Latin America

An electrifying portrait of Brazil’s dystopian contemporary moment that blends documentary with narrative fiction and genre elements, Dry Ground Burning presents a daring vision of the country’s possible future. The film is set in the Sol Nascente favela in Brasilia, where fearsome outlaw Chitara leads an all-female gang that siphons and steals precious oil from the authoritarian, militarized government, while her sister, Léa, recently released from prison, is brought into the criminal enterprise.

EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle. He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition — filmmaking to more deeply understand the self, and the other — spirals into a process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son. This documentary holds a steady lens to the way the act of cinema unearths, binds, heals and destroys.

HENRY GLASSIE: FIELD WORK

The worldwide travels and unique cultural finds of renowned American folklorist Henry Glassie are enthrallingly chronicled in this portrait. Field Work allows us to witness the walling up of a massive kiln in Piedmont, North California, and features archival recordings of Glassie's encounters with carpet weavers and ceramicists in Western Turkey, and storytellers in Collins and Hogan's home country of Ireland, where Glassie's subjects reflect on their troubled present by talking about the past.

HAVANA, FROM ON HIGH

The chronic shortage of housing in Central Havana has pushed the city upwards forcing some to make their homes on building rooftops. This wondrous documentary tells the story of these remarkable and resilient rooftop dwellers - a secret village, hidden from the clamor of the streets below - who have a privileged point of view on a society in the process of major transformation.

SEGUNDA VEZ

This vital, revolutionary documentary isn't merely a biopic of Oscar Masotta - a pivotal theorist in the Argentinian avant-garde from the 1950s to 1970s - but a treatise on the artistic and political climate of the nation preceding the Dirty War, eerily mirroring the world today. The title, Segunda Vez, originates from a homonymous story written by a contemporary of Masotta’s, Julio Cortázar.

LA FLOR

A decade in the making, filmed around the world, and featuring the same four remarkable actresses in six episodes (each a different genre), Mariano Llinás’ landmark 14-hour feature film La Flor is an unrepeatable labor of love and madness that redefines the concept of binge viewing; a wildly entertaining exploration of the possibilities of fiction and storytelling. A must-see.

LOS REYES

A magical documentary, Los Reyes presents the world, or more specifically, a skate park in Santiago, Chile, from the perspective of two wise and adorable dogs, Chola and Fútbol. As the camera effortlessly follows them throughout the day and night, the conversations of young skaters are heard in the background; frank talk of drug use, sexuality, economic mobility and social marginalization.

CABALLERANGO

In the Mexican village of Milpillas, deteriorating economic and social conditions have led to a wave of suicides among its young people. The remarkable new documentary Cabellerango, from filmmaker Juan Pablo González, examines one such case, relying on conversations with family members and townspeople to piece together the factors that led to this tragic incident, and in the process, reflect upon the changes occurring across much of the country.

AMÉRICA

Three brothers confront the chasm between adolescent yearning and adult responsibilities when brought together to care for their charismatic ninety-three year old grandmother in this critically-acclaimed documentary, “a sublime, magical masterpiece.” (Joshua Oppenheimer, director, The Act of Killing)

WALDEN

Deep inside a pristine forest, we hear the sudden sound of a chainsaw felling a fir tree. So begins this breathtakingly photographed, puzzle-like documentary which follows the mysterious journey of the tree’s lumber entirely through thirteen 360° panning shots; a wide-angle picture of the role nature plays in a world defined by globalization.

THE TRIAL

A riveting behind-the-scenes look at the impeachment trial of Brazil's first female President, Dilma Rousseff. Granted unique access to the defense team, senators and President Rousseff herself, this explosive documentary captures this profound political crisis while reflecting on the dangers facing so many democracies throughout the world.

WOMEN OF THE VENEZUELAN CHAOS

Embodying strength and stoicism, five Venezuelan women from diverse backgrounds and generations each draw a portrait of their country as it suffers under the worst crisis in its history amid extreme food and medicine shortages, a broken justice system, and widespread fear, in this powerful and timely documentary.

COCOTE

Questions of faith, tradition and honor course through de Los Santos Arias’ rapturous crime fable. Set in the Dominican Republic, Cocote follows a kind-hearted gardener, an Evangelical Christian, who has returned home to take part in traditional mourning rituals for his father's death, only to discover that he is expected to commit an unthinkable act.

LIGHT YEARS

An intimate portrait of the great Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel, the director of landmark films like La Cienaga and A Headless Woman, during the making of her fourth feature, Zama. Far more than a behind-the-scenes look, it is an attempt to evoke the oblique, transcendental tendencies that pervade Martel’s haunting films.

DIESTE [URUGUAY]

Born in 1917 in Uruguay, Eladio Dieste created industrial and agrarian works, public infrastructure and commercial buildings whose unique and innovative design, a melding of architecture and engineering, elevated these often humble buildings to masterworks of art. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, this audacious documentary presents twenty-nine of Dieste's buildings.

ARABY

A fable-like road movie, Araby is a beautifully written and photographed story about a young boy who discovers an old notebook and is soon swept up in the writer's wanderings, adventures and loves; a twenty-year journey across the Brazilian countryside in search of a better life.

A RIVER BELOW

A captivating documentary about the ethics of activism in the modern media age, A River Below examines the efforts of two conservationists in the Amazon – one, a marine biologist, the other, an animal activist and host of a popular National Geographic TV show – whose methods to save the mythical pink river dolphin from extinction trigger unforeseen consequences.

RETURN TO CUBA: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF WALKER EVANS

In his first commissioned body of work, Walker Evans travelled to Cuba in 1933 to document life under the Machado regime. Nearly 75 years later, renowned photographers return to Cuba to retrace Evans' footsteps at a new historical tipping point.

THE JOY OF SOUND

What impact does sound have on our lives? From classical music to a hummingbird flapping its wings to the Earth’s natural hum, this is a fantastic exploration of the psychology, sociology and economics of sound.

AN AVIATION FIELD

The newest work to emerge from Harvard’s groundbreaking Sensory Ethnography Lab, Joana Pimenta’s An Aviation Field is a mesmerizing short film, a ghost story about buried cities, lost civilizations and Western colonialism.

EL REMOLINO (THE SWIRL)

In recent years, the town of El Remolino in Chiapas, Mexico has suffered from some of the country's worst flooding. This lyrical documentary surveys the social and ecological impact, from schools that can't open to farms that can no longer operate.

THE 100 YEARS SHOW

From Alison Klayman, director of The Brink and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, the remarkable story of Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, a pioneering abstract painter in the '40s and '50s who only found recognition as she approached her 100th birthday.

IMPRESSION OF A WAR

An artful meditation on Colombia's 70-year civil war--and the culture of violence that pervaded every aspect of society--through the marks, traces and images it left behind.

MINERITA

An acclaimed, award winning documentary about the women of a remote mining town in Bolivia where life above ground is just as dangerous as below.