Cinema Libertad

A deaf and mute vagabond finds a large denomination bill in a Mexico City dump, and while he tries to buy something with it, others try to con him into giving it away.

When their mother disappears, a group of siblings are forced to fend for themselves, and make their way on their own. They eventually meet their grandmother, a loner who is reluctant to take them in.

Three Mexican filmmakers — Max del Río, Gabriela Ivette Sandoval, and Hugo Villaseñor Alcázar — share their processes and challenges around a single question: How can an independent film get seen? Through the eyes of insiders, the documentary reveals the complex journey behind making cinema visible in Mexico.

In Spain of the 1960s, a poor family of quinquis - a nomadic ethnic group with a tradition as old as that of the gypsises of Spain but with even more obscure origins - have a nomadic life marked by poverty. The son, Eleuterio Sánchez Rodriguez, nicknamed "El Lute", steals some chickens and is condemned to six months in jail. El Lute moves to the slum outskirts of Madrid with his common law wife, Chelo, starting an itinerant life as a peddler of pots and pans and living in a quinqui shantytown. He gradually embarks upon as life of petty criminality, eventually participating in the theft of a jewelry store during which a bystander is killed.

This is the story of a man fighting with all his might for his life and his freedom. Eleuterio (”El Lute”) embarks upon an action-packed future, fuelled by the notions of freedom and dreams of living just as his countrymen, ever-growing in his mind. Nothing and no-one can stop him. After escaping the Puerto de Santa María prison, the reunion with his family is just the beginning of what will become an endless escape.

The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.

Lola

Highlights the hardships faced by a boy who works selling popsicles at the local train station and forced by economic circumstance to smuggle rice across the Thai-Malaysian border.

Kim is 15; his father and step-mother have two buffalo, their lifeline as subsistence rice farmers. During the rainy season, there's no grass and the buffalo are starving. Kim volunteers to take the beasts inland to find food. On this coming-of-age journey, Kim sees men mistreat women, men fight with men, and French taxes rob the poor. He works for Lap, a buffalo herder whose past is entangled with Kim's parents, and he makes friends who will lead him to his place in the world.

An honest man emigrates to the capital in search of a better life, but ends up mired in extreme poverty along with his family; forced to overcome tragedy and despair to find, even in misery, a glimmer of hope.

Following the mysterious death of a friend, a teenage boy descends into a fractured nightmare built by the enigmatic businessman Richard Eagleton and his own subconscious.

Mercedes works as a cabaret performer to pay for her sister's studies. Problems begin when Mercedes and Paco, her exploiter, win a dance contest, but he refuses to share the prize with her.

A nightclub performer decides to raise the baby boy she found abandoned in a trash can, putting her job and social life in jeopardy.

A young couple struggling against poverty must keep their marriage a secret in order for the husband to keep his job, as his boss doesn't like to hire married men.

The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in the basement of a music school for poor children.

A travelogue through the remains of São Paulo failing 80s economy, including its in ruins film industry.

VEKA

One stranger on his way to an important meeting will transform the afternoon for another man in this emotionally stirring short film.

Sally, a girl of the tenements, is being raised by three bachelor foster-fathers, a pawnbroker, an organ-grinder and a peddler, and is very happy preparing their meals and keeping the house, while the old men bask in the attention she gives them. However, this happy home is broken up when Sally wealthy aunt appears on the scene and takes Sally back to her luxurious penthouse in order to give her the advantages of money and social position. But Sally's heart is back across the river with her plumber sweetheart, Jimmie Adams.

Professor Griggs, teaching at the college, doesn't get paid a living wage; his next door neighbor, successful shoemaker Olsen, has money and plentiful food, while the Griggses have hardly any. When the professor's rich student Phil West falls for beautiful Griggs daughter Amelia and also befriends the poor Reverend Gates (a young man who is also in love with Amelia), he observes the difference in his life and theirs and tries to help make a difference.