Discoveries from Venezuela World Cinema

A mysterious skeleton appears in a Mexican neighborhood.

If there was an award for the most stylish opening scene, it would go to Álvaro Pulpeiro for ‘So Foul a Sky’. A road movie and a immersive report from a Venezuela on the verge of collapse. Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s classic novel ‘Nostromo’, we are led into a twilight world where allegiances change among the travellers under the enormous dome of the sky. Pirates and pilgrims cross tracks, and oil is traded on the black market in the middle of nowhere. Crackling car radios relay an ideological battle of words. Has the oil cast a curse on Venezuela? The country is in the midst of the worst political and humanitarian crisis that South America has experienced in the 21st century. Instead of trying to explain the chaotic situation, Pulpeiro places us in the middle of it. A sensory and cinematic film, where the oil runs like thick, black blood through the arteries of the road network and connects us with some of the people who are trying to make life work beyond law and order.

In Secretaries Day, either you get laid or you get paid.

Directed by Margot Benacerraf, Reverón is a poetic and visually striking documentary that delves into the life and artistic vision of Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón. Set in the sun-drenched coastal landscape of Macuto, where the artist lived in near isolation, the film captures his eccentric lifestyle and unique creative process. Through evocative imagery and a contemplative narrative, Reverón explores his deep connection to nature, his experiments with light and texture, and his profound artistic genius. This seminal work stands as a tribute to one of Venezuela’s most influential painters and a landmark in Latin American documentary filmmaking.

The first Venezuelan graffiti documentary featuring the participation of the most important writers of national graffiti, either by style, quantity, quality, technique and their experience or the places where they write, these writers have set a milestone in what graffiti is today in Venezuela. In the graffiti: respect, strategy, intelligence, experience, agility, skill, boldness, competition, secrecy and illegality are key and determining issues captured in this documentary. Pinto con lata takes place in the Gran Caracas, and records the graffiti movement during the years 2008-2011. Gran Caracas and its contrast, its nights, its harshness, its people and graffiti are the main protagonists.

In Venezuela, one day in 1948 there were born three children all named Victorino: Pérez, mulatto and son of the poor Lucía; Perdomo, son of a middle-class communist who gets arrested; and bourgeois Peralta. On the day of his eighteenth birthday Pérez escapes from prison using lather pretending it to be a rage attack. Peralta shows a friend of his a car he got from his parents. A young lady gives herself to Perdomo as a birthday present. Pérez finds his mistress with another man and wounds her. Pérez and a few others rob an old man while riding on their motorcycles. Perdomo and a bunch of bushwhackers plan to rob a bank. Pérez sees a friend of his smoking pot while Peralta visits a cousin of his and has sex with her. Perdomo’s father, recently elected a communist representative wants to talk him out of his violent ways. Pérez sleeps with three girls and remembers how he once killed a man in the middle of a robbery. Peralta and his friends shoot dogs just for fun. Perdomo and his pals…

A hit man of international prestige arrives in Caracas to carry out a political attack without knowing the identity of the victim. From the Illegal Immigrant Detention Center, El Paso, Texas, terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, alias Bambi C4, gets into the action, while revealing his activities in Venezuela and all of Latin America during its most active and deadly period.

A young woman is seduced by an evil doctor and then sent to a brothel to be sexually exploited.

Documentary about Venezuelan poet Juan Sánchez Peláez.

A young man who dreams of being an artist remembers an argument he had with a cousin who distrusted his plans. The disagreement is so great that, even though they both talk, neither of them listens to what the other has to say.

An old man travels to the city in search of a book. After a long journey, he returns to his town empty-handed and resumes his strange routine.

On December 31, 1958, a detective investigates the theft of a painting from the home of a wealthy widow in Havana. The relationship between the two, amid investigations and danzones, reveals the history of the house and the family. The arrival of the bearded men in Havana changes the course of events.

After becoming undefeated champions of the South American Women Under-17 Championship and overcoming one of the worst social and economic environments for sports practicing, the Venezuelan team takes a chance to win the first World Cup for their country, having the chance to give a voice to women football in their country and perhaps in all of South America.

