Tropic of Blood_Dominican Republic

Tropic of Blood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Directed by	Juan Delancer
Starring	Michelle Rodriguez Juan Fernandez César Évora Sergio Carlo Claudette Lali Celines Toribio
Release date(s)	2010
Language	Spanish, with English subtitles

Trópico de Sangre (English: Tropic of Blood) is a dramatic film based on the true story of the Dominican Republic's historic Mirabal sisters.

Plot summary

The film focuses on Minerva Mirabal and tells the true story of how she and her sisters came to represent the greatest threat to dictator Rafael Trujillo and his regime. The Mirabal sisters were involved in an underground movement against the government. They were assassinated in 1960 by men under the instruction of the Luis Amiama Tio according to Pupo Roman, although their death was made to appear as an automobile accident. Many citizens were outraged and a few months later Trujillo was assassinated by an ambush lead by Antonio de La Maza, who was played by actor Cesar Evora.

Cast

• Michelle Rodriguez as Minerva Mirabal
• Juan Fernandez as Rafael Trujillo
• César Évora as Antonio de la Maza
• Claudette Lali as Emilia Bencosme
• Sergio Carlo as Manuel "Manolo" Aurelio Tavárez Justo
• Sharlene Taulé as Maria Teresa Mirabal
• Celines Toribio as Dedé Mirabal
• Luchi Estevez as Patria Mirabal
• Héctor Then as Priest Luis Peña González
• Johnnié Mercedes as Dr.Tejada Florentino

Filming information

• Filming wrapped in the Dominican Republic and debuted at the New York International Latino Film Festival on July 29th, 2009.
• Real-life surviving sister, Dedé Mirabal, consulted on and participated in the production of the film, she was also played by actress Celinés Toribio.

Controversy

In July 2008, the president of the Minerval Mirabal Foundation, Carlos Leiter, publicly criticized the film, specifically the involvement of actress Michelle Rodriguez due to her past legal issues. Leiter threatened to sue Rodriguez and her co-producers citing illegal use of the Mirabal name, unless charitable organizations of his choice, including his own, were given all revenues, including Rodriguez's entire personal salary, from the film.
Within days, the film's writer/director Juan Delancer responded to such criticisms by stating "One does not need permission to bring history to film." Delancer pointed out that Dedé Mirabal and the Mirabal family themselves approved of and supported the film and Rodriguez, with Dedé even appearing in the film as its narrator. Delancer also defended Rodriguez, as both a person and actress, saying it is impressive that "a figure of her stature who had just completed projects with the likes of Charlize Theron (in Battle in Seattle) and James Cameron (in Avatar)" would even participate in such a small production, let alone show such "undeniable" dedication to it as both an actress and producer.

Story of the Mirabal sisters in other media

• In the Time of the Butterflies is a novel by Julia Álvarez, fictionalizing the lives of the Mirabal sisters from their personal accounts of what happened during the time. The novel was later turned into a film with the same name. It stars Salma Hayek, Marc Anthony and Edward James Olmos as the Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.

• In 1999, the United Nations established the day of November 25th, as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the murder of the three Mirabal sisters.

• Ms. Dedé Mirabal still lives in the same household they all grew up. She has been responsible for keeping their legend alive. At 85 years old, she has recently released her first and only book about her sisters and events called “Vivas en su jardin” (“Alive in their garden”), published by Vintage Español/Random House Publishing.

• There is another film project by the Dominican director Etzel Baez, called "Crimen", but it has been left unfinished since 2006.

Dogtooth_Greece

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Ali Zaoua_Morocco

Ali Zaoua

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Directed by	Nabil Ayouch
Produced by	Etienne Comar Jean Cottin Antoine Voituriez
Written by	Nabil Ayouch Nathalie Saugeon
Starring	Maunim Kbab Abdelhak Zhayra Hicham Moussaune Amal Ayouch Mustapha Hansali
Music by	Krishna Levy
Cinematography	Renaat Lambeets Vincent Mathias
Editing by	Jean-Robert Thomann
Distributed by	Arab Film Distribution (USA)
Release date(s)	September 8, 2000 (2000-09-08)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	Morocco
Language	Arabic French

Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets is a 2000 Moroccan crime drama film that tells the story of several homeless boys. It was awarded in the 2000 Stockholm Film Festival and in the 2000 Amiens International Film Festival.

