What to Watch Online This Week on Cinema Tropical
Special Event:
New York Women In Film and Television Goes to the Oscars: THE MOLE AGENT
Join NYWIFT anc Cinema Tropical for a free screening of the Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary, The Mole Agent followed by a Q&A with Maite Alberdi (Director, Producer), Marcela Santibañez (Producer), and Julie Goldman (Executive Producer).
Sergio is a Chilean spy. Sort of. At least, he is offered the role of one after a casting session organized by Detective Romulo, a private investigator who needs a credible mole to infiltrate a retirement home. Romulo’s client, the concerned daughter of a resident, suspects her mother is being abused and hires him to find out what is really happening. However, Sergio is 83, not 007, and not an easy trainee when it comes to technology and spying techniques. But he is a keen student, looking for ways to distract himself after recently losing his wife. Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent is a stylish combination of an observational documentary and a spy movie, with sleek camerawork and wonderfully watchable characters. It’s a unique meditation on compassion and loneliness that will infiltrate your heart and never let go.
Film available to stream through Monday, April 12 at 11:59pm EDT.
Panel discussion tonight, Monday, April 12 at 4pm EDT.
SON OF MONARCHS at the San Francisco and Seattle Film Festivals
(Hijo de monarcas, Maya Da-Rin, Brazil/France/Germany, 2019, 98 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Employing a rich and romantic visual tapestry, this drama tells the story of Mendel, who grew up enchanted by the migrating monarch butterflies in his native Michoacán. Now, he sequences their DNA in New York while trapeze lessons allow him to experience their flight. On a visit back home to Mexico, the young man finds himself weighing matters of culture, love, and family, recognizing how his own life path has followed the migration of the beloved insects he studies. Part of the Sloan Science on Screen program.
San Francisco Film Festival: Available to stream nationwide through Sunday, April 18
Seattle International Film Festival: Available to stream nationwide through Sunday, April 18
Virtual Theatrical Release:
THE FEVER
(A Febre, Maya Da-Rin, Brazil/
France/Germany, 2019, 98 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Manaus is an industrial city surrounded by the Amazon rainforest. Justino, a 45 years old Desana native, works as a security guard at the cargo port. Since the death of his wife, his main company is his youngest daughter with whom he lives in a modest house on the outskirts of town. Nurse at a health clinic, Vanessa is accepted to study medicine in Brasilia and will need to be leaving soon. As the days go by, Justino is overcome by a strong fever. During the night, a mysterious creature follows his footsteps. During the day, he fights to stay awake at work. But soon the tedious routine of the harbor is broken by the arrival of a new guard. Meanwhile, his brother’s visit makes Justino remember the life in the forest, from where he left twenty years ago. Between the oppression of the city and the distance of his native village, Justino can no longer endure an existence without place.
Watch Now
Daily Recommendation:
AFTER LUCĂŤA
(DespuĂ©s de LucĂa, Michel Franco,
Mexico, 2012, 102 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“Six months after the death of his wife in a car accident, Roberto and his teenage daughter Alejandra set off from Puerto Vallarta for a fresh start in Mexico City. Alejandra finds her way more easily than Roberto but very soon, she arouses the baser instincts in her classmates. Ashamed and unable to tell her father about the escalating bullying at school, Alejandra’s silence ultimately takes a dreadful toll. An unflinching reflection of upper middle class youth in Mexico by one of the country’s most promising filmmakers, the film has been a box office success since its release. After LucĂa’s intense and shocking exploration of the violent effects of bullying are essential viewing for all students. The film earned the prestigious Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was the Mexican submission for the 2013 Best Foreign-Language Academy Award.” —Pragda
Daily Recommendation:
THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE
(La princesa de Francia, MatĂas Piñeiro, Argentina, 2014, 70 min. In Spanish and Italian with English subtitles)
“As in his critical hit Viola (2013), MatĂas Piñeiro doesn’t transplant Shakespeare to the present day so much as summon the spirit of his polymorphous comedies. VĂctor (Julián Larquier Tellarini) returns to Buenos Aires after his father’s death and a spell in Mexico to prepare a radio production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Reuniting with his repertory, he finds himself sorting out complicated entanglements with girlfriend Paula (Agustina Muñoz), sometime lover Ana (MarĂa Villar), and departed actress Natalia (Romina Paula), as well as his muddled relations with the constellation of friends involved with the project. As the film tracks the group’s criss-crossing movements and interactions, their lives become increasingly enmeshed with the fiction they’re reworking, potential outcomes multiply, and reality itself seems subject to transformation. An intimate, modestly scaled work that takes characters and viewers alike into dizzying realms of possibility, The Princess of France is the most ambitious film yet from one of world cinema’s brightest young talents, a cumulatively thrilling experience.” —New York Film Festival
Films Available to Stream Now:
THE SPOKESWOMAN at the San Francisco Film Festival:
(La vocera, Luciana Kaplan, Mexico, 2020, 77 min. 77 min. In Spanish, Maya, Yaqui, and Wixárika with English subtitles)
Another gripping and illuminating documentary from Luciana Kaplan, here the focus is Maria de Jesús Patricio, the first indigenous woman to run for president of Mexico. Known as Marichuy, her fraught and heartfelt campaign reveals the intricacies of Mexican politics while cementing the critical issues facing the indigenous population into the national discourse. Exploring racism and gender discrimination, Marichuy’s journey is one of inspiration and hope.
