MEXICAN CINEMA—Backyard (El Traspatio, 2009)

"The voice of the woman is a reflection of her condition on Earth. Air echoes in a chest that is smaller, vibrates vocal cords that are smaller and that produce a higher, thinner sound. It requires twice the energy, twice the intensity of a man's voice to be heard. This is why I learned to shout for those who couldn't ... and to cry so many times for and with so many women, girls and boys whose voices and whose lives have been crushed by the impunity of our state and our nation."—Esther Chavez.

As detailed in the press book for Carlos Carerra's most recent feature Backyard (El Traspatio), the film's narrative is based on actual events that took place in 1996 in Ciudad Juárez: a Mexican border city sustained by American-owned factories, or maquiladoras, that sprang up on the Mexican side of the border after the NAFTA agreement went into effect. "1996 was the year when people on both sides of the border began to grow accustomed to the fact that every month or every week in Juárez, a young woman would turn up dead. The screenplay was written in the year 2001 as the murders continued: three or four bodies appeared like clockwork every month, while the author [Sabina Berman] was writing her screenplay in the local Holiday Inn. Backyard was filmed on location in 2008, when each week murdered women continued to appear—in keeping with what is now a local Juárez custom."

As Diana Sanchez specified in her program capsule for the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (where Backyard saw its international premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema sidebar): "This ongoing tragedy remains a painful stain on Mexican history and has been the subject of numerous films, articles and books", including the 2006 Jennifer Lopez vehicle Bordertown and Lourdes Portillo's 2001 documentary Señorita extraviada (Missing Young Woman), in which Portillo sought to give voice to the many victims and to understand how these awful crimes could take place. In her onstage interview with Variety critic John Anderson at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival, Portillo detailed the death threats she received after making Señorita extraviada and the debilitating effect it had on her.

Similar threats were levied at the cast and crew of Backyard, as outlined in Guy Adam's report to The Independent: "Last year, the makers of … El Traspatio (The Backyard) reported that an actress from Ciudad Juárez, where they were shooting, had found a slaughtered lamb on her doorstep, with a death threat pinned to it. She was replaced, for her own safety. Several other crew members on the film, about local drug murders, reported receiving sinister anonymous phone calls." Carrera's crew shot their film surrounded by two bands of armed men. One of these rings was formed by agents from the government Division of Investigation Specializing in Organized Crime (SIEDO), the other by soldiers with rifles. Two police commanders assigned to security duty were slain and a third had to flee in fear of her life. Although the governments of Juárez and Mexico ultimately decided to provide protection to Carrera and his film crew, they first tried to dissuade Carrera from the project, hoping he would instead shoot a romantic comedy in Cancun; but, Carrera and Berman remained committed to the subject of femicide in Juárez. As reported by Tracy Wilkinson to the Los Angeles Times, "Local government officials do not come off well in the film, having often preferred to downplay the murders of easily replaced female factory workers in order to prop up business interests."

Perhaps best known for El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Carlos Carrera is expected to attend Backyard's screening at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), where it has been included in PSIFF's Modern Masters sidebar. Backyard is likewise Mexico's entry this year in the Academy Awards® foreign-language film category.

As Diana Sanchez has written: "Presented as a fiction, Carrera's film is all the more moving given that the events he recounts are based on true stories and touch upon the various theories that have been put forward as to the cause of the murders. Hypotheses range from a serial killer, to drug cartels, to the more abstract pains of globalization, and it is easy to see how any of these factors could be at work in this Mexican town, which is a backyard to El Paso, Texas. Through his film, Carrera is able to denounce culprits who have never been brought to justice. However, the most devastating truth he illuminates is that these murders continue to happen because they have become commonplace. Today, some men kill women in Ciudad Juárez simply because they can."