Plot

Kwita (Maunim Kbab), Omar (Mustapha Hansali), Boubker (Hicham Moussaune) and Ali Zaoua (Abdelhak Zhayra) are homeless boys living in Casablanca. The boys were in a gang led by Dib (Said Taghmaoui), but decide to rebel against him under Ali's guidance. However, Ali is killed by members of the gang while he is hired as a cabin boy on a ship, and the other boys decide to give him a proper funeral. Kwita sits a cemetery where his lack of religious training is criticized while Omar briefly returns to Dib's gang. Boubker, the smallest and most vulnerable of the boys, threatens to kill himself but recovers his sense of self and helps the old fisherman on his boat.

Awards

• Bronze Horse, 2000 Stockholm Film Festival
• Audience Award, 2000 Amiens International Film Festival

Ali Zaoua (2002)
 

Reviewed by Jamie Russell

Ali Zaoua may have been left to wander the streets of Casablanca with the rest of the city's glue-sniffing street urchins, but when he's killed in a stone fight with a gang of boys, his three friends decide to bury him "like a prince".
Eking out a life amid the squalor of Morocco's port and taking refuge in the city's abandoned construction sites, Kwita, Omar, and Boubker don't have much chance of giving him the funeral he deserves. They can barely find enough food to eat, whatever money they steal gets spent on glue, and deaf-and-dumb gang leader Dib (Saïd Taghmaoui, from "Three Kings") is after them.
Nabil Ayouch's film immerses us in the lives of these grubby street kids, limiting the adult roles to just three characters. It's at its best when showing us the fractured innocence that these children share - they may only be eight, but they've already developed an understanding of the harsh realities of the world that's far beyond their years. At the same time, Ayouch captures their childish dreams in a series of (glue-induced) hallucinations where a series of chalk drawings come to life.
The script puts this clash between innocence and experience to good effect in the marvellous dialogue that constantly switches from naiveté to profanity and back again. But it's the beguiling performances from the three young children that are really captivating, and it's their sense of the comic and the tragic elements of their predicament that gives the film its enjoyable energy. A real treat.

La Fiebre del Loco_Chile

La Fiebre del Loco

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Directed by	Andrés Wood
Written by	René Arcos, Gilberto Villaroel
Release date(s)	October 2001  Chile December 2001  Cuba January 2002  United States January 30, 2002  Netherlands April 16, 2002  Mexico June 22, 2002  Poland August 9, 2002  Peru December 20, 2002 Spain[1]
Running time	90-94 minutes
Country	Chile
Language	Chilean Spanish
Budget	Unknown

La Fiebre del Loco (Chilean) (Abalone Fever in Spanish) is a 2001 Chilean comedy.

Plot

The film is about infighting between visiting prostitutes and their husbands' wives in a small fishing village in rural Southern Chile that has become greedy and crazy for Abalone.^[2][3] In Spanish the word loco has the dual meaning of Chilean Abalone and crazy. The film's tagline was "Amor y avaricia en un mundo de buzos y moluscos" (Spanish for: Love and greed in a world of scuba and mollusks). The film's title in German was Das Loco-Fieber and English Loco Fever. In the film all hell breaks loose when the Chilean government temporarily lifts the ban on the collection of the Chilean abalone, a mollusk with aphrodisiacal effects.^[4]

Cast

• Emilio Bardi... Canuto
• Luis Dubó... Jorge
• Loreto Moyo... Sonia
• Luis Margani... Padre Luis (Father Luis)
• Tamara Acosta... Nelly
• María Izquierdo... Leila
• Mariana Loyola...
• Patricia López (credited as Patricia López Menadier)... Isabel
• Carmina Riego
• Pilar Zderich... Denisse
• Aldo Parodi
• Julio Marcone... Yukio
• Cristián Chaparro
• Gabriela Medina
• Carmen Barros
• Marcela Arroyave
• Claudia Hidalgo
• Chamila Rodríguez
• Pablo Striano
• Camila Videla

Night of the Pencils_Argentina

Night of the Pencils

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Héctor Olivera
Produced by	Fernando Ayala Alejandro Sessa
Written by	Screenplay: Héctor Olivera Daniel Kon Book: María Seoane Héctor Ruiz Núñez
Starring	Alejo García Pintos Vita Escardó Pablo Novak Adriana Salonia Pablo Machado
Music by	José Luis Castiñeira de Dios
Cinematography	Leonardo Rodríguez Solís
Editing by	Miguel López
Distributed by	Aries Cinematográfica
Release date(s)	Argentina: September 4, 1986 United States: March 14, 1987
Running time	105 minutes
Country	Argentina
Language	Spanish

