Argentina’s Mar del Plata International Film Festival begins this Saturday, November 16, and runs through Sunday, November 24. While this is the fest’s 28th edition, the event is technically Latin America’s oldest fest, having been founded in 1954. After more than a decade, it largely went dormant between 1967-1995, until it relaunched in its current incarnation in 1996. The only “A” class fest in South America, the seaside resort destination event annually draws over 100,000 attendees for its impressive 425-strong film lineup, consisting of approximately 250 feature-length films and 170 mid-lengths and shorts. Included are nearly 75 documentary features, largely representing new Argentine and Latin American filmmaking. The following offers a spotlight on some of these:
Nearly half of the Argentine Competition features are docs, including: Emiliano Grieco’s coming-of-ager DIAMANTE (pictured), Ada Frontini’s portrait of a SCHOOL OF THE DEAF, Baltazar Tokman’s character portrait I AM MAD, and Marcos Pastor’s spiritual road movie THE SEVENTH SALAMANCA. The broader Latin American Competition only includes one doc among its fourteen entries, Edison Cájas’ EL VALS DE LOS INÚTILES, about the continuing legacy of Pinochet in Chile, while the International Competition features no nonfiction.
Outside of the competitions, the festival’s Focus sidebars highlight numerous themes. The Panorama of Latin American Cinema includes several documentaries, such as: Pablo Berthelon’s ROSITA, THE FAVORITE OF THE THIRD REICH (pictured), about a little-remembered Chilean chanteuse who became a favorite of the Nazi leadership; Tevo Diaz’s DEATH PENALTY, on a 1980s Chilean police scandal; Wanadi Siso’s THE LABYRINTH OF POSSIBILITY, a portrait of a blind Venezuelan photographer living in NYC; and Fernando Gabriel Krichmar and Alejandra Guzzo’s ROAD TO SANTIAGO – JOURNALISM, MOVIES AND REVOLUTION, an exploration of the history of Cuban broadcast journalism. Another Focus area, Documentary Window, looks at indigenous cinema, including Marina Rubino’s exploration of the impact of climate change TUNTEYH OR THE RUMOR OF THE STONES, Julián Borrell, Demian Santander, and Franco González’s river resource-focused UAHAT, Lucas Riselli’s ethnographic portrait of a small Andean village, INTO THE PUNA, and Ariel Di Marco’s partly animated look at the legends of the natives of the Impenetrable region, AT THE EDGE OF THIS WORLD.
Mar del Plata’s Panorama similarly has separate strands, with docs included in several: an Auteurs section devoted to several films by Wiseman, Lanzmann, and the like, familiar from the Fall fest circuit; a music doc section leaning heavily to regional performers; also locally-oriented Special Screenings; the genre-films focused Open Veins; experimentally-tinged Altered States, including Alessandro Pugno’s UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS, a meditation on Spain’s Franco-era Valley of the Fallen, and Spanish collective Los Hijos’ TREES, a free-association essay film on people and their surroundings; and an Argentine Panorama, which, beyond topics of strictly local interest, also features Fito Pochat and Javier Olivera’s MIKA, MY SPANISH WAR, about a global activist revolutionary couple and their experience in the Spanish Civil War; and Lucia Vassallo’s THE JAIL OF THE END OF THE WORLD (pictured), on the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, and its infamous Tierra del Fuego Prison.
what (not) to doc 