Oxen, Foxes and Crocodiles (Bois,Raposas & Crocodilos)
Director:  Calixto Hakim, Brazil, 2019
Director Calixto Hakim will be in attendance and will address the audience in a post-screening Q&A session.
Length:  60 minutes

Showtime(s) and location(s):
Thursday October 3 7:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Introduction: Dr. Manuel Medina, Department of Classical and Modern Languages



Synopsis: 

Set in Curitiba, Brazil, Cattle, Foxes & Crocodiles pervade the “wild” business world through five characters: Mario, Patrícia, Arnor, Bruno and Luíz; who work at the same company, which is under federal police investigation for kickbacks with high level politicians and fraud. The plot develops during 5 days of the life of these characters where we get to know their yearnings and dilemmas; leading the story to a dramatic climax with a drastic conclusion that changes their lives forever.

Extra Terrestres (Extra Terrestres)
Director:  Carla Cavina, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, 2017
Length:  110 minutes

Showtime(s) and location(s):
Thursday October 3 5:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Friday October 18 1:00 p.m., 104W Ekstrom Library
Thursday October 24 7:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Synopsis: 

Teresa is a vegetarian and a successful astrophysicist who lives with her girlfriend, Daniela, in the Canary Islands. After years of self-exile, Teresa returns to Puerto Rico to invite the family to her wedding. But the Díaz family, who lives in a rural town, are a conservative and well-to-do family who control much of the poultry industry in Puerto Rico.

No one in the family is what who they appear and none is willing to reveal their most intimate secrets, so once back home, Teresa chooses to lie. When several acts of sabotage force the closure of the family business and Daniela, tired of waiting for Teresa, travels to Puerto Rico to meet her new family, the Díaz family nucleus collapses like a supernova star, unleashing a chain reaction that puts in evidence that we are all “extraterrestrials.”

Birds of Passage (Pájaros de verano)
Director:  Ciro Guerra, Cristina Gallego, Colombia, México, 2018
Length:  125 minutes

Showtime(s) and location(s):
Thursday October 10 7:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Introduction: Dr. Walter Rodríguez,University of Louisville

Thursday November 14 5:00 p.m., 104W Ekstrom Library

Synopsis: 

Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, the creative team behind Oscar®-nominated Embrace of the Serpent (also available for your SFC festival), return with this inspired mob epic for the ages — a completely fresh take on the origins of the Colombian drug trade, far from Narcos and Escobar, as told through the story of an indigenous Wayúu family.

In the 1970s, as an American-fueled marijuana boom hits Colombia, farmers quickly turn into seasoned businessmen starting a narco-trafficking era known as “la Bonanza Marimbera.”

In the Guajira desert, one indigenous Wayúu clan takes a leading role. Guided by matriarch Ursula Pushaina, the “Birds of Passage”—drug runners—face the constant risk of violence and incarceration from the outsiders in Northern Colombia. The cultural differences between the native population and the newcomers begin a brutal war that threatens to destroy the Wayúu way of life. As greed, passion, and honor blend together over the decades, the family’s unity, their lives, and their ancestral traditions are all put at stake.

A true story, the visually striking Birds of Passage is as much a thriller as it is an anthropological study on the consequences of outside influences to indigenous traditions.

A Translator (Un traductor)
Director:  Rodrigo Barriuso, Sebastián Barriuso, Cuba, 2018
Length:  107 minutes

Showtime(s) and location(s):
Thursday October 17 7:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Introduction: Prof. Beatriz Pérez Reyes, Department of Classical and Modern Languages

Thursday October 24 5:00 p.m., Floyd Theater

Synopsis: 

Based on the little-known true story of how twenty thousand Chernobyl victims were eventually treated in Cuba, Un Traductor unfolds as a tale at once historical and personal, brought to life in crisply shot, beautifully realized period detail of a Havana on the brink of economic crisis.