Night of the Pencils (Spanish: La noche de los lápices) (1986) is an Argentine drama film directed by Héctor Olivera and written by Olivera and Daniel Kon. It is based on the non-fiction book by María Seoane and Héctor Ruiz Núñez.
This motion picture, based on the actual events recorded in history as Night of the pencils (La noche de los lápices), tells the story of seven teenagers, five boys and two girls, who, during a time of economic and political unrest in Argentina in the mid 1970s, protest for lower bus fares in Buenos Aires.
The event takes place as Argentina's notorious Dirty War begins.

Plot

Pablo is arrested and tortured in an Argentina jail.

The kids wanted reduced student bus fares so they take to the streets and protest. At first, under Isabel Martínez de Perón's government they succeed, but their protests draw hostile attention from the military regime, led by Emilio Eduardo Massera, that overthrows Peron. The "leftist agitators" are not tolerated by the new government.
The ensuing crackdown on the student social activities is demonstrated in the film when police break up a school dance wielding swords and on horseback.
Later, six students are kidnapped in the middle of the night, and the police claim ignorance about their whereabouts.
Pablo (Alejo García Pintos), a seventh member of the group is later arrested by the police. He learns that his friends have been brutally tortured by governmental authorities and he's not spared. The police give him electric shocks while radio music masks his cries.
He was fortunate to survive and tell their horrific story. His classmates were never found and became part of the thousands of desaparecido students who were kidnapped and never seen again by their families or friends.

Cast

• Alejo García Pintos as Pablo Díaz
• Vita Escardó as Claudia Falcone
• Leonardo Sbaraglia as Daniel
• José María Monje as Panchito
• Pablo Machado as Claudio
• Adriana Salonia as María Clara
• Tina Serrano as Mrs. Falcone
• Héctor Bidonde as Mr. Falcone
• Alfonso De Grazia as priest impersonator
• Lorenzo Quinteros as Raúl

Background

Basis of film

The motion picture was based on the non-fiction book, La noche de los lápices, written by María Seoane and Héctor Ruiz Núñez. The book profiles seven high school student activists from La Plata, Argentina, including lone survivor Pablo Díaz, who gives the authors his testimony. The students were kidnapped by the government after protesting for cheaper bus fare.
Pablo Díaz was incarcerated for four years. The other six students became a part of the 236 Argentine teen-agers who were kidnapped and disappeared during the military dictatorship.

Filming locations

The film was shot entirely in the city of La Plata.

Distribution

Night of the Pencils first opened in Argentina on September 4, 1986. It has been featured at various film festivals including: the New York New Directors/New Films Festival, the Moscow Film Festival, where it was nominated for the "Golden Prize," and the Toronto Film Festival.
In March 2003 the film was included in a slate of films shown at the 1st International Film Festival on Human Rights, held in Geneva, Switzerland.

Critical reception

Critic Manavendra K. Thakur was appreciative of the direction of the film and wrote, "Olivera seems to have kept his integrity mostly intact. He does not shy away from disturbing realities, and he draws a surprisingly complex portrait of the students, their captors, and the students' parents. The film's accomplishment in this regard is considerable and therefore worthy of serious attention...[and] this is especially true of the film's second half."
Caryn James, film critic for The New York Times, also liked Olivera's work, and wrote, "Mr. Olivera builds his film on irony and contrast, so the visual beauty of the early scenes - the deep blue night in which cars and lights glisten - calls attention to the ominous unseen political dangers. In daylight, the once-beautiful, now crumbling buildings, including the high school itself, become emblems of a country falling apart, not knowing what to preserve from its past." 

Award nomination

• Moscow International Film Festival: Golden Prize, Héctor Olivera; 1987.

