South American music and culture magazine

A Useful Life is a new Uruguayan film that continues an aesthetic started by Whisky and 25 Watts, two classic Latin American films directed by fellow Uruguayans Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll. The dry humour is there, as is the unlikely choice of leading actors and use of black and white, as well as a story that revels in everyday life. It shouldn’t be too surprising then that the director Federico Veiroj worked as a scriptwriter on those films. Continue Reading

Las Acacias is a film in which the plot alone does not represent the film. Which is a good thing, as the story of an Argentine truck driver who gives a Paraguayan women and her child a lift to Buenos Aires does not in itself sound too promising. Where Las Acacias succeeds is in the moments and relationship that builds during this journey, and which results in the film being one of the most charming of the year. Continue Reading

I’m not convinced Pachamama – meaning Mother Earth – is an apt title for this film. There are certainly many glimpses of nature, and the relationship between man and nature on this road trip through Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, but it’s the sense of political unrest in the last two of these countries which really has the greatest impact. Continue Reading

The element that unites all the best music documentaries – a pack led by Stop Making Sense and The Last Waltz – is a feeling of experiencing a moment of music at it’s creative zenith. Our Latin Thing must therefore join this illustrious company. It’s documentation of a performance from the Fania All-Stars in a New York club in 1974, captures some of the Latin world’s musicians at the top of their game. Continue Reading

Karen Cries On The Bus starts off as a story about independence, and remains defiantly so throughout. Continue Reading

Hard Labour (Trabalhar Cansa) is the debut feature from Brazilians Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra. It’s billed as part social commentary, part horror, and this is exactly how it pans out. Continue Reading

The circus is tough, but it is also beautiful. So says ringmaster Juventino “Tino” Ponce at the beginning of Circo, a mesmerising documentary about a 100 year-old travelling circus in Mexico, struggling to prevent its own extinction. Continue Reading

Pablo Larraín’s vision of Santiago, Chile in 1973 looks every bit as drab as Britain from the same time. The houses and people are adorned with the same beige and brown colours as you might expect from a British drama about industrial unrest: flared trousers, facial hair and dated grubby furniture. But the historical backdrop here is the lead up to the military coup of that year and the death of the democratically elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende. Continue Reading

It’s inevitable that Rio Breaks will always be deemed a surf documentary, yet surfing is clearly playing second fiddle throughout. The story follows Fabio and Naama, two kids from the Pavao favela in Rio, as they head to the beach each day with hopes of competing in a surf competition, winning sponsorship and finding a way out of Pavao, a favela nicknamed Vietnam due to the number of shootings that occur. It’s also the story of Rio Surf Club, a group set up by a number of former Rio surf champions who are trying to show the kids from the favelas that there is an alternative to drug trafficking. In exchange for surf lessons and board rental they ask that the kids attend school and don’t get involved in the drug trade. Continue Reading

Marc Evans’ Patagonia tells the simultaneous stories of two women at two very different stages in their lives. Set to the beautiful backdrop of both Wales and Argentina, the film’s exquisite beauty creates a breath-taking surrounding for an equally breath-taking plot. Continue Reading

180º is not your average Brazilian film: there’s no violence in the favelas, no drug-trafficking, prison riots or corrupt police; there is little, if any, on-screen sex and no blood is spilt. If anything, Eduardo Vaisman’s first feature seems like a deliberate attempt to move away from all those things we would normally associate with Brazilian cinema, especially the “urban warzone image” (Phil Hoad, The Guardian) seen in City of God and Elite Squads 1 & 2, Brazil’s most successful exports. Continue Reading

Head over Heels is a chick-flick comedy set firmly in the tradition of Sex and the City, Bridget Jones diary and the like; but it uses its Latin American setting to highlight a slightly different set of trials for the modern Brazilian woman. Continue Reading