The topic of femicide is unquestionably important and Backyard aims its statistics of sex-related murders from other Mexican cities and other South American countries with stern verve, pointedly wrapping up with sobering statistics from New York City where 3,200 murders of women remain unsolved. A worldwide issue, femicide is clearly not exclusive to Juárez; yet—though conceding the necessity of keeping the issue in public focus to counter its statistical frequency—I have mixed feelings about Backyard. Though it has high production values, with a strong turn by Ana de la Reguera in the lead role of Police Captain Blanca Bravo, I have substantive concerns with Berman's script which—though it informs through dramatization—offers questionable solutions, primarily through a revenge scenario towards film's end that has been both applauded and deplored by audiences. Though Berman has defended her scriptural choice as morally unambiguous, it remains excessively dramatic and—oddly enough—counterproductive. As Marilyn Ferdinand opines at Ferdy on Films, the dramatic violence of the subject scene provides the audience cathartic relief from their frustration but possibly sends them home "without really taking the message of the film to heart." In this instance, cathartic release falls far short of viable solutions. It's too easy to kill the killer and be done with it. Not to say that Berman should pretend she has solutions, but at the same time she shouldn't really defuse their absence through compounded violence. Acknowledging that the wall of indifference and denial in Mexican society is a horrible problem, there's a defeatist edge to Berman's vision: "We can't solve it," she said to the L.A. Times, "let's change the subject." I'm not criticizing her defeatism. I think it's a healthy and honest response. I'm not so sure, however, about her dramatized solutions which offer false remedy.

Ferdinand does a solid job of synopsizing Berman's narrative and endorsing the "important message of this grave film", even as she stages a cogent complaint that despite Carrera's disclaimer that Backyard is not intended as "entertainment" certain "touches—particularly the attractive lady detective in the Law & Order mold—are right out of the Hollywood play book." Ferdinand's concern that reviews that read and critique Backyard as a thriller "underplay or ignore its message—a rather chilling commentary on how even the most hideous violence against women has so completely infiltrated the entertainment industry." Again, no solutions appear ready to present themselves. For now, a sober eye on the information is in order.

Cross-published on Twitch.

MEXICAN CINEMA—Alamar (To the Sea, 2009)

Straight off, Adam Nayman deserves some kind of commission for convincing a small squadron of film journalists to catch Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature Alamar (To the Sea, 2009) at its last public screening at the Isabel Bader. Boasting its world premiere in TIFF’s Visions sidebar, Alamar was already part of my scheduled coverage of this year’s Latin American fare, but it’s always heartening to share a viewing experience with such accomplished journalists as Andrew Tracy, Danny Kasman, Fernando Croce, Darren Hughes, Girish Shambu, Richard Porton and Dan Sallitt. Talk about fraternity! Though I didn’t quite agree with Nayman (or Danny Kasman at The Auteurs) that Alamar was the "find of the festival"—for me that honor fell to Oscar Ruiz Navia's El Vuelco del Cangrejo (Crab Trap, 2009)—I could certainly understand their shared enthusiasm for Alamar's pellucid simplicity. "Pedro González-Rubio," Kasman writes, "has found a documentary subject and turned it into a lovely, modest, and sweet fiction of the real world." In a word, the film is beautiful, with stunning aquamarine cinematography contributed by Alexis Zabé (Silent Light, Lake Tahoe).

Mexican Jorge (Jorge Machado) and Italian Roberta (Roberta Palombini) have fallen in love and given birth to Natan (Natan Machado Palombini), now five years old; but, their relationship can’t endure their contrasting temperaments so Roberta has decided to return to Italy with the boy, but not before allowing him the chance to spend quality time with his father and grandfather Matraca (Nestor Marin). Jorge seizes the opportunity to take Natan to Chinchorro, Quintana Roo, home to the second-largest coral reef on the planet and one of the few places in the Mexican Caribbean with an intact ecosystem. Living simply in a wooden palafite (a shack constructed on stakes) in front of the quay, little Natan eases into a fisherman’s life, acclimating to the natural world alongside his father and worldly-wise grandfather. Linaje (lineage) and a sense of knowing one's origins becomes a father’s parting (and lasting) gift to his son.

So what is it that makes this spare tale so resoundingly resonant? Is it that Alamar achieves fiction without narrative intervention? During the Q&A following the screening, González-Rubio was asked the inevitable question: is Alamar a feature film or a documentary film? He responded quite honestly, "I think of it as just a film." Circumventing strict categories, and suffering no delimitations, Alamar forges its own waters. As filmmaking, it recalls Antonio Machado's poetic assertion that there are no paths at sea, only wakes.