Interview

"Kiarostami seems to reinvent cinema with every movie", David Schreiber

An alumni of New York University’s Graduate School of Film & Television, David Schreiber worked as Director of Development and Creative Director for four different production companies, and now serves as director of a digital filmmaking program in Santa Monica, California. Bijan Tehrani: Since we spoke four years ago about international cinema in the United States; what are your opinions on the presence of International cinema in the US. David Schreiber: Well, I would like to be more optimistic than when we spoke four years ago, but unfortunately the economic forces that impact movie production in this country I suspect will eventually, perhaps soon, take root in other countries as well. When we last spoke about those national cinemas, we spoke at length about Iranian films and I think that they’re as vital and as interesting as before. Kiarostami seems to reinvent cinema with every movie. When you look at contemporary Iranian cinema, it seems to grow more and more vital and artistically revolutionary at the same time that Iran is being demonized more and more by the Western powers . I recently re-watched Children of Heaven, which was nominated for best foreign film a decade ago, and beautifully directed by Majid Majidi. I re-watched Amir Naderi’s film The Runner. What one responds to in these movies is the honesty and delicacy of the portrayals. I get the same feeling when watching the best of current Taiwanese cinema. Unlike Hollywood movies, the cinema of these nations doesn’t divorce meaning from the everyday experience of life. In the case of Hou Hsiao-hsien, there’s an attempt, a successful attempt, to reenact their history and portray a very personal dissent against an oppressive government. The movies are more vital and real and honest than what we in the West typically get from our corporate cinema. One of the things that I have done recently is to revisit a lot of the old movies; I have been watching a lot of Ozu’s oeuvre and studying how he did what he did so eloquently and conversely bemoaning the business model that eviscerated cinema in America. I’m sure you recall how cynical I was about the state of things in Hollywood. It’s only got worse. The business model has squeezed the creative model out of existence in America, and I fear that it will affect other nations and their movies as well. The global movement of capital has squeezed the humanity out of many industries; it’s irrational to think that the film industry is immune to the same forces—and yet people do. In the minds of many, the entertainment business is exempt from economic crises. We think of it as an insular art form, inoculated against the dumbing down and leveling that global capitalism seeks to impose wherever it sees opportunity. It should be no surprise that movie production, in the eyes of the mutant elites is no different from other industrial production. Presently, the media in other nations is not controlled by a handful of transnational mega-corporations that strangle creative expression; there remains room for the artist’s vital voice in those nations. Asia comes to mind and Iran and South America. I’m sure there are other national cinemas as well that remain dedicated to the soul, not the sale. BT: There seems to be a decrease in the number of foreign films that are shown in the US, what is the cause of this? DS: I know you would rather discuss the art of cinema instead of the political-economy of it—as would I—but the wolves are at the door, Bijan, and it would be foolhardy to think that the entertainment and cultural industry in any nation is immune form economic forces. When the financial sector of our economy collapse three years ago and put the squeeze on the financial institutions, they stopped lending. Even with bailouts and prodding from our own government, they stopped lending. Well, that is pretty much the same thing that has happened with our film industry in America. A lot of people think the studios finance their movies out of their own deep pockets. They don’t. They borrow the money from financial institutions. One of the first shoes that dropped on production occurred right after the Wall Street collapse. Deutsche Bank withdrew a 450 million dollar package of film funding for Paramount Pictures. Paramount said they walked away from the money of course, but the only thing relevant is that credit markets stopped floating loans. If the money changers stop lending, movies don’t get made. What we are seeing in this country is fewer and fewer movies getting made and so the intimate and honest movies are sacrificed at the altar of movies made by money for money. Corporate values have trumped the art. Because the money isn’t flowing freely anymore, when Hollywood green lights a project, they want it to be a risk-adverse product; they want a film that does not take chances and appeals to the lowest common denominator, which some critics have called the reptilian brain stems of the audience. They trick them up. They become roller coaster rides. The last thing the studios want is the audience to use their brains. If they did, they would say, what’s wrong with these characters? Why are they all walking around with Tommy guns, shooting people to solve their problems. The films are synthetic and divorced from human experience. The studios want to make sure that there is a built in audience before the film gets financed and you can see the results in the theatres. If you still like your movies in the dark, you can see these films that are contrived, divorced from reality, and evoke fake emotions. They never challenge the viewer or allow the viewer to re-imagine parts of their own lives. If you could be a fly in the ointment (mixed metaphor intended) at a typical green light meeting in Hollywood, you’d witness a phenomenon that is quite different to what it was a even a generation ago. Yes, it always was the entertainment business and the people that produced movies wanted to make money, but there were always one or two persons in the room that believed in the script and trusted in the talent of the writer and the talent of the director and would green light the project because they genuinely liked the script. Today you could have twenty people in the meeting and they are all marketers and bean-counters and, to be honest, philistines who only care about money and so they do not want to take any risk with that film. In that same meeting you might have investors from McDonalds and Mattel, you might have a foreign corporation you might have a video game executive, and these people are saying that they could provide this percentage of the budget because they can get a video game spin off or move merchandise. Who is representing the art? Art has no seat at that table, which seems fitting, as movies from Hollywood are no longer the expression of an artistic vision; they are spectacles in 3D. BT: One of the things happening in Europe right now is that they are not going to wait on the US market for their films and rather they are going to depend on the European market to profit with their films. The result has been positive because the filmmakers are able to at last make back their money on the films that they produced. Do you think that this strategy will eventually help European cinema? DS: I don’t know for sure, but I think that not accepting modest returns will sap the sweet meats out of any national cinema. As long as producers can accept modest returns, returns sufficient to reproduce their means of production—i.e., to make enough money to support the next production—they will be healthier in both the long run and short. The Hollywood model of production has built into it its own destruction. It’s just one incarnation of the unquestioned premise that an economy must continually grow. On a planet with a finite amount of resources, the growth model will eventually and imminently, run into a fatal roadblock. It’s the same with movie production. Hollywood