The seventh Sydney Latin American Film Festival opens on September 6 and runs over 10 days and across four Sydney venues in Circular Quay, Marrickville, Annandale and Bankstown.
Launching the festival will be the internationally acclaimed Argentine film MIA, a deeply moving drama that follows the story of a transvestite living in a Buenos Aires slum and explores the issues of discrimination and the right to happiness.
Highlights of the festival program include the gritty, fast-paced heist thriller and highest grossing Venezuelan film in history, The Zero Hour, and the ground breaking documentary The Sacred Science, a film about eight seriously ill people from around the world who are transported to the Amazon jungle to be treated by shamans.
The program also includes the multiple award-winning Colombian drama
Silence In Paradise. Based on true events, the film exposes the murderous strategies used by members of the Colombian military. It also features the winner of this year’s Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize, the Chilean documentary Violeta Went To Heaven, a tribute to the famed Chilean folksinger and national hero Violeta Parra.
The City closing night features the presentation of Cuba’s first ever Zombie film, the hilarious Juan of the Dead.
On September 15, the festival will extend to western Sydney when the
Bankstown Arts Centre throws its doors open for a fiesta and a screening of The Rumble of the Stones, Venezuela’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film in the 84th Academy Awards.
[For more info, visit www.sydneylatinofilmfestival.org .]