A guide to the 2009 Hola Mexican Film Festival

Fancy a holiday to Mexico? Si, si, mí también. Unfortunately I don’t have the funds to realise this dream right now. This is where the Hola Mexican Film Festivalsteps in, whisking us away from the tedium of everyday life and plunging us smack bang in the middle of a passionate, dramatic landscape with sensational views. This is the best of Mexico – on film. Armchair tