Discoveries from Venezuela World Cinema

A hand becomes the protagonist in a piece that outlines, from a macro viewpoint, a city seen as a tactile scenario, with different women working on artisan crafts.

Animation film by Armando Arce.

This documentary is a tribute to the founder of Bolívar Films on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of this production company, which presents, through valuable testimonies and unpublished images, the life and work of Luis Guillermo Villegas Blanco and his legacy in the Venezuelan film industry.

Documentary created by Hacha y Machete (@hacha.machete) that reconstructs the historical memory of the events of July 29, focusing on the spontaneous popular uprising in Venezuela in response to one of the most blatant electoral frauds in recent history, for which the Venezuelan government blamed an alleged non-existent fraud from North Macedonia.

A taxi driver sets out for his daily route in the city center. After a series of fares, he discovers that all his earnings have vanished, forcing him into a desperate search for a way to afford his next meal.

Santiago, a young filmmaker, wanders around Caracas lost in a romantic reverie, longing for his girlfriend Carmela, who has left Venezuela. In this autobiographical portrait, Santiago Martín constructs a charming hybrid narrative between film shoots, friends and memories, an atmosphere of words and spaces evoking moments lived.

Locked in home during a blackout, mother and daughter argue in front of a candle flame. One holds on to the past, the other worries about the future. The melody of a song protects them from the shadows waiting in the dark, as they prepare to face an important decision that could change their lives.

Pliegues de Pausalina is a conceptual journey that traces time through the nostalgia of memory. In the highlands of the towns of southern Mérida, every wrinkle and every crack in the landscape is a fold that harbors the silenced history of Pausalina. This body, a living archive that safeguards family identity, confronts silence in a poetic act that unfolds the layers of a life marked by rurality, revealing the intimate connection between the ancestral body and the territory that endures.

The short documentary follows the efforts of a veteran filmmaker producing his own movies about the small village he lives in Caracas, Venezuela. It's the story of Alejandro Farfán, a man who registered the history of Pedregal for more than 40 years.

Documentary by Jesús Enrique Guédez.

Film by Franca Donda about Inés María Marcano.

Autorretrato is the mirror the filmmaker uses to look at himself, and through it, at his reality, using the cinematic collage.

Victor Millan is a Venezuelan folk artist. The naive painter appears alongside his friends, in his environment, the real world that surrounds him. Here, inventions, myths, obsessions, the sun, the sea, music, and original philosophy are imbued with humor. The film's soundtrack includes commentary and dialogue from the artist himself.

A lonely man, trapped in his routine and the confinement of a pandemic, has his only connection to the outside world through his apartment window. His life becomes a hypnotic and hopeless loop, a solitary struggle to find meaning in life at the end of the world. A story that confronts us with the fine line between sanity and isolation.

At the highest point of Venezuela, where the fog envelops the memory of time and the wind whispers ancestral tales, Páramos de Leyendas reveals, through portraits of muleteers and peasants, the courage of those who braved the heights and the relentless cold, often barefoot and wearing only a poncho. In this hostile environment, tough personalities were forged, but with an unparalleled spark of humor and wisdom.

Transformations is a work in which the author addresses the issue of gender freedom. According to Castillo, the moving images and the unfolding action open a window to free thought and free interpretation of what is seen. "To be or not to be, that is my film," says the author.

According to its author, Mom's chicken soup is based on a recipe for six people: one small chicken, two onions, two cloves of garlic, one carrot, three cups of milk, two potatoes, one tablespoon of cornstarch, and salt and pepper to taste. Mrs. Maite is making chicken soup in her kitchen, and next to her, on a television set, a strange character (Francisco) is seen struggling with windows and doors, determined to enter a house. In ten minutes, Castillo recounts, two actions are described that ultimately complement each other, as the outcome is disconcerting.

In the early 1990s, a group of friends escape their daily routine and hit the road for a fun weekend getaway. Anthony and his friends arrive at an abandoned housing complex ready to have a blast. However, an unknown entity suddenly fills the sky and influences the friends' behavior, unleashing a night of terror and turning it into an inexplicable and deadly experience.

A dance piece.

A series of disappearances have occurred on Ávila Mountain. But a group of young people, unaware of the truth, decide to venture into the mountains to rediscover an ancient legend: that of Dr. Knoche.

Reinita, an elderly grandmother, is preparing for a special event, full of enthusiasm. She goes out, shops, dresses up and puts on makeup to be ready.

Experimental animation film about the adventures of a little bunny.

Experimental video by Carlos Castillo.

In this short film, made on the occasion of a visit by Maurice Hasson to Mérida to perform in concert, he evokes in a warm conversation his indelible memories and deeply human experiences of his life in Mérida.

Documentary that narrates the evolution of Maracaibo during the 20th century

Live recording of Venezuelan rock band Ravahil, from La Quinta Bar, Caracas, on 11/9/2024

Recorded live from Caracas, Venezuela, witness El Cuartico's stand up comedy tour closing show

A woman lives in a world that is foreign and hostile to her, anddoes not provide any meaning or purpose to her existence, her mind is a labyrinth of memories that alienate and confuse her, which extends and drags her to a time that It's not yours.

Tells the story of four young people who were affected by the Vargas tragedy in 1999. They were six years old when the natural disaster occurred that left painful traces. In their adolescence, they participated in talks and short films to speak and give recommendations to more than 4,000 students about prevention and mitigation in the face of a natural and social disaster.

A man who names the simplest things with charmingly terms that most of his fellow countrymen do not understand suffers a serious indigestion, his troublesome visit to the doctor gives rise to this story told by the Cubillán neighbors, who did not miss any of the city's ins and outs.

Venezuelan drama by Arturo Plascencia.

Three By Three portrays three people in search of their own identity by playing on two levels of consciousness and intertwining reality and illusion. Ricardo, a Cuban gay refugee and his two American friends Sharon and Wes, express themselves through video taped documents which are juxtaposed with dramatized sequences based on their own experiences. The film imposes upon them circumstances which force them to deal with their contrasting backgrounds, their different prejudices and attitudes, their predetermined role in society, their relationship to one another and the reality of an uncertain future.

A young woman named Island immerses himself in the nostalgia of the absence of her boyfriend who emigrated, moves to the abandoned house of her family and tries to adapt to the new place while facing the deterioration of the house and the chiaroscuro's of loneliness.

Mariposa de Papel is a powerful and intimate two-sided documentary film that portrays the daily routine of a family of Andean farmers and the hard work of transferring agricultural fairs to the centre of Venezuela.

Amanda discovers Erasmo’s infidelity and grapples with doing what she believes is right.

A young woman faces the reality of living with her drug-addicted mother. Her world is shattered when she returns home and runs into the dealer who supplies her mother, forcing her to make the decision to confront the demons that consume her.

When Ivan Simonovis becomes the first and most famous political prisoner in Venezuela, a 15-year period of imprisonment leaves devastating effects on his and his family’s lives. Living in exile as a filmmaker, his son Ivan Andrés crafts a very personal and moving story, using over 25 years of unique family material, showing history from an angle never seen before. A family that had to overcome extreme hardship, a father that has to find his place in life again and a son that faces his traumas by inviting the viewer into the core of a wound that touched both his family and his entire country.

After several close calls with death squads, Mario Handler fled Uruguay in 1973 and eventually settled in Venezuela where he lived and continued to make films before returning to Uruguay in recent years. The first film he completed in exile, Dos puertos y un cerro is an essay film about the imbalances of trade. A narrator dispassionately recounts in voice-over a brief summation of Venezuela's situation as a hub port in the establishment of the colonial system in the sixteenth-century.

In the region of the Venezuelan Andes, trough the stories told by the peasants with fine sense of humor, we will travel backwards in time, following the thread that created the legends, through oral tradition, magic realism and songs that will reveal a collective conscience and the characteristics of their culture.

Education Center for disabled children located in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. Despite the precarious conditions in which this population lives since 40 years ago, the Polisario Front as the representative of the Sahrawi people has promoted inclusion as a way to avoid marginalization and discrimination of one of the most vulnerable populations within these territories: children with special needs. "Castro" is the man who devotes his life to this beautiful project fighting all odds: physical, psychic, social, economic, and even the incomprehensions of his own society. The Sahrawis are living (resisting) in one of the harshest deserts on Earth but Castro has the magic formula to achieve the inclusion of these wonderful beings in his society and in the rest of the world: MUSAWAT, EQUALITY.

In César Miguel Rondón's adaptation, a different origin story is presented. The fisherman Ismael (Félix Loreto) is unfaithful to his wife Cayita (Ana Karina) with a witch, Carmelina (Ileana Aloma). She swears revenge when she sees Ismael return to Cayita's arms and casts a curse that will cause the fisherman's death, setting his house on fire. Faced with the tragic event, Cayita, frightened, screams and begs the townspeople for help to save her son, who was inside the house when the fire started. Cayita's son dies alongside Ismael. It is then that she, crazed with grief, cries out for her son for eternity.

Douglas Bravo talks about the guerrilla war in Venezuela.

Farmers and miners unite to protest and drive away exploitative foreign corporations from Peru. They are given the choice: leave or die.

Documentary about the last 10 speakers of the Mopwoi language, in the Venezuelan Amazon forest.

Documentary on the struggle for land reform in Venezuela.

Film by Ángel Hurtado, which premieres today at the Cine-club Universitaire, Paris.

Horacio lives tormented under the memory of his dead mother. Until a series of revelations lead him to confront a dark past full of secrets.

Journalist exposé about how power and money ultimately corrupt the innocent.

Bittersweet comedy by Cesar Bolivar about a quiet and humble villager who becomes a faith healer.

How many parents lost their sons? How many sons lost their parents? A young boxer faces his biggest fight, although it is not the battle he expected, in a dark moment of life he faces fate with nothing to gain, like another son.

5 Factories provides a penetrating look at the Bolivarian socio-economic project designed to challenge the dominant neo-liberal development model. Since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, the Venezuelan government has implemented reforms to transform the nation into what Chávez and his supporters refer to as a form of democratic socialism. As a component of this economic transformation, the government has supported co-ownership initiatives in which workers’ councils play a key role in company management. 5 Factories provides a unique perspective on the Bolivarian experiment, examining the successes and challenges of five companies rejecting traditional ideas of industrial management.

Sol, a 14-year-old girl, shoulders the burden of running the household and caring for her younger sister when Giovanni, her long-absent father, reappears looking for a second chance.

A famous politician and his son face each other.

A recently deceased man returns home incorporated in a new spectral state. Invisible to mortals, he is left only to watch as greed takes over his family.

Miriam Torres stopped seeing and hearing at the age of 7. She learned to speak whilst being deaf-blind and now at 55 years old, she teaches other people with the same disability on how to communicate with others. Based on the diaries of Miriam, the film takes you through the inner journey of a woman seeking to recall the forgotten sights and sounds of her childhood, her mother's face, her own face, and the last image she saw and heard in her life.

Documentary by Liliane Blaser and Lucía Lamanna.