Arrancáme la Vida

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MOVIE BRIEF: Latin American Film Festival

Now in its seventh year, the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (running Sept. 10-20) focuses this year on Chilean film, but will also present 60 full-length features, short films, and documentaries from 13 Latin American countries, as well as a handful of works by Latin American directors currently living in Canada.

Opening the 11 days of screenings is Mexico’s Arrancáme la Vida (Tear This Heart Out), based on the bestseller of the same name by novelist Ángeles Mastretta. A lavish spectacle set in post-revolutionary 1930s and ’40s Mexico, this big-budget, Hollywood-style costume drama (not coincidentally, it’s Mexico’s official submission to the 2009 Academy Awards) follows the Evita Perón-like transformation of a beautiful young lady who marries a wealthy general, becomes a crusader for social change, and eventually finds herself older, wiser, and desperately unhappy.

Other films on the roster include the 2008 winner of the Havana Film Festival, the dark comedy Tony Manero, about a middle-aged man’s obsession with John Travolta’s titular Saturday Night Fever character, against the backdrop of Augusto Pinochet’s brutal Chilean dictatorship; Leonera (Lion’s Den), a heartwrenching story about a mother raising her son behind bars (and the winner of the 2008 Cannes Viewer Prize); Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke’s oddball day-in-the-life comedy Lake Tahoe; El Cuerno de la Abundancia (Horn of Plenty), the latest comedy from Cuban director Juan Carlos Tabío (1994’s Oscar-nominated Strawberry & Chocolate); Chevolution, a documentary that traces the surprisingly humble roots of a single photo of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara that became one of this century’s most enduring images; and the festival’s closing gala presentation of La Buena Vida (The Good Life), director Andrés Wood’s follow-up to his 2004 VIFF Audience Choice-winning film, Machuca.

For complete schedule and ticket information, visit VLAFF.org