In a serendipitous bit of elucidation, Mark Peranson provided advance copies of the Fall 2009 issue of Cinema Scope to press attending TIFF and—perusing same on the flight home to San Francisco—I was quite delighted with Robert Koehler’s essay "Agrarian Utopias/Dystopias", which more than aptly captures the spirit of Alamar in its exploration of "the new nonfiction" or "the cinema of in-between-ness." Koehler writes of a "zone of a cinema free of, or perhaps more precisely in between hardened fact and invented fiction" that "permits all manners of wild possibilities", especially with regard to nuanced observations "specifically applied to subjects about humans working on the surface of the earth." Koehler's essay addresses the suspicion posed during the Q&A that Alamar was neither fact nor fiction: "This deliberately contradictory nature is a fundamental part of these films' essence. If any finding is made at all, it is that the categories are finally quite pointless."

Indeed. How could it be otherwise? How else could the poignancy of a film like Alamar be so evocatively articulated? The profound sadness at the heart of the separation between father and son, between a boy and his native country, echoes the "overwhelming sadness at the process of collapse and the end of things, alongside the unspoken drama of human beings stuck in a cycle with no escape." Marriages collapse, families fall apart, lineages are disrupted, and only memory can soothe distance and rupture; the memory, perhaps, of a befriended cattle egret who flies into the film—and into the lives of its "characters"—as if to remind that one need go no further than an observation of the natural world to find a story that will last a lifetime; a story whose heart is perhaps not fiction but unadorned observed truth.

10/25/09 UPDATE: Alamar swept the audience and jury prizes at the recent Morelia Film Festival. Produced by Mexico’s Mantarraya Productions and Xcalakarma Films, Mantarraya will handle Mexican distribution for Alamar, with France’s MK2 as the film’s international sales agent.

01/03/10 UPDATE: In his Senses of Cinema Toronto dispatch, Dan Sallitt agrees with me that—though Pedro González-Rubio's documentary hybrid Alamar "generated a surprising amount of critical buzz during the last days of TIFF"—he "somewhat preferred another Toronto premiere with a wilderness coastal setting, Oscar Ruiz Navia's El Vuelco del Cangrejo (Crab Trap)."

Sallitt writes that Alamar's story—"slight to begin with"—"almost vanishes behind the didactic mission of the project, as the son's learning experience is entirely coincident with ours. The film has considerable travelogue appeal, and the beautiful natural light and waterscapes of the Chinchorro region create an idyllic atmosphere. But director Pedro González-Rubio's documentary-style hovering camera doesn't do very much to organize the experience; and the issues accompanying the father-son relationship are too suppressed even to be called latent."

Cross-published on Twitch.

ELDORADO—A Critical Overview

The San Francisco Film Society's longstanding working relationship with Film Movement ensures the theatrical exhibition of several festival-lauded films on the Sundance Kabuki's SFFS Screen. For this, Bay Area audiences should be especially grateful. Recently, Film Movement's collaboration with SFFS provided Munyurangabo; this week they're providing Eldorado (July 3-9); and in future weeks they'll be providing encore screenings of both La Ventana (July 17-23) and Lake Tahoe (July 24-30), which were featured at the 52nd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

This week's entry, Belgian director Bouli Lanners' Eldorado—a "small but damn-near perfectly formed serio-comedy" (Leslie Felperin, Variety)—was selected for the 40th anniversary of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors' Fortnight) at the 2008 61st Cannes Film Festival where it won Best European Film. Eldorado was likewise the official entry from Belgium for the 81st Annual Academy Awards (Oscars®), received a special mention at Italy's Pesaro Film Festival, and was nominated for a César for Best Foreign Feature.

Bouli Lanners—as profiled when Eldorado was featured in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs—was born in Belgium in 1965, opposite an orchard. Painter, autodidact, he worked in a wide variety of jobs on film sets before becoming popular on Canal+Belgium with Les Snuls. Since then, he has directed films and played supporting parts in Belgian and French films. In 1999, he wrote and directed Travellinckx, a black and white Super 8 road movie which traveled the international festival trail. Two years later, Muno confirmed the director's singularity and was selected for the Directors' Fortnight. Not only has he directed Eldorado, but he is also the film's screenwriter, and one of its two lead actors.

With Eldorado, Lanners returns to the genre of the road film to express his sad, absurd tale of temporary companionship on route to disparate destinies. The skillful balance between humor and melancholy is—as Felperin states it—"just so" and the film "never puts a wrong foot forward in the direction of sentimentality or cliche." Plot points "that cruder hands might have milked for more pathos" are "unfussily revealed." As Melissa Anderson states in her Village Voice review: "When the traveling companions reveal their backstories, the monologues avoid mawkishness, further upending all low expectations of this frequently trite genre. In its final act, Lanners's film is smart and confident enough to acknowledge that certain lives are dead ends, while others get tired of just spinning their wheels."

