Cine Latino Film Festival 2017

Overview

If you're a film buff, then you're also a travel buff. Even if you don't venture further than your nearest cinema, you're often journeying to other countries when you sit down to watch a movie. Thanks to the Cine Latino Film Festival, the sights and sounds of Latin America await Australian filmgoers in November, taking them on a trip to Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Cuba, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic.

Australia's second Spanish-language film festival (after the Europe-centric Spanish Film Festival), the Cine Latino Film Festival will bring 26 titles from Central and South America to Aussie screens in November. The fun kicks off with You're Killing Me Susana, a marital comedy featuring Mexican star Gael García Bernal.

Other highlights span a variety of genres and nations. Audiences can check out Inseparables, the Argentinian remake of French film The Intouchables, or get an authentic glimpse into prison romance in the Dominican Republic with Woodpeckers – about inmates from neighbouring jails communicating via their own form of sign language.

Elsewhere, Cannes Critics' Week hit Gabriel and the Mountain combines documentary and drama to tell the true tale of a Brazilian traveller; Tales of Mexico asks eight filmmakers to spin stories about Mexican history; and Lost North tracks a man trying to find his girlfriend across the 900 miles between Santiago and the Bolivian border.

Other notable titles include Peruvian musical-comedy Crazy in Love, Colombian paramilitary thriller Guilty Men, and Ecuador's submission to next year's foreign-language Oscar category Such is Life in the Tropics, about a battle between a land owner and squatters.

The festival will also shine a particular spotlight on Argentinian and Mexican filmmaking in two specific program strands. The latter is a collaboration with the Hola Mexico Film Festival, while the former will thrill fans of familiar faces, with The Secret in Their Eyes star Ricardo Darín playing an Argentinian president in The Summit, and Gloria's Paulina García going soul searching in The Desert Bride.