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The 36th edition of the Toulouse Meetings brought together portraits of women, from childhood to old age, but also classic and contemporary Cuban films. Cinelatino served as a showcase to expose the delicate situation of Argentine cinema and opened its doors to the Mexican actress and singer Teresa Sánchez, the festival's guest of honor.
For 36 years, Cinelatino has been a film competition, in feature films, shorts and documentaries, and a festival of Latin American cultures in Toulouse, in the southwest of France.
The fiction competition featured 12 films, five of which were directed by women. Among them, 'Valentina or serenity', a film about childhood grief, filmed in Oaxaca, where its director, Ángeles Cruz, is from.
Valentina finds out that her father drowned in the river. A reality so heartbreaking for her nine-year-old that it is impossible to accept it. This is the second feature film by Cruz, who was inspired by her own experience to compose this story where the forest and the Mixtec language are very present.
Another female gaze, but this time at a more mature stage, is the central theme of the Costa Rican film 'Memoirs of a burning body', by Antonella Sudasassi. The film brings together the voices of three women, who reveal their most intimate secrets and sexuality when they have reached their 70s.
“Censorship has been part of Cuban cinema”
In 2024, Cinelatino emphasized the production of Cuba, an island of cinema, but which has been affected by successive economic crises, political censorship and exile. Under the title 'Resisting oblivion' (Résister à l'effacement), a selection of recent short films by directors from the diaspora was presented, accompanied by several round tables on cinema made inside and outside Cuba.
The well-known director Ernesto Daranas participated in the discussions and presented his documentary 'Landrián', about the late Nicolás Guillén Landrián, a visionary filmmaker, free but also excluded and censored by the revolution.
“It's not that it could happen, it's that it continues to happen. Censorship, unfortunately, has always been present in Cuban cinema since its beginnings. Over the years it has become an increasingly uncultured, increasingly crude fact. It has its peaks historically and is one of the elements that determines the exodus of Cuban filmmakers,” Daranas explained to Carrusel de las Artes.
Anti-Milei protests
Another crisis that was addressed in Cinelatino is the one that Argentine cinema is experiencing right now, in danger after the arrival of Javier Milei. The new president announced drastic cuts to culture and cinema, declaring them useless. The festival showed solidarity with Argentine artists and allowed the Assembly's demonstrations in support of the Argentine people, in the screening rooms and in the streets.
A total artist
At Cinelatino there was the magnetic Teresa Sánchez, a multifaceted artist. The Mexican is an actress, puppeteer, singer and composer, and was the guest of honor at the Toulouse festival, where she accompanied a selection of her films ('Two seasons', 'La camarista', 'Tótem', 'Verano de Goliat') and delighted the audience with his own songs.
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