Jorge Molina
Aram is a wearied accountant with an unbearably dull existence. With a nagging wife who berates him for not being assertive enough, and a measly paycheck, he quietly suffers while awaiting a long-deserved promotion. But there's more to Aram than his mild-mannered demeanor lets on: he has been secretly devising a scheme to finally get what he feels he is owed. One day he asserts his power menacingly when he kidnaps a schoolgirl and keeps her tied up in an abandoned warehouse. What seems like the perfect plan soon unravels into his worst nightmare, and his carefully constructed scheme comes crashing down piece by bloody piece.
Unites 8 Latin American filmmakers from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Spain, and Mexico in a single feature to count depict in seven stories some of the most brutal crimes that have happened in these countries.
An intellectual leaves the Cuban revolution and 'underdevelopment' behind only to find himself at odds with the ambiguities of his new life in the 'developed' world. A portrait of alienation, of an outsider with no clear-cut politics or ideology. A stranger in a strange land struggling with old age, sexual desire and ultimately the impossibility for the individual to belong in any society. The film's narrative is a collage of flashbacks, daydreams, and hallucinations comprising live-action, animation, and newsreel footage assembled to suggest the way personal memory works, subjectively and emotionally.
While Havana is full of zombies hungry for human flesh, official media reported that the disturbances are caused by dissidents paid by the United States. Panic seizes all until Juan comes to the rescue: he discovers he can kill the undead destroying his brain, and decides to start a small business under the slogan "We kill your loved ones."
Ned Giles, an aspiring news photographer, joins the 1932 Great Apache Expedition on the search for a young boy, the son of a wealthy Mexican land owner who was kidnapped by wild Apaches. Ned finds himself on an unexpected and perilous journey through rugged terrain, when a captured wild Apache girl must be exchanged for the kidnapped boy.
Lorenzo, a Cuban policeman specializing in grave robberies is sent to Havana to investigate the death of a Havana-born German national, Hermann (or German in Spanish) found in a famous grave. Lorenzo recounts his findings to the police chief (Major Anancio) as he investigates Dora, an elevator operator and Herrmann's landlady, Aguila and Silvia (who work for Cultural Affairs), Chrissy (a British-born Socialist Internationalist lover), Xiomara (Hermann's mother and a local drag queen as well), a dwarf, and a false Guatemalan who had raped Chrissy during her internationalist "love/sex campaign" in Guatemala. These are the main, but not the only characters, one must absolutely follow to make sense of the plot.
The 50-minute "Madagascar" has the resonance and eloquence of the best poetry, as it deftly turns an adolescent's search for identity into a metaphor for post-revolutionary Cuba. Laura is a professor at a shabby, stultifying college. Her daughter, Laurita, stops going to school, wishes to move to Madagascar and quickly races through several phases. One day, she looks like a heavy-metal fan, another like a bohemian who weeps at poetry and art. Slowly, she crosses the line from ordinary adolescent confusion to intense neurosis and beyond, finally becoming so obsessed with religion and good works that she brings 10 homeless children into the cramped house she shares with her mother and grandmother.