has irrationally put itself in a position where each movie must make more and more money. That perforce leads to fewer and fewer movies getting made, because each movie must return X number of dollars and that X rises exponentionally as the cost of production and distribution rises. It’s self-defeating and will spell the doom of the American cinema. If each studio makes fewer and fewer movies (and that’s what we’re witnessing), then two or three bombs in a row will decimate that studio. It’s an art form; the painter only needs paint and canvas, but when you deal with movies, which cost so much money, if you can reduce the size of the needed return, it is going to be a positive thing. I actually think the production and business model employed by many European and other cinemas is a great model, a sane model, a model that preserves the role of the artist in the process. Whether or not it can be imported into this country is the question. America is a state in crisis, rapidly approaching the ignominious category of failed state, or as some economists have called it, an undeveloping nation. Unfortunately, the adoption of, what you called, the European model might first require a complete collapse of the Hollywood system. Hollywood movies are top heavy and they are fake, they reference other movies and do not reference real life; the last time we spoke and since then I still focus my attention and viewing hours on movies from other national cinemas because I want to watch a movie about life and Hollywood movies do not do that. To get back to the economic question; when a country is thriving and growing they can take risks; the economic health of the studio isn’t placed on the strength of any one movie. When you don’t have to work under those economic forces, you have the freedom to take chances and some risk. You don’t have to use a cookbook to make another movie. I don’t know what is going to happen in the future, but I do think that the Asian and European models are much more helpful for the artist involved. Even in a country like Iran, where a lot of the great artists are writing in opposition to their government and a number of filmmakers have been thrown in jail for the content of their movies, it is still a more vibrant cinema than say Hollywood where the characters are not recognizably human and they are not speaking to people in a challenging way. BT: Right now you don’t see many international films in theatres; it seems that you can see international films in film festivals around the country. How helpful do you think that film festivals are in terms of exposing American audiences to international cinema? DS: I think it has to be done; I don’t think the rest of the world wants to write off the American market because it is so large. This we spoke of 2-3 years ago; the studios that are distributing movies are also blocking international movies from being shown here. The more pernicious act is that our media megaliths buy up foreign movies and then they don’t distribute them--they kill them. The reason is that when your back is against the wall, you don’t want competition. So studio execs block films that are more humanistic from the American market and, with media consolidation in this country, that means the symbolic universe that we all swim in is narrowed and denuded of dissenting voices. When that happens, movie production is not a business; it’s a monopoly, and like all monopolies, the media mega-corporations actively block competition from foreign cinemas in the North American market. These bean-counters probably fear that serious film lovers in America will connect with these foreign films and ignore the spectacles that their corporations produce. The film festivals are a glimmer of hope in this sea of despair, but how many people actually go to film festivals and get to see those movies? What some filmmakers are doing is showing their films online for free and if the viewer really likes them then they can buy the rights directly from the filmmaker who initially gave it away. It remains to be seen if this is going to pose a serious threat to Hollywood’s domination. But right now things look very bleak. Hollywood is not producing interesting movies and they are blocking cinemas from showing more interesting work. BT: Could new media help international cinema? DS: Yes, it can but the way you do it comes with a lot of risk. There might not be money up front for the filmmaker if they have to reach the audience through the Internet and then hope for a wider distribution, which does occasionally happen. You can have Internet sensations and have other distribution channels show these non-American movies. But if the corporate sector successfully brings an end to Net Neutrality, how can we see these films? People are not going to travel overseas to see films. Those who care deeply about our culture need to fight on every front, as our corporate enemies don’t sleep. BT: Do you think that the new generations of filmmakers are in touch with international cinema? DS: I’m surprised that young filmmakers in North America know as much as they do. In the classes that I teach, I always try to show my students films that they have never seen or films that they might not have even been aware existed. I mentioned that I showed Children of Heaven and they were blown away by it. I also showed Millennium Mambo; sometimes they are aware of it and sometimes they are not but it’s our job to make them aware. There is a human need to explore and learn about other cultures and other cinemas, and for that reason, there is always hope. You cannot suppress the human spirit and the human need for learning and exploration. Bijan, I do honestly feel that we are not that far away from the Hollywood system collapsing and being put into a condition in which Hollywood cannot afford to make movies. Technological improvements will for a short while keep the body alive, but it clear it’s on life support. We now have the 3-D movie craze. It’s a gimmick, a gimmick intended to keep alive a revenue stream—but these tricks are bound to fail. People like us want to find cinemas that speak to us. You can watch a foreign film and relate to the characters and understand their feelings and way of life. When I watch Asian films (all exceptions granted), I can see that understanding; as these movies don’t have the need to make so much money, they can be more honest. I do think that the spectacle-approach to cinema that Hollywood practices will eventually lead that industry to collapse under its own weight. The 3D rage proves the point; it’s a trick and not a new one, to keep people in the theater, but attendance is down, while ticket cost is up. It can’t continue. These are little more than desperate measures to save the flagging fortunes of an industry. BT: What do you think students should be taught in school? DS: I think students should be taught about personal filmmaking. Our students cannot compete with Hollywood; they cannot blow up things, they cannot stage car chases, they can only make it look real and honest. Their lives are interesting. Most of my students come from multicultural, working class backgrounds. If they can be convinced to make movies about their own lives, our cinema will be enriched by the experience. Hollywood worships the affluent. Characters from working class background rarely grace the Hollywood screen, and when they do, they are almost invariably the butt of jokes or depicted as neanderthals. In reality, it’s the studio and network execs who more closely resemble the third character from the left on the evolutionary chart. I encourage my students to explore their own lives and obsessions in their movies. Above all else, they should enjoy life and care about it for what it is, not what life is in a galaxy far, far away. Whether or not this pedagogical approach will stick, I honestly don’t know-- but I think that it is a good fight and a fight that will have to continue in order to breathe life back into the American cinema.

