Dir. Arturo Ripstein. Mexico/Spain, 2015, 99 mins. Digital projection. In Spanish with English subtitles. Based on a true-yet bizarre-crime story, the latest film by veteran auteur Arturo Ripstein is a black-and-white lusciously shot noir melodrama that tells the story of two prostitutes (Patricia Reyes Spíndola and Nora Velásquez) who mistakenly kill two twin mini-luchadores in downtown Mexico City in a robbery attempt to make ends meet. "Ripstein plunges into a Mexico City demimonde of crime, prostitution, and wrestling...(and) imbues his Buñuelian tableaux with both empathy and dark humor" (Film Forum).

Neon Bull (Boi neon)
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 5:00 P.M.
Winner, Best Film. Dir. Gabriel Mascaro. Brazil, 2016, 101 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Aptly described as "wild, sensual, and utterly transporting" by the Toronto International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere, Neon Bull marks a great leap forward for Gabriel Mascaro, the Brazilian writer-director whose background as a documentary filmmaker is revealed in his deeply observational style. He is creating a form of poetic realism, and Neon Bull is a bold and transgressive look at sexual identity within the context of the vaquejada, an exhibition sport in which cowboys try to pull bulls to the ground by their tails. The freewheeling film revolves around a traveling group of performers, including a rugged cowhand who spends much of his time fashioning sexy outfits for a truck-driving female exotic dancer.

[Top image: Tempestad]