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Berlinale: The Message (El Mensaje) (2025)
★★★☆☆
The Message is a beguiling, opaque film in Competition at the Berlinale.
★★★☆☆
Most People Die On Sundays, written and directed by and starred in by Iair Said, is a very personal, heartfelt portrait of the absurdities of life and death.
★★★★☆
Simon of the Mountain, the feature debut of Federico Luis, intrigues you with its ambiguity as it follows the life of a disabled young adult.
★★★★☆
Fifteen years after the sudden end of their secret relationship, Victor and David meet unexpectedly and soon reignite their passionate affair with high emotional stakes for both in writer/director Matias De Leis Correa’s Since the Last Time We Met at BFI Flare 2024..
★★★★☆
Reas is an extraordinary documentary and musical by Lola Arias set in a women’s prison in Argentina, unlike anything you have seen before.
★★★☆☆
The Settlers is an angry, violent Western-type version of the brutal colonial birth of Chile by first-time filmmaker Felipe Gálvez.
★★★☆☆
Berlinale presents San Sebastián award winner El Castillo (The Castle) a strangely moving mixture of documentary and fiction by Martin Benchimol.
★★★★☆
Azor, Andra Fontana’s subtle, sophisticated feature debut, unsettles with an increasing sense of dread as a Swiss banker is enveloped in the Argentinian junta’s heart of darkness.
★★★★☆
Pablo Larraín’s fictional biopic of Chile’s greatest poet creates a magical realist cat-and-mouse story that Neruda himself would have enjoyed.
★★★★☆
Crazy, caustic, and ingeniously clever, Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales is an excellent Argentine selection box of intricate short stories.
★★★★☆
Dividing the world in two on a butterfly’s wing, Marco Berger’s Mariposa is a charming, delicate tale of the unflappable nature of love.
Jauja Filmed in a stunning 4:3 aspect ratio with rounded corners, Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja creates an intriguing story of Danish engineer Captain Dinesen travelling…
Read MoreAn excellent Argentine selection box of intricate short stories; crazy, caustic, and ingeniously clever.
Read More★★★☆☆
Uncovering Josef Mengele’s hideout in Argentina, Lucía Puenzo’s The German Doctor struggles to make a monster of the Angel of Death.