Imagining Argentina

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Imagining Argentina
Imagining Argentina film poster
Directed by	Christopher Hampton
Produced by	Michael Peyser, Diane Sillan
Written by	Lawrence Thornton (novel), Christopher Hampton
Starring	Antonio Banderas, Emma Thompson
Distributed by	Arenas Entertainment (USA)
Release date(s)	September 12, 2003
Running time	107 minutes
Language	English

Imagining Argentina is a 2003 film directed and written by Christopher Hampton. The movie was nominated for the "Golden Lion" award at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. The film is adapted from an award-winning novel of the same title by Lawrence Thornton.

Plot

The movie is set during the Dirty War in 1970s Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the military government is abducting those opposed to its rule. Cecilia, a dissident journalist, is kidnapped by the secret police to join the ranks of the 'disappeared'. Cecilia had earlier published a provocative article in her outrage over the disappearance of students protesting bus fares.
As her husband Carlos, a theatre director, begins to search frantically for her, he realizes that he has acquired psychic power that enables him to predict the future. This not only puts him in high demand by those who have also lost a loved one, it helps Carlos to foresee what happens to his wife and other detainees.
At one point, Carlos visits the Naval Mechanics School, the notorious torture centre.
The movie has graphic images of suffering such as the rape and torture scenes of Cecilia and her daughter Teresa.
The closing caption mentions that around 30,000 Argentines disappeared between 1976 and 1983.

