Filmmaker in Focus: Lucrecia MARTEL
Landmarks
Argentina, United States, Mexico, France, Netherlands, Denmark / 2025 / 122min /
Director Lucrecia Martel’s first feature-length documentary. It follows the 2009 killing of Javier Chocobar, an Indigenous leader in northern Argentina, who was murdered while trying to protect his ancestral land, and the subsequent trial. The film situates the incident within a 500-year history of colonial violence and land dispossession, exposing the structural injustices that persist in contemporary Argentina.
Zama
Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Dominican Republic, France, Netherlands, Mexico, Switzerland, US, Portugal, Lebanon / 2017 / 115min /
Set at the end of the 18th century in a far-flung part of Spanish-ruled South America, the film follows Don Diego de Zama, a once-decorated officer of the Spanish crown now reduced to the role of a colonial administrator. He waits interminably for a letter from the Spanish king granting him a transfer—either so he can reunite with his wife and child in Buenos Aires or be elevated to a more prestigious post. However, the longer the letter doesn’t arrive and time drags on this idle, corrupt environment, Zama grows increasingly anxious about his uncertain future, trapped in a feeling of stagnation. As his hopes of both home and promotion fade into despair, he volunteers for a dangerous expedition, dreaming of striking it rich. Will this final attempt to reclaim a long-sought normal life bring him what he seeks? Premiered out of competition at the 2017 Venice Film Festival and was Argentina's official entry for Best International Feature at the 90th Academy Awards. Pedro Almodóvar was a co-producer.
This film will be screened with Japanese subtitles only.
The Swamp
Argentina, Spain / 2000 / 103min /
A decadent bourgeois family passes a sweltering summer in a dilapidated estate in northern Argentina’s Salta Province wetlands. At the film’s heart is Mecha, a woman of middle age, and her husband’s family. Mecha, verging on alcoholic, passes the summer at their vacation home with a relation named Tali and her children—Tali herself is mentally unstable.
This film will be screened with Japanese subtitles only.