Though Slant's Joseph Jon Lanthier found the film flawed for its "sheer incredulity", he astutely acknowledged the "visual chemistry" successfully (and comically) engendered by the "mismatched physiques" of the film's two leads: Yvan (played by Lanners) is "beefy", "overweight and unkempt", whereas Elie (Fabrice Adde) is "smack-scrawny", "incompetent" and "pathetic." In a Cineuropa interview with Aurore Engelen, Lanners admitted he was "immediately touched by Adde's "beanpole appearance" when they first met. He added: "Our Laurel and Hardy-like duo interested me, for it had definite comic potential. It was a question of striking the right balance so as to avoid crude parody, whilst still infusing a sense of humor." Lanthier picks up on the Laurel & Hardy riff, describing it as "bewhiskered" and "bohemian."

Not only is the visual chemistry between the two lead actors notable, but the beautiful and desolate summertime landscape of the Wallonia region of Belgium—"filmed to resemble a miniaturized American West" (Stephen Holden, New York Times)—is contrasted against claustrophobic car interiors. Lanners explained in his interview with Engelen: "[T]he car is a sort of artificial cocoon in which the characters come into close contact with each other. It acts as a catalyst in the relationship between Yvan and Elie. Trapped inside the car, they are forced to listen to one another and communicate. We were originally supposed to shoot the film in a Cadillac Eldorado (whence the title), as it fitted the mood of the film." This contrast between exterior and interior shots stages a compelling visual tension. Lanthier states: "[E]ffectively placed edits juxtapose wide shots of the overcast Belgian countryside with tight, in-vehicle close-ups to emphasize the characters' isolation—as though the duo has been expelled from the rural Eden in their very midst as a punishment for their social atrophy." At Trustmovies, James van Maanen observes that the wide-screen format used by Lanners and his cinematographer Jean-Paul de Zaetijd "produce some memorable vistas", yet the view the audience takes away is precisely "interior." He articulates: "The bond that forms between the two stems from the need and desire to help, and this keeps the movie on a kind of moral ground from which it never veers."

That bond is particularly poignant for being so fugacious and—before the final act's reveal—nearly mysterious. The look Yvan gives Elie when he recognizes the boy is an incompetent heroin addict—a look that seems almost like Yvan has fallen in love—belies a commitment limned with regretful hindsight. Matched against a countenance of concerned resignation at film's end, a depth trembles in Eldorado's seeming insouciance. The haphazard and absurd adventures of their shared road trip converts into precise meaning and acquired insight.

"Once Yvan and Elie reach their destination," Stephen Holden writes, "Eldorado turns into a sad contemplation of fractured family relationships and eternal regrets. Elie's mother (Françoise Chichéry) regards her wastrel son with the stricken look of a woman who knows in her bones that he is doomed but loves him with a hopeless desperation. When Elie briefly disappears and we hear in the background the shouts of a savage father-son battle, the mother clutches Yvan's hand, her eyes wild with grief and terror." What makes this scene so wrenching, however, is that the camera is held tight on the two of them looking at each other as they overhear the argument, and only belatedly backs away to reveal that they have been grasping each others' hands. And when Yvan drives away from Elie's parents' home, Elie looks back bereaved, muttering, "Mama." The breadth of this scene is devastating.

Holden interprets this as a reflection on "the consequences of forsaking human (especially family) connections to go it alone in the world. Because Yvan understands the personal cost of ignoring ties that bind until it's too late, he tries to be an older brother to Elie. But for men fleeing pain for the freedom of the wide open spaces, whether of Montana or Wallonia, the movie suggests, the price of that freedom may be an unbearable loneliness."

If, for some reason, you're unable to catch Eldorado at the SFFS Screen, Film Movement will be releasing the film on DVD come July 14th, 2009.

Cross-published on Twitch.

