Hispanic Heritage Month 2021 @ UAB: Films

Based on Tomas Rivera's classic novella, this is a beautiful and moving account of a family of Mexican-American migrant workers in the 1950's.

Marcos is a middle-aged chauffeur to Ana, daughter of a Mexican general. Ana and Marcos both have secrets that unite them.

Lila Aviles turns the monotonous work day of Eve, a chambermaid at a high-end Mexico City hotel, into a beautifully observed film of rich detail. Set entirely in this alienating environment, this minimalist movie brings to the fore Eve's hopes, dreams, and desires.

Carlos Saura's film melds the personal and the political in a portrait of the legacy of fascism and its effects on a middle-class family.

Documentary. An immersive and metaphorical portrait of post-colonial, "utopian" Cuba, where the 1898 explosion of the U.S.S. Maine still resonates. Explores a century of interventionism and myth-making together to interrogate time, imperialism and cinema itself.

A group of high-society friends are invited to a mansion for dinner and inexplicably find themselves unable to leave. A takedown of the rituals and dependencies of the frivolous upper classes.

Tomas discovers that a Mexican folk-rock hero has been hospitalized somewhere in the city. He convinces others they must track him down, and what they thought would be a trip to find their childhood idol becomes a voyage of self-discovery across Mexico City's invisible frontiers.

Camila, a young Argentine, travels to New York to work on a new Spanish translation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. When she begins to receive a series of mysterious postcards, she second-guesses her artistic endeavors and seeks answers about her past.

Guatemalan film fusing fact and fable in a dreamlike depiction of the daily lives of Kaqchikel speaking Mayans on a coffee plantation at the base of an active volcano.

Argentine tale of a dissolute bourgeois extended family, whiling away the hours of one sweaty, sticky summer. A visceral take on class, nature, sexuality, and the ways that political turmoil and social stagnation can manifest in human relationships.

Documentary. Examines how US news and entertainment media portray -- and do not portray – Latinos to uncover a pattern of gross misrepresentation and gross under-representation.

Simon Bolivar (Edgar Ramirez) fought over 100 battles against the Spanish Empire in South America. He rode over 70,000 miles on horseback. His military campaigns covered twice the territory of Alexander the Great. His army never conquered- it liberated.

A man employed on a cargo ship requests shore leave to visit his sickly mother, who lives in Tierra del Fuego. He depends on booze and the unkindness of strangers to make the grueling journey southward, hinting at tragedies beneath the surface.

Gus Van Sant's debut feature is an idiosyncratic, provocative film. Set in Portland, Oregon, the film follows a romantic deadbeat with a wayward crush on a handsome Mexican immigrant.

Most renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, bourgeois intellectual Sergio passes his days wandering Havana in idle reflection, his amorous entanglements and political ambivalence gradually giving way to a mounting sense of alienation.

Well into their 30s, Juan and Benjamin still can't seem to finish veterinary school or leave their parents' homes. On a fateful Christmas Eve, they decide it's time to distinguish themselves by executing the most infamous cultural artifacts heist in Mexican history. Inspired by true events.

Paulina is a young lawyer in Buenos Aires who chooses to go back to her home town. Paulina decides to teach in a suburban high school as part of an inclusion program. After the second week, she's brutally assaulted by a gang but returns to work.

The second part of a trilogy about Chile during the dictatorial reign of Augusto Pinochet. An unassuming state employee who transcribes notes during autopsies becomes obsessed with his neighbor, a dancehall who is involved with a group of left-wing activists.

Johan, married, falls in love with another woman, and must decide whether to betray his wife and disrupt the stability of the community or sacrifice his true love and future happiness. Shot entirely on location in the Mexican Mennonite community near Chihuahua.

Life of devoted ascetic Saint Simeon Stylites, who waited atop a pillar surrounded by a barren landscape for six years, six months, and six days, in order to prove his devotion to God. Yet the devil huddles below, trying to tempt him down.

Widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s. In a small Castilian village in 1940, in the wake of the country's devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a traveling movie show of Frankenstein and becomes possessed by the memory of it.

Ariel returns to Buenos Aires seeking to reconnect with his father Usher, who has founded a charity foundation in Once, the city's bustling Jewish district where Ariel spent his youth. In the process of trying to meet his father and getting entangled in his charitable commitments, Ariel also reconnects with his own Jewish roots.

Pedro Almodovar's comedy starring Antonio Banderas as an unbalanced but alluring ex-mental-patient and Victoria Abril as the B-movie star he takes prisoner in the hopes of convincing her to marry him.

As Augusto Pinochet holds Chile in the grip of dictatorship, a fifty year old man obsessed with John Travolta's character from Saturday Night Fever imitates his idol each weekend in a small bar on the outskirts of Santiago. A stinging allegory for the corruption and egomania of Augusto Pinochet.

The four officers of Unit 7 have a tough mission: eliminate the city's most dangerous drug trafficking network before the opening of the 1992 Seville World Exhibition.

Documentary. The story of famed Chilean singer and folklorist Violeta Parra, tracing her evolution from impoverished child to international sensation and Chile's national hero, while capturing the swirling intensity of her inner contradictions, fallibilities, and passions.

Banned in Spain. A novice nun does her utmost to maintain her Catholic principles, but her lecherous uncle and a motley assemblage of paupers force her to confront the limits of her idealism.

Documentary. The body of an unidentified immigrant is found in the Arizona Desert. Marc Silver and Gael Garcia Bernal embed themselves among migrant travelers on their own mission to cross the border, providing rare insight into the human stories which are so often ignored in the immigration debate.