Latin America and Spanish Film Festival offerings to entertain

A scene from Mexican film Illusions Ltd screening in Whanganui for the Latin America and Spain Film Festival.

Two films screening in the Latin America and Spanish Film Festival give very different insights into Mexican and Spanish history and culture.

Mexico's entry, the 2015 romantic drama Illusions Ltd (Ilusiones S.A.) is a prime example of the genre of magical realism which pervades modern Latin American literature.

Director Roberto Girault, who recently visited New Zealand to talk about his work, says there is increasing enthusiasm for the exotic and magic worlds portrayed in modern Mexican films, and watching them is a good way to understand Hispanic values.

He deliberately sited his movie in the state of Campeche, at an undefined time in the past, because the place for him represents the best of traditional Mexican attitudes to love and family. The golden glow of its landscape fills the screen with nostalgia.

A group of professional actors work for Illusions Ltd, a company that specialises in infiltrating its personnel into real-life situations to make people's dreams come true.

One day, kind and wealthy Señor Balboa hires them to help create an elaborate ruse which will protect his beloved wife from the truth about their grandson, who left home 20 years previously.

The chosen actors arrive at the elderly couple's home to set the fantasy in motion, but things don't go exactly to plan.

What follows is a sweet tale of love and redemption, showing that the art of fiction can be so powerful that it creates and becomes its own reality.

Spain's harrowing 2010 film Even the Rain (También la lluvia) won three Goya awards, including Best Foreign Language Film in the 2011 Academy Awards.

A Spanish film crew arrives in Bolivia to expose the real story behind Christopher Columbus' discovery of America.

As the film progresses, the director (Gabriel García Bernal) becomes increasingly frustrated by his cast, one drinking too much and others getting embroiled in local water protests.

Telling stories on multiple levels – about Columbus' subjugation and conquest of indigenous people, multinationals seeking to monopolise Bolivian water, and films being made within films - Even the Rain is a powerful portrayal of the complexity of colonial and modern politics in the Americas.

Illusions Ltd (PG) screens at 4pm and Even the Rain (M) screens at 7pm on Saturday October 20 at the Davis Lecture Theatre, Whanganui Regional Museum, Watt St. Entry to both films is free, koha appreciated.