The Lateinamerikanische Tage is an annual film festival in Leipzig and Halle that aims to highlight some of the stellar productions that come out of Latin America every year. Since 2010, the Sudaca e.V. organizes the fest and collaborates with various sponsors and volunteers. They put together a program that aims to inform, educate, challenge but also always entertain.
Our city’s spots for the festival – whose 10th edition runs from 17-26 October this year – are as prestigious, alternative and varied as Leipzig itself.
Screening venues range from the cozy cinema rooms of Kinobar Prager Frühling in Connewitz and Cineding in Lindenau to the grand stage of Schaubühne Lindenfels across the street on Karl-Heine- Straße.
Each event and film is part of a mosaic of critical and colorful Latin American cinema offerings. The program is split up into different sections, each fulfilling its own role within the concept of the festival.
With its political and cultural ambitions, the Lateinamerikanische Tage festival has a lot of screenings with discussions afterwards.
Many of the entries are specifically selected to shine a light on sociocultural, economic or political themes. To structure these goals, the festival has grouped many screenings into specific sections.
Eine Welt Wettbewerb
This is the only competition of the Lateinamerikanische Tage. It features a wide variety of short films that all incorporate the subject of development policy. This concept pervades our globalized world, bringing Latin American people, issues and themes directly to our doorstep in Leipzig: be it through admirable new approaches to global problems, influence from international corporations, or conflicts whose participants span from Europe to South America.
All these short films have a goal beyond entertainment value, and the competition’s task is to find the one that best encapsulates and conveys their subject.
To determine the winner, the festival convened a jury from the community that met routinely before the festival. This jury viewed and discussed each short film with regard to its development policy aspect, while always keeping in mind all the general criteria that make a film better than the sum of its parts. The films should merit a viewing from a cinema audience with all levels of interest and background information.
I was glad to have been a part of that process and can only recommend participating yourselves if you get the chance.
The different voices in the jury ranged from filmmakers both local and Latin American, to experts from different educational backgrounds, to native Latin Americans. Within this illustrious group, the discussions were always engaging and fruitful. Philipp, the moderator, facilitated an open forum that encouraged everyone to voice their enthusiasm, concerns, criticism and praise.
While there was a lot of consensus for many of the entries’ political and sociocultural impact, the cinematic merits were often contested, and it felt challenging to marry both expectations. The goal was to land on a work that both engages the form of cinema to its fullest and also manages to feel relevant enough to facilitate a discussion of development policy import.
All of the entries in the Eine Welt Wettbewerb will be screened multiple times during the festival and presented by jury members with some insight into the competition’s process and selection.
To find out who our winner was, you can attend the 9 PM screening of the Cuban film Yuli on the 24th of October in Schaubühne Lindenfels.
This will mark the official presentation of the competition’s winner and include a screening of the winning film.
We’ve got all the competition-related showtimes for you here.
Erupción – Mexican Cinema
Mexico’s growing cinema landscape lends voice to many new and exciting creatives. This section wants to highlight a few of these critical filmmakers and their respective causes.
Among the entries from the North American country is a profile of an independent, family-run paramedics unit at the heart of Mexico City, trying to fill the gaps in medical coverage in the metropolis. You can find this gem called Midnight Family and all other screenings from the Erupción section in our list of showtimes.
Nosotras – Women in Film
The Nosotras section boasts some of the most intriguing and compelling stories from Latin America, all featuring a uniquely female point of view. The entries include experimental fare like the four-minute short Las Dos Mitades (straight from the Berlinale Talents campus) and the student film Cambio de Turno about two watchwomen at an art gallery.
The leading entry of the section is the ambitious La Cuarta Ola, which examines the machismo omnipresent in Argentinean society, and the growing feminist resistance fighting against the oppressive societal climate surrounding abuse and arcane abortion legislature.
Have a look at our listing to find out when and where to watch them all.