Havana, 1989: Russian literature professor Malin (Rodrigo Santoro, of Westworld fame) receives a mysterious note at the university with orders from the government sending him to a local hospital, where he learns he is expected to act as translator between Cuban doctors and the families of young patients from the Chernobyl disaster. Initially raging against his new role, Malin is forced to stay on. He eventually becomes deeply devoted to his patients. But while he becomes “king of the kids” at the hospital, his relationships with his pregnant wife and young son suffer.

Meanwhile, life around all of them shifts as the “Special Period”—the economic crisis in Cuba that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union—begins.

Red Gringo (Red Gringo)
Director:  Miguel Ángel Vidaurre, Chile, 2016
Length:  68 minutes

Showtime(s) and location(s):
Sunday October 27 1:00 p.m., Speed Art Museum's Speed Cinema
Introduction: Dr. Tricia Gray, Department of Political Sciences
Acting Director, Latin Am. & Latino Studies

Thursday November 7 5:00 p.m., Floyd Theater

Synopsis: 

Reminiscent of Waiting for Sugarman, director Miguel Ángel Vidaurre’s self-described “pop memory exercise” follows North American singer Dean Reed’s surprising and unlikely political transformation after learning of the brutality and repression of U.S.-supported regimes in South America.

Born in Lakewood, Colorado, Dean attempted to conquer the American music industry with his voice and charisma. His songs found modest success in the U.S. but became massive hits in Latin America. In 1962, with hopes of cashing in on his international popularity, Reed tours South America, where he undergoes a political awakening that earned him the nickname “Red Elvis.”

Making magnificent use of never seen old photographs, interviews, concert footage, and other unpublished material, Red Gringo sheds light on what was really happening in Latin America during the Cold War.

The Second Mother (Que horas ela volta?)
Director:  Anna Muylaert, Brazil, 2015
Length:  112 minutes

Showtime(s) and location(s):
Thursday October 17 5:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Thursday November 7 7:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Introduction: Dr.Christine Ehrick, Department of History


Synopsis: 

BRAZIL’S OFFICIAL ENTRY TO THE ACADEMY AWARDS®

An excitingly fresh take on some classic themes and ideas, The Second Mother dissects with both impeccable precision and humor such matters as class differences and family. The film centers around Val, a hard- working live-in housekeeper in modern day Sao Paulo.

Val (stunning performed by Regina Casé) is perfectly content to take care of every one of her wealthy employers’ needs, from cooking and cleaning to being a surrogate mother to their teenage son, who she has raised since he was a toddler. But when Val’s estranged daughter Jessica suddenly shows up, the unspoken but intrinsic class barriers that exist within the home are thrown into disarray. Jessica is smart, confident, and ambitious, and refuses to accept the upstairs/downstairs dynamic, testing relationships and loyalties and forcing everyone to reconsider what family really means.

Panama Canal Stories (Historias del Canal)
Director:  Abner Benaim, Carolina Borrero, Luis Franco Brantley, Pinky Mon, Pituka Ortega-Heilbron, Panama, 2014
Length:  106 minutes

Showtime(s) and location(s):
Thursday October 10 5:00 p.m., Floyd Theater
Introduction: Dr. Thomas Edison, Department of Classical and Modern Languages

Thursday November 14 7:00 p.m., Elaine Chao Auditorium
Introduction: Prof. Berta Calvert, Department of Classical & Modern Languages


Synopsis: 

This impressive, sweeping historical drama chronicles five incredible stories of people who helped build the famous canal and Panama itself. Spanning a century, from 1913 to 2013, the film weaves together the tales of five remarkable characters: Clarice, a young Jamaican laborer forced to choose between love and survival at the hands her American and British bosses during the Canal’s construction; Jake, the son of an engineer who grows up in the ‘American zone’ in 1950s Panama but who really wants to be with his Panamanian friends; José, a student caught up in the 1960s political unrest and his love for a pretty American girl, Lucy; Silverio, a chauffeur for visiting U.S. politicians who is hired to spy on them by local political activists in 1977; and Clarice Jones, a jazz singer in New York City who discovers that her great-grandmother worked on the canal and decides to go to Panama to explore her roots.