INDEX—Latino, Latin American, & Spanish/Portuguese Cinemas

Argentine Cinema

Aerial, The (La Antena, 2007; Esteban Sapir)—Critical Overview/Review

Dignity of the Nobodies, The (La dignidad de los nadies, 2005; Fernando Solanas)—Festival Capsule

Dignity of the Nobodies, The (La dignidad de los nadies, 2005; Fernando Solanas)—Interview With Fernando Solanas

Dignity of the Nobodies, The (La dignidad de los nadies, 2005; Fernando Solanas)—Review

Latent Argentina (Argentina latente, 2007; Fernando Solanas)—Critical Overview/Review

Liverpool (2008; Lisandro Alonso)—Critical Overview/Review

Northeast (Nordeste, 2005; Juan Diego Solanas)—Festival Capsule

Northeast (Nordeste, 2005; Juan Diego Solanas)—Introductory Remarks by Aymará Rovera and Q&A With Juan Solanas

Paranoids, The (Los Paranoicos, 2008; Gabriel Medina)—Critical Overview/Hold Review

Possible Lives (Las vidas posibles, 2006; Sandra Gugliotta)—Critical Overview

Week Alone, A (Una semana solos, 2007; Celina Murga)—Hold Review (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Window, The (La Ventana, 2008; Carlos Sorín)—Interview with Carlos Sorín

Without Title (Sin Título, 2007; Matt Losada)—Interview with Matt Losada

Stray Girlfriend, A (Una Novia Errante, 2007; Ana Katz)—Critical Overview/Review

Latino/Argentine American Cinema

Cartoneros (2006; Ernesto Livon-Grosman)—Interview With Ernesto Livon-Grosman

Brazilian Cinema

Best of Me, The (Lo mejor de mí, 2007; Roser Aguilar)—Critical Overview

Cinema, Aspirin & Vultures (Cinema, Aspirinas E Urubus, 2005; Marcelo Gomes)—Critical Overview/Review

Cinema, Aspirin & Vultures (Cinema, Aspirinas E Urubus, 2005; Marcelo Gomes)—Interview With Peter Ketnath

City of Men (Cidade dos Homens, 2007; Paulo Morelli)—Critical Overview

Delicate Crime (Crime Delicado, 2005; Beto Brant)—Festival Capsule

Favela Rising (2005; Matt Mochary & Jeff Zimbalist)—Festival Capsule

Germano (2007; Vicente Ferraz)—Capsule

House of Sand, The (Casa de Areia, 2005; Andrucha Waddington)—Festival Capsule

House of Sand, The (Casa de Areia, 2005; Andrucha Waddington)—Interview with Andrucha Waddington

House of Sand, The (Casa de Areia, 2005; Andrucha Waddington)—Q&A with Andrucha Waddington

Lower City (Cidade Baixa, 2005; Sérgio Machado)—Festival Capsule

Lower City (Cidade Baixa, 2005; Sérgio Machado)—Introductory Remarks by Alice Braga

Lower City (Cidade Baixa, 2005; Sérgio Machado)—Interview with Alice Braga

Margarette's Feast (A Festa de Margarette, 2003; Renato Falcão)—Critical Overview/Review

Mutum (2007; Sandra Kogut)—Critical Overview/Review

Not By Chance (Não Por Acaso, 2007; Philippe Barcinksi)—Critical Overview/Review

Underground Game (Jogo Subterrâneo, 2005; Roberto Gervitz)—Festival Capsule

Latino/Brazilian American Cinema

Send A Bullet (Manda Bala)—Sundance Dispatch

Send A Bullet (Manda Bala, 2007; Jason Kohn)—Q&A with Jason Kohn

Latino/Chicano Cinema

Don't Let Me Drown (2008; Cruz Angeles & Maria Topete)—Q&A With Cruz Angeles & Maria Topete

Gómez-Peña, Guillermo—"El Corazón de la Missión"

Lopez, Yolanda—Conversation Between Yolanda Lopez & Amalia Mesa-Bains

Mexican Museum / M.H. deYoung Museum Chicano Films Program: Yo Soy Chicano (1972; Jesús Treviño); Remember Los Siete (work-in-progress; Veronica Majano); Chronicle of a Being (Cronica de un ser, 1990; S.M. Peña); Asco (1994; Juan Garza); Pretty Vacant (1996, Jim Mendiola); Columbus on Trial (1992; Lourdes Portillo); Corn In The Front Yard (2001; Al Lujan); Why Cybraceros? (1998; Alex Rivera); Ozzy Goes to the Alamo (2001; Jim Mendiola and Ruben Ortiz Torres); Lupe & JuanDi from the Block (2003; Fulana Collective); Larry Landia (2005; Karim Scarlata). Curated by Tere Romo.

