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F ilm directors often make amazing debut feature films. These debut films can be awesome if they are based on the director’s original scripts rather than an adapted one. Kleber Mendonca Filho’s debut feature film Neighboring Sounds as a director stands out as he has observed and reflected on the history of Brazil and created a tale that mirrors the race conflicts and the closely related economic and social disparity that has existed in recent decades of that wonderful, naturally well-endowed nation’s history. Beyond the interesting tale that director Filho wrote for his debut as a feature filmmaker, he evidently decided to build his tale aided by the importance of sounds in a film that most viewers neglect to notice. It is no coincidence that he chose to title the film as Neighboring Sounds . If a viewer approaches the film casually, the story of the film will be more overpowering than the diegetic sounds captured on the film’s soundtrack. Filho divides his film into three chapters (i...

T he first impression of a viewer of Bacurau would be that it is structured in many ways similar to any recent Tarantino film or the way a traditional Hollywood Western is assembled: the bad guys making the life of the good people a living hell until the good people get external help to rid the bad guys while the audience experiences a cathartic orgy of violence and gore towards the end of the film, when the good people emerge victorious over the evil characters.  Is Bacurau a film that offers much more than that? The Cannes film festival jury thought it was the second best film in competition, sharing the honour with Les Miserables (2019), a film that had little to do with Victor Hugo. Was Bacurau less impressive than the Korean film Parasite , a film that won the top honour at the Cannes festival in the same category, which also had a similar orgy of violence at its end? Debatable, indeed, because Parasite deals with economic disparity in urban life while Bacurau deals with ...

Both posters above are predominantly in black and white, while colour is utilized sparingly and effectively,  as in the film “ The display I witnessed in those enchanted hours was such that I find it impossible to describe in a language that allows others to understand its beauty and splendour; all I know is that, like all those who have shed the thick veil that blinded them, when I came back to my senses, I had become another man. ” ---German scientist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg’s (1872-1924) writings, quoted at the opening of the film T he year 2015 witnessed the release of three outstanding films from South American countries: Land and Shade from Colombia, The Pearl Button from Chile, and Embrace of the Serpent a co-production from Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela. Each of the three films deals with history and economics. Each film present a combination of fact and fiction, the last two blending history with actors playing fictional roles that have some facts to rel...

An evocative poster of the film at the Berlin Film Festival The conventional poster U ruguay is not a country that one would easily associate with great cinema.  Even for Latin American standards, Uruguay cannot boast of major cinematic works.  And yet, Rodrigo Plá’s La demora (The Delay) offers without any doubt a major Uruguayan contemporary counterpoint to Michael Haneke’s Amour (Love), both films made in the same year, both major winners on the film festival circuit, both offering quality cinema that will grip the viewer right up to the end. While Amour dealt with uxorial love, The Delay is all about paternal love. Both films deal with the problems of the elder citizens today. While Amour dealt with the problem within the economic comforts of a small Parisian apartment where the principal characters could afford hospitalization, home nurses, a baby grand piano, a good music system, and a concierge to buy groceries, The Delay pushes the viewer to the bitter re...