NEW DIRECTORS COMPETITION

Childhood: the state of being a child. Memory: the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained. Mysticism: the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience.

The 7 feature-length debuts selected to participate in this year’s New Directors Competition thread profound connections among somewhat disparate words: childhood, memory, and mysticism. By exploring relationships of care —with a focus on the complex dynamics between youth and elders— and introducing us to unique regions of Latin America guided by popular beliefs, this selection lays bare physical and emotional scars that give way to an embrace which allows us to find both individual and collective healing.

New Directors Co-curators Mirella Reichenbach Livoti and José Luis Cano

I Dreamed His Name

After 30 years denying her pain, Angela is confronted by her past when her father appears to her in a dream, asking her to find him. With her sister Juliana, she embarks on a trip across Colombia to the Indigenous lands where their father, a farmer of Afro-descent, became a victim of forced disappearance. The journey from Medellin to Caloto, in the challenging Cauca’s province in the Southwest of Colombia, confronts the sisters with paradoxes of the land, family emotions, and indigenous spirituality that will show Angela an unexpected path to reconnecting with her father.

Seeds

Director: Eliana Niño
Colombia | 2024 | Spanish with English subtitles | 100 min | Fiction

Shaira, a girl from the plains, dreams of participating in a coleo festival like her deceased brother Andrey. However, one day her horse disappears, and the reason is because her grandfather is suffering a drought in his crops forcing him to sell it without mentioning anything to his granddaughter.  On a plains sunset, his grandfather asks her if she knows the reason why animal figures are formed in the clouds. He tells her that the sky traps them and that is why these figures are formed, and until the day it rains again on earth, they return to the village. Shaira decides to go in search of a special seed that will make it rain again and bring her horse Semillas back.

XIBALBA MONSTER

Director: Manuela Irene
Mexico | 2024 | Spanish with English subtitles | 76 min | Fiction

Rogelio is 8, his parents are never around and he gets his best birthday gifts from his dentist. This summer he is sent away to his nanny’s hometown, nestled in the Yucatan jungle. Rogelio spends the excruciatingly hot days obsessing over “The Book of Spirits” which awakens in him visions and dreams of ghosts, but above all, of an old man who leaves a trace of death when passing by. Rogelio recounts this to his new Mayan friends, Lucio and Juanito, who say this man is not a dream, he is real and lives in the outskirts of town, he is known as the “Xibalba Monster”. Why these dreams? Rogelio starts to spy on the monster and lives an adventure that will change forever his view on life and death.

My Chest is Full of Sparks

Director: Gal S. Castellanos
Mexico | 2024 | Spanish with English subtitles | 75 min | Documentary

My dad dies. Days later, my mom escapes to Turkey to meet her secret Facebook lover. I propose to my mother that we communicate through video letters. These video correspondences reveal our attempts to see each other through a shaky journey of self-discovery. My mom, who gave up singing to embrace motherhood, finds freedom for the first time far from home. I, in solitude, while making this film, discover that I need to transition and change my name.

LOST CHAPTERS

Director: Lorena Alvarado
Venezuela | 2024 | Spanish with English subtitles | 67 min | Docu-fiction

When Ena discovers a mysterious postcard inside a book, she embarks on a search across Caracas to uncover a forgotten writer. Her search gradually interweaves with her grandmother’s memory loss and her father’s quixotic dreams.After years living abroad, Ena returns to Venezuela with a fragmented sense of self. At home, she finds her grandmother losing her grasp of reality. Meanwhile, her father spends his days looking for rare books in an attempt to safeguard the country’s literary past.

SOULS

Dir. Laura Basombrío | Argentina, 2024
Spanish with English subtitles | 78 mins | Narrative

Inhabiting the border that separates the mystical and the earthly, Souls proposes a dream. Over the half-Martian, half-Lunar landscapes of the Argentine Northwest, Estela tells her story. Since her mother died, the wounds press upon her ailing spirit. Her mother returns in dreams with messages, the violence of her father exerts pressure from the past, the distance of her husband feeds on secrets. Souls is Estela’s inner journey in search of healing amidst memories of the past, the diffuse time of dreams and the present where the living and the dead coexist on All Soul’s day.

CIRCO

Director: Lamia Chraibi
Canada | 2024 | Portuguese with English subtitles | 88 min | Documentary

In Rio de Janeiro, Richard dreams of dazzling audiences in the world’s biggest circus tents. But when the 20-year-old artist is kicked out of his home by his adoptive mother, his life is turned upside down. His once-clear dream begins to drift out of focus, and he embarks on a lengthy quest to find his way. A vibrant community of drag queens becomes his refuge, sparking a new path as he transitions to Ashila. As uncertainty looms, the spirits of Candomblé offer him hope, while his sister remains an unwavering pillar of support, in spite of her own struggles. Through an intimate, direct cinema approach, Circo immerses us in the lives of residents of Brazil’s favelas as they seek to shape their own futures.

Preceded by: Luis, at Home (Dir. Francisco Passuelo, Canada/Argentina/Mexico, 11 min)