Missión, La (The Mission, 2008; Peter Bratt)—Q&A with Peter & Benjamin Bratt

Missión, La (The Mission, 2008; Peter Bratt)—Hold Review (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Noriega, Chon—TCM: Latino Images in Film Interview

Oddball Films Chicano Films Program: The Mexican American Speaks: Heritage in Bronze; Latino: A Cultural Conflict; Calle Chula; Two Four; Decision at Delano. Co-curated by Stephen Parr and Jesse Lerner.

Our Father (Padre Nuestro, 2007; Christopher Zalla)—Sundance Dispatch

Al Más Allá (2008; Lourdes Portillo)—On-Stage Conversation With Lourdes Portillo & John Anderson

Quinceañera (2006; Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland)—Interview With Emily Rios & Jesse Garcia

Quinceañera (2006; Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland)—Interview With Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland

Sleep Dealer (2008; Alex Rivera)—Critical Overview/Review

Sleep Dealer (2008; Alex Rivera)—Interview with Alex Rivera (for SF360)

Chilean Cinema

Chilean Cinema SF360 Report by Miljenko Skoknik

In Bed (En La Cama, 2005; Matias Bize)—Festival Capsule

In Bed (En La Cama, 2005; Matias Bize)—Critical Overview/Review

Judge and the General, The (2008; Elizabeth Farnsworth & Patricio Lanfranco)—Critical Overview/Review

La Fuga Spotlight

Lost Domain, The (Le domaine perdu, 2005; Raoul Ruiz)—Festival Capsule

Mirageman (2007; Ernesto Diaz)—Critical Overview/Review

Play (2005; Alicia Scherson)—Festival Capsule

Play (2005; Alicia Scherson)—Critical Overview/Review

Play (2005; Alicia Scherson)—Interview With Alicia Scherson

Santa Fe Street (Calle Santa Fe, 2007; Carmen Castillo)—Critical Overview

Tony Manero (2008; Pablo Larraín)—Interview with Pablo Larraín

Cuban Cinema

Viva Cuba (2005; Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti & Iraida Malberti Cabrera)—Festival Capsule

Latino/Cuban American Cinema

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (2005; Georgina Garcia Riedel)—Interview with Elizabeth Peña

Mexican Cinema

Babel (2006; Alejandro González Iñárritu)—Q&A with Alejandro González Iñárritu

Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo, 2005; Carlos Reygadas)—Q&A with Carlos Reygadas

Broken Sky (El Cielo Dividido, 2006; Julián Hernández)—Review

Charm School (Niñas Mal, 2007; Fernando Sariñana)—Critical Overview

Cochochi (2007; Israel Cárdenas & Laura Amelia Guzmán)—Critical Overview/Review

Covarrubias, Miguel & John Huston: A Friendship

Cumbia Connection (Cumbia Callera, 2007; René U. Villareal)—Critical Overview/Review

Desert Within, The (Disierto Adentro, 2008; Rodrigo Plá)—Sergio de la Mora's Review

Duck Season (Temporada de Patos, 2004; Fernando Eimbcke)—Critical Overview/Review

Figueroa, Gabriel—Overview & Interview with Steve Seid on "Hecho Por Mexico: The Films of Gabriel Figueroa"

2008 Guadalajara International Film Festival Preview by Sergio de la Mora

Hernández, Julián—Profile by Sergio de la Mora

In the Pit (En El Hoyo, 2005; Juan Carlos Rulfo)—Critical Overview/Review

Japón (Japan, 2002; Carlos Reygadas)—Q&A with Carlos Reygadas

Lake Tahoe (2008; Fernando Eimbcke)—Sergio de la Mora's Review

Lake Tahoe (2008; Fernando Eimbcke)—Hold Review Capsule (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Never On A Sunday (Morir$e En Domingo, 2006; Daniel Gruener)—Interview With Daniel Gruener

News From Afar (Noticias lejanas, 2004; Ricardo Benet)—Festival Capsule

Night Buffalo, The (El búfalo de la noche, 2007; Guillermo Arriga)—Interview with Guillermo Arriaga

