Latin American Cinema is Booming, But You Wouldn’t Know it From the 2018 Cannes Competition

Over the last few years, films by Sebastian Lelio, Lorenzo Vigas, Lucrecia Martel, Michel Franco, and Pablo Larraín have wowed audiences at many of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. They’ve won Oscars and Golden Lions, earned retrospectives and the esteem of the world cinema establishment. By many indications, Latin American cinema is booming. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the Official Competition at Cannes, the world’s most prestigious film festival. In the last five years, only four films from the region (Aquarius, Chronic, Wild Tales, and Heli) have been invited to that most exclusive of cinephile programs — that’s fewer than the number of French films playing in this year’s competition lineup alone.

In fact, this year’s fest has no Latin American films vying for the Palme d’Or. Alfonso Cuarón’s  Roma would have been in contention had it not been picked up by Netflix; the streaming giant refused to adhere to new fest rules stipulating a theatrical release of all titles in competition, thus leaving one of our most anticipated projects off the Croisette altogether.

Elsewhere, though, the French film fest will have several titles from countries like Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico playing at the various other programs, including premieres from Embrace of the Serpent‘s Ciro Guerra and I Promise You Anarchy‘s Julio Hernández Cordón as part of the Directors’ Fortnight selection. We’ve rounded up the admittedly short list of Latin American films playing the French fest which will be sure to be making waves in the next few months.

71st annual Cannes Film Festival runs 8 to 19 May, 2018