Santa Sangre

A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother, a religious fanatic and leader of the heretical church of Santa Sangre (“Holy Blood”), and … Read more

Vancouver Latin American Film Festival Presents: Buy Me a Gun

A retelling of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ that plays both with gender and the notion of adventure tales, BUY ME A GUN is set in the near-future of Mexico where all the women are disappearing and children are being abducted with frightening impunity. A young girl named Huck wears a mask to hide her … Read more

Chavela

The Rio Theatre and the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (VLAFF) are partnering to co-present a double feature in advance of the festival’s highly anticipated 17th season happening August 22-September 1. This year, VLAFF will be featuring over 70 films from across Latin America, and is set take place at various venues around the city … Read more

Roma

The most personal project to date from Academy Award-winning writer-director Alfonso Cuarón (GRAVITY, CHILDREN OF MEN, Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN), ROMA follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, in an Oscar-nominated performance), a young domestic worker for the family of Antonio, Sofia (Oscar nominee Marina de Tavira), and their four children in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma in … Read more

Romeo + Juliet (30th Anniversary Screening)

“My only love sprung from my only hate.” Join us at the Rio Theatre on Sunday, February 15, for a 30th Anniversary Galentine’s Day-ish(?) screening of Baz Luhrmann‘s iconic, very contemporary and highly stylized take on William Shakespeare‘s classic romantic tragedythe Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering, yet very hip, … Read more

Santa Sangre

Fifteen years after EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN unlocked moviegoers’ collective third-eye, legendary provocateur Alejandro Jodorowsky made his late-’80s comeback with the SANTA SANGRE, a film whose staggering odyssey of ecstasy, anguish, belief, blasphemy, beauty and madness enraptures both Jodo newbies and dedicated fans alike. Fully restored to an inky sheen, this evocative tale … Read more

Silence

SILENCE tells the story of two Christian missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who face the ultimate test of faith when they travel to Japan in search of their missing mentor (Liam Neeson) at a time when Christianity was outlawed and their presence forbidden. The celebrated director’s 28-year journey to bring Shusaku Endo‘s 1966 acclaimed … Read more

Y tu mamá también

Before breaking into Hollywood with films like CHILDREN OF MEN and GRAVITY, director Alfonso Cuarón made his name with arthouse audiences thanks to the sexy roadtrip movie Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN (which he also co-wrote). Gael Garcia Bernal (NERUDA, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES) and Diego Luna (ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY) star as two Mexican teenagers … Read more

El Topo

Renowned filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s bizarre, ultra-violent and allegorical EL TOPO is an acid-trip Western set in two halves that have widely been compared to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In the first half, writer-director Jodorowsky performs something of a hat trick in his role as a violent, black-clad gunfighter – the eponymous El Topo (“the … Read more

The Holy Mountain (50th Aniversary Screening)

The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Chilean writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism in THE HOLY MOUNTAIN is a spiritual quest for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. … Read more