Available to stream nationwide, April 9 – 18
Virtual Theatrical Release:
MY DARLING SUPERMARKET
(Meu Querido Supermercado, Tali Yankelevich, Brazil/Denmark, 2019, 80 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Grocery store employees, today’s essential workers, get star treatment in My Darling Supermarket (made prior to the pandemic). Set within a bright, colorful supermercado in São Paulo, Brazil, this charming, funny documentary glides through a seemingly endless array of vibrantly designed shelves and displays, but it’s the store’s employees who take center stage. Rodrigo (in bread) discusses quantum physics and parallel universes; Santo (a forklift operator) builds video game cities; a security officer tracks possible shoplifters on closed circuit TVs (“Two suspects near the condensed milk!”); Ivan (a baker) likes to dress as Goku, a Manga character; and then there’s the artist who lovingly paints the prices. A panoply of individuals with fears, hopes, and questions about their place in the universe are celebrated in a quirky portrait that juxtaposes their idiosyncrasies with the assumed mundanity of bringing food to our table.
Daily Recommendation:
SOLDIER
(Soldado, Manuel Abramovich,
Argentina, 2017, 72 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“Your beats should convoke History. You should evoke scenes from thousand combats. Stimulate the moral.’ Drums beat out a march in steady rhythm. Under their officers’ strict gaze, soldiers assemble in the barrack yard. The Argentinian flag is raised; the sound of trumpets accompanying it on its slow ascent up the mast. With clinical precision, Manuel Abramovich portrays a young recruit on his path through military training, his transformation from youth to young adult marked by doubt and conflict. In empathetic distance to its protagonist, the film reveals the tension between the rigidly defined system of the military academy and the vulnerability of the young man. Coming of age in a total institution.” —Berlin Film Festival
Daily Recommendation:
THE JOURNEY OF MONALISA
(El viaje de Monalisa, Nicole Costa, USA/Chile, 2019, 93 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)
“Chilean-born performer and writer Iván Monalisa fully embraces his dual selves: scrappy, masculine Iván as well as diva, transvestite sex-worker Monalisa. A reunion with filmmaker Nicole Costa, Iván’s former college classmate, provides the opportunity for a journey through this undocumented transgender immigrant’s daily life of sex, drugs and poetry—as well as a quest for US legalization. Pragmatic and humorous, Iván Monalisa navigates the gritty underbelly of New York City with charisma and charm.” —DOC NYC
Daily Recommendation:
WHILE WE ARE HERE
(Enquanto Estamos Aqui, Clarissa Campolina and Luiz Pretti, Brazil, 2019, 75 min. In Portuguese, English, French, and Arabic with English subtitles)
“Charting a relationship from its origins through its aftermath, While We Are Here follows the lives of Lamis, a Lebanese woman, and a Brazilian man named Wilson, who one day meet while living in New York. In alternating voiceover, the pair reflect on their impressions of the city, their courtship, and their eventual separation, as vivid images of urban and rural life trace Lamis and Wilson’s individual paths from New York to Berlin and Brazil, respectively. Equal parts diary film, travelogue, and epistolary drama, this discreetly expanding fiction from partners Clarissa Campolina and Luiz Pretti captures the beauty and fragility of love and its memory.” —Film at Lincoln Center