Rufino, a man of 71, is widowed and decides to return to the village where he met his wife. There is reunited with his landscapes and his friend Gaspar, a painter who has taken over a little orphan girl named Ana eight-year-E, Rufino who will be forced to remain under the same roof, despite its hostile coexistence . The loneliness of these characters are facing, beginning strokes to a new way to overcome abandonment.

An indomitable spray dog takes as its territory the "home" of Matthew, a beggar immersed in solitude.

Short film by Diego Rísquez.

After the suicide of her son, Amanda starts to question her life and the decisions she made when she was young. This movie take us back to Venezuela in the 1950s through the memories of Amanda Contreras, between of the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez.

During a holiday, Charlie invites his friends for a weekend getaway at his family’s beach house in Caruao, Venezuela. Already on the first night, an unexpected triangle causes tension within the group. This has an impact on the rest of the weekend. Sultry coming-of-age drama in which youthfulness, friendship, curiosity and freedom are extensively celebrated. Relationships are damaged, against the background of a paradisaical place where anything seems possible.

When a deaf young man asks his estranged older brother to join him in a musical contest, this salt-of-the-earth blue collar worker must dust off his musical chops in order to be his little brother's voice.

In the dark streets of a city plunged into chaos, Ángel, a young man tormented by a violent past, seeks refuge in Marian's pure love, leading a strangely normal life. However, this reality is shaken when a series of disappearances of young students begins to spread terror through the community. The nightmare intensifies when Ángel and Marian are dragged into a party organized by a sinister cult.

The story delves into the existential problems of a forty-something executive who rediscovers his youthful drive and generosity in a young woman, only to fall and rise from a terrible moral crisis, which is cinematically resolved within a period of 24 hours.

This intimate letter from a migrant grandson about his Italian grandmother, also a migrant, unites in a trip to Italy the portrait of Venezuelan migration as a vital legacy of the European post-war period and the current crisis that has led the South American country to the largest exodus the continent has ever known.

Venezuelan drama directed by Juan Corona.

The obsession of The Mother for The Negro causes her sick relationship with The Daughter. Mother and daughter perform a daily routine of rites to conjure The Negro's soul. It pushes them into the dolorous tragedy which will consume them.

As an immigrant to the US, Vela left behind everything she knew: her home, her family, her traditions and beliefs. A decade later she makes her way back home to search for her family and her roots.

This autobiographical video, in which the filmmaker reveals his homosexuality to his mother, explores the awkward situation of being ‘out' to friends but closeted to family. Prompted by the deaths of his father and best friend, Salvo returns to his native Venezuela to ‘come out' to his mother. In this intimate dialogue she discusses her preconceptions, fears and love, and he reveals childhood memories, adolescent thoughts and fears, and affirms his present loving relationship.

A forgotten musical record connects Caracas to Tehran, revealing untold stories of oil, not as a commodity, but as a political leverage for the liberation struggles in Palestine and building Pan-Arab solidarity between 1960-1970.

Documentary on the Indigenous tribes that live in the Venezuelan Llanos.

A taxicab is implicated in a story with a plot twist.

A young couple lives together in a small apartment in the city of Caracas, Venezuela. As they spend their summer in lockdown, their relationship will become increasingly toxic and more dangerous.

Short that tells the history of Campoma, a small Venezuelan town founded by black slaves.

Liliana, a mother of 5 kids, living in terrible condition in a Caracas's "favela", is hoping to get a new flat from President Chavez in order to change her life. August 2007, Venezuelan's President Chavez convokes a referendum in order to change the constitution and get absolute power. Carlos, a local Party Activists tries to convince Liliana to vote for the new constitution. Liliana is promised that she'll get a flat if she votes for Chavez. Hugo Rey is a journey into the totalitarian mechanism employed by Chavez to perpetuate his power.

Luis Toñac (Carlos Arreaza), a renowned scientist and researcher, heads to a village with anthropologist Amelia (Ligia Petit) to investigate the appearance of dead animals without a drop of blood in their bodies. A creature called El Chupacabra is believed to be responsible for these strange deaths. The scientist downplays the possibility, considering it part of local mythology, similar to the legend of the death of a pre-Columbian princess who was reincarnated as his coworker.