Only God Knows (Sólo Dios Sabe, 2006; Carlos Bolado)—Festival Capsule

Only God Knows (Sólo Dios Sabe, 2006; Carlos Bolado)—Interview with Carlos Bolado

Only God Knows (Sólo Dios Sabe, 2006; Carlos Bolado)—Interview with Alice Braga

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006; Guillermo del Toro)—Review

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006; Guillermo del Toro)—Interview with Guillermo del Toro

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006; Guillermo del Toro)—Q&A with Guillermo del Toro

Rivera, Diego—Cargador de Flores

Rudo y Cursi (2009; Carlos Cuarón)—Hold Review (for The Auteurs Notebook)

Sergio de la Mora's Top Ten Favorite Mexican Films of 2007

Silent Light (Luz Silenciosa, 2007; Carlos Reygadas)—Critical Overview/Review

Silent Light (Luz Silenciosa, 2007; Carlos Reygadas)—Dim Sum with Carlos Reygadas

Silent Light (Luz Silenciosa, 2007; Carlos Reygadas)—Q&A with Carlos Reygadas

Tribute to Toña la Negra—Capsule

Violin, The (El Violin, 2005; Francisco Vargas)—Interview with Francisco Vargas

Mexican/U.S. Cinema

Cinemachismo—Q&A With Sergio de la Mora

Cinemachismo—Lambda Nomination

Cowboy del Amor (2005; Michèle Ohayon)—Review

Letters From the Other Side (2006; Heather Courtney)—Critical Overview/Review

Romántico (2005; Mark Becker)—Interview with Mark Becker, Pt. One

Romántico (2005; Mark Becker)—Interview with Mark Becker, Pt. Two

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005; Tommy Lee Jones)—Critical Overview/Review

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005; Tommy Lee Jones)—Q&A With Guillermo Arriaga

Miscellaneous

Oscars 2007 Hispanic Nominees

Peruvian Cinema

Madeinusa (2006; Claudia Llosa)—Critical Overview/Review

Máncora (2008;Ricardo de Montreuil)—Critical Overview/Review

Susana Baca: Memoria Viva (2003; Mark Dixon)—Capsule

Portuguese Cinema

Blood, The (O Sangue, 1989; Pedro Costa)—Critical Overview/Review

Casa de Lava (1994; Pedro Costa)—Critical Overview/Review

Costa, Pedro—Interview (for The Greencine Daily)

Costa, Pedro—Overview

Tarrafal (2007; Pedro Costa)—Capsule

Tarrafal (2007; Pedro Costa)—Critical Overview/Review

Two Drifters (Odete, 2005; João Pedro Rodrigues)—Review

Spanish Cinema

20 Centimeters (20 Centímetros, 2005; Ramón Salazar)—Critical Overview/Review

Almadovar, Pedro—An Overview of the "Viva Pedro" Retrospective (for The Greencine Daily)

Birdsong (El Cant dels Ocells, 2008; Albert Serra)—Interview With Albert Serra & Mark Peranson

Boystown (Chuecatown, 2007; Juan Flahn)—Critical Overview

Buñuel, Luis—My Last Sigh Review

Chaotic Ana (Caótica Ana, 2007; Julio Medem)—Critical Overview

Grönholm Method, The (El método, 2005; Marcelo Piñeyro)—Festival Capsule

Iberia (2005; Carlos Saura)—Festival Capsule

In the City of Sylvia (En la Ciudad de Sylvia, 2007; José Luis Guerín)—Critical Overview

Mataharis (2007;Icíar Bollaín)—Critical Overview

Me (Yo, 2007; Rafa Cortés)—Critical Overview

Nocturna (2007;Victor Maldonado & Adrià García)—Critical Overview/Review

Obaba (2005; Montxo Armendáriz)—Festival Capsule

Obaba (2005; Montxo Armendáriz)—Critical Overview/Review

Orphanage, The (El Orfanato, 2007; Juan Antonio Bayona)—Critical Overview/Review

Orphanage, The (El Orfanato, 2007; Juan Antonio Bayona)—Interview with Juan Antonio Bayona & Sergio Sánchez (for The Greencine Daily)

Shiver (Eskalofrío, 2008; Isidro Ortiz)—Critical Overview/Review

Solitary Fragments (La soledad, 2007; Jaime Rosales)—Critical Overview