Cast

• Carlos Rueda - Antonio Banderas
• Cecilia Rueda - Emma Thompson
• Teresa Rueda - Leticia Dolera
• Esme Palomares - María Canals
• Silvio Ayala - Rubén Blades

The Milk of Sorrow_Peru

Olive Films

Magaly Solier and Barbara Lazon in the Peruvian film “The Milk of Sorrow,” directed by Claudia Llosa.

A Trauma in Peru

By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

As tense as a clenched fist and just as communicative, Fausta (Magaly Solier), the heroine of “The Milk of Sorrow,” scuttles around her mountainside neighborhood in Lima, peering from beneath bangs like guillotine blades. Her mother has just died, leaving Fausta with a deathbed song of rape and violence suffered during “the terrors,” Peru’s decades of civil strife. As a defense against similar violations — and, indeed, any sexual connection — Fausta has blocked her vagina with a potato, oblivious to the physical consequences.

Plumbing the generational reverberations of trauma (believed by the indigenous population to be passed on through a mother’s milk), the Peruvian writer and director Claudia Llosa (the niece of the author Mario Vargas Llosa) explores the possibility of female empowerment in a culture suffocated by superstition and poverty. To pay for her mother’s funeral, Fausta becomes the maid of a wealthy pianist (Susi Sánchez), who encourages the girl to compose her own songs. But when her employer steals her music, it becomes clear that Fausta’s real oppressor isn’t the violence of the past but the exploitation of the present.
Beautifully framed and not without humor (especially in the lively wedding preparations of Fausta’s fussy cousin, which include a “mobile buffet”), “The Milk of Sorrow” is constrained by a rarefied screenplay and a near-mute central performance.
A tender, tentative turn by Efraín Solis, as a gardener who tries to breach Fausta’s defenses, offers temporary relief from the emotional uniformity, but it’s not enough to rescue a story limited less by Fausta’s reserve than by the filmmaker’s. 
THE MILK OF SORROW
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Written and directed by Claudia Llosa; director of photography, Natasha Braier; edited by Frank Gutierrez; art directors, Susana Torres and Patricia Bueno; produced by Antonio Chavarrias, José Maria Morales and Ms. Llosa; released by Olive Films. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. In Spanish and Quechua, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Magaly Solier (Fausta), Susi Sánchez (Aida), Efraín Solis (Noé) and Marino Ballón (Tío Lucido).

The Milk Of Sorrow_Peru

by Noel Murray August 26, 2010

• Director: Claudia Llosa
• Cast: Magaly Solier, Susi Sánchez, Efraín Solis (In Spanish & Quechua w/subtitles)
• Rated: Not Rated
• Running time: 100 minutes

In the opening scene of Claudia Llosa’s The Milk Of Sorrow, a dying Peruvian woman sings her final song: a monotone ballad that describes how when she was younger, she was raped by guerrillas and forced to swallow her dead husband’s penis. Her grown daughter, Magaly Solier, has heard these stories all her life, and has internalized her mother’s fear of the outside world. (Her uncle insists that the fear was transmitted to Solier via her mother’s breast milk.) She’s also come up with her own way to ward off rapists: by inserting a potato into her vagina. Trouble is, it’s begun to take root and make her bleed.
That may sound like the setup for some kind of over-the-top, Pedro Almodóvar-style melodrama, but Llosa is after more of a melancholy hush, bordering on haunted. The Milk Of Sorrow is about a country dealing with old wounds and old divisions, and it’s about how sometimes it can be easier to cling to pain than to move past it. When Solier gets a job working as a maid for a concert pianist in Lima, she’s surrounded by more people than she’s used to, and it makes her more nervous and withdrawn than ever. So every so often, she walks back up the big hill to her impoverished, dusty neighborhood, so she can cradle the corpse of her still-unburied mother.
The Milk Of Sorrow is lousy with allegory, and is often too heavy for its own good. When Solier sits on one side of the screen while a man sits on the opposite side, separated from her by two large sashes in the shape of an X, the meaning is so obvious that it’s distracting. And that isn’t the only time Llosa holds her camera on an image that works too hard to make a point. But she also fills the film with music and pageantry—the latter in the form of a family wedding and all its attendant rituals—and Solier is captivating as a woman trying to figure out when and how she can reach out to others. She starts in her employer’s garden, walled off from the city, where she sings her own improvised songs, and tries to follow her boss’s advice on how to live in society day after day: “Make it up again, but exactly the same.”