Cruz Quinal, "the mandolin king," lives near Cumana in a mountain valley surrounded by sugarcane fields. Perpetuating 16th century Spanish traditions of guitar-making, Cruz fashions such musical instruments as cuatros, marimba, escarpandola, and his own creation, a mandolin with two fretboards. He is an accomplished musician as well. In this moving portrait, Cruz compares himself to a decaying colonial church across the street: revered yet neglected, the village altar stands, paint peeling, under the open sky.

A doll acquires consciousness and embarks on an introspection of the self.

Oscar and Paco live in a country where a fascist revolution has been imposed for the last 50 years forcing the people to live stark naked.

Bakiro is a shy peccary who works as a janitor at a classical music hall. He dreams of being an opera singer, but has a horrible voice. However, moved by a mysterious force that compels him to sing, Bakiro discovers his inner self.

Depression and finding happiness again.

Venezuelan movie

A prequel to PAVO 90.

After his mother falls ill, filmmaker Humberto González Bustillo flies back home to be by her side. Before his return, he remembers his childhood, and in turn recounts the colonial interests in Venezuelan lands, together with the continuous oil crisis.

Maverick-y cop takes down drug-dealers despite PD corruption and governmental complicity.

Juan Manaure, the only Venezuelan who has the chance to play one-on-one with Michael Jordan, started his career as a young humble boy in a slum debating himself between follow his dreams of basketball glory or falling dawn into the tempting abyss of a life in crime.

The four children of a married couple hatch a plan to prevent their father from leaving with another woman

Its production seems like a game: throwing a Super 8 camera, turned on and recording, from what was, at that time, the tallest building in Caracas. The film films the shots of its own accelerated fall, a succession of chromatic shots that cannot be identified either in terms of what is “recorded” in each one (windows, columns, walls, sky or floor) or in its own formal configuration as an image (color, composition, shapes or figures). What is perceived and apprehended is the impotence of vision – of perception – to distinguish this extreme and exhausting mobility, this vertigo of “free fall.”

A small town in Venezuela believes that one of the inhabitants, Miguelina, is possessed by the devil after flowers and fruit burst forth as if by magic from the dry earth.

Eugenio is a real state salesman who's facing a middle life crisis. Cornered by his boss's demands, his girlfriend, and his co workers, he decides to party the night out and "forget about it all at least for one night." Alone and drunk he stumbles into what it looks like a teapot that ended up having the power of granting three wishes. Eugenio is too drunk to make sense of what's happening and messes up his wishes which brings a hilarious chaos into his already chaotic life.

Five stories, five perspectives on the same emotional territory called “country.” A Cuban actress tries to make her way in Chile; two women reunite after decades and confront the passing of time; another survives in solitude while facing her fears; a father and son seek reconciliation amid old wounds; and a birth turns into a desperate race for life. Five intertwined stories—small tales of love, loss, and hope—forming an intimate mosaic about identity, belonging, and the search for a place in the world.

A biologist from London goes to Amazonia to study the local flora. There she meets three other scientists from different nationalities and backgrounds. They advise her not to go near the Autana, a mountain regarded sacred by the local tribes, without a guide. She will do exactly the contrary.

A politically charged film, where a series of archetypal characters are presented.

A machine-voice makes a "sad film of his homeland" for a dying patient to ease its passing: footage from Kennedy's visit to Venezuela in 61' creeps through montage errors, and a seemingly endless poem comes alive one last time.

Carmen practices Vaulting (artistic gymnastics over a horse) and has a tense relationship with her coach and teammates, as they will introduce her to a strange rite.

HYSTERIA is a one take and real time feature film that tells the story of Marina, a woman who is not able to recognize her emotions. Her partner Martin will try to help by submitting her to some exercises and tests that trigger a hysteria in which both will be victims.

In the begining of 20th century, after the "thousand days war", the country was devastated. Gunmen to the service of land lords attack small land owners to get their lands. Aquileo is the only one who survives, and promises to take revenge on the killers.

A group of musicians try to establish a pacifist Latin American philharmonic orchestra. They must face the efforts of an American spy to ruin the project.

A journalist will seek to decipher what happened in Cabimas in 1992, when a well burst, flooding a village for nine days. The different versions of the population and the cult of a saint will make you enter a labyrinth with unexpected situations.