World Languages and Cultures Film Festival

[PEDRO ALMODÓVAR / SPAIN / 2021 / 123 MIN]

SDSU Campus, Founders Recital Hall, Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center

• 4 p.m. La Petite Crêpe food truck
• 5:30 pm film screening

Trailer:https://vimeo.com/786068081

Synopsis:

Spanish with English subtitles
With Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Rossy de Palma, Julieta Serrano

Starring Penélope Cruz in what could be the best performance of her career, Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers is an unabashed story of cascading twists and turns, thickening complications, and high family drama.

The film follows two mothers who meet at the hospital ward during their pregnancy, and whose lives become intertwined from then on. Janis (Penélope Cruz), middle-aged, doesn’t regret her accidental pregnancy and she is exultant. The other, Ana (Milena Smit), an adolescent, is scared, repentant, and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in those hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and becomes complicated, changing their lives in a decisive way.

In one of his best films to date, Almodóvar revisits the legacy of his country’s political violence during the Spanish Civil War to provide a broader and richer perspective on the exploration of one’s ancestry.

[FERNANDO TRUEBA / COLOMBIA / 2022 / 136 MIN]

SDSU Campus, Founders Recital Hall, Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center

• 5:30 p.m. film screening

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/792348904

Synopsis:
Spanish with English subtitles
With Javier Cámara, Nicolás Reyes Cano, Juan Pablo Urrego

Based on the legendary book Oblivion: A Memoir by the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince, and directed by Academy Award® winning director Fernando Trueba (Belle Époque), the film tells of the life of the prominent doctor and human rights activist, Héctor Abad Gómez (Javier Cámara), a father who is concerned about both his children and children from less favored classes.

After a devastating loss in the family, Héctor gives himself to the greater cause of public health programs for the poor in Medellín to the consternation of the city’s authorities. The film straddles two eras: Faciolince’s adolescence in Medellín in the 1970s, and his young adulthood in the ’80s up until 1987 when his father was assassinated.

[MARC WIESE / GERMANY / 2022 / 93 MIN]

SDSU Campus, Founders Recital Hall, Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center

• 4 p.m. El Charrito food truck
• 5:30 p.m. film screening

Trailer:https://vimeo.com/780983621

Synopsis:
Spanish with English subtitles
With Paúl Jarrín Mosquera, Fernando Villavicencio

Chinese mining in Ecuador’s mountains sets the stage for an epic battle between eco-guerrillas and a corrupt government in an intensely dramatic documentary.

This Stolen Country of Mine follows Paúl Jarrín Mosquera, who leads the indigenous resistance against the exploitation of their land. Meanwhile, China uses the Ecuadorian government to turn the country into one of its new colonies, having made the country dependent on credit through a series of corrupt and greedy treaties. When journalist Fernando Villavicencio exposes these plots and gets access to the contracts between China and Ecuador, the government wants him silenced too. Both men are fighting for freedom in this battle against a superpower.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Marc Wiese, the film exposes China’s massive hunger for natural resources and how during the last decade it has been aggressively operating to obtain access to these resources in Ecuador. The country is now stuck with the most Chinese debts in Latin America.

[FERNANDO LEÓN DE ARANOA / SPAIN / 2021 / 116 MIN]

The State Theater, Downtown Sioux Falls

• 6 p.m. Doors open for a complimentary drink and popcorn
• 6:30 film screening

Trailer:https://vimeo.com/792346537

Synopsis:
Spanish with English subtitles
With Javier Bardem, Manolo Solo, Almudena Amor, Óscar de la Fuente

A smash hit in Spain starring Academy Award® winner Javier Bardem, The Good Boss is an acerbic character study and a darkly funny social satire of the workplace.

Blanco, the charismatic owner of a family-run factory, is under pressure as he covets a local award for business excellence. Everything needs to be perfect! But the veneer of the perfect company cracks as Blanco has to deal with a vengeful fired worker, a depressed supervisor, and an infatuated ambitious intern. To win the competition, the manipulative “good boss” shamelessly meddles in his employees’ private lives and crosses every line imaginable, unknowingly starting an explosive chain reaction with wild consequences.

[SILVINA SCHNICER, ULISES PORRA / ARGENTINA / 2021 / 89 MIN]

SDSU Campus, Founders Recital Hall, Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center

• 5:30 p.m. film screening

Trailer:https://vimeo.com/649423771

Synopsis:

Spanish with English subtitles
With Cecile Van Welie, Magnolia Núñez, Adelanny Padilla

Featuring striking cinematography and outstanding performances, Carajita (which means annoying child) explores the tenuous relationship that exists between race, class, and family.

Sarah, the pampered daughter of a corrupt oligarch whose family recently relocated to Las Terrenas, thinks of her Black Dominican nanny, Yarisa, as “part of the family.” The two have a “mother-daughter-like” relationship that transcends their social standing. That illusion is put to the test when Yarisa’s spirited daughter Mallory goes missing, challenging Sarah’s naïve beliefs.

Boasting intuitive storytelling and confident direction, Carajita plays like a psychological thriller, deriving oppressive tension from unspoken inequalities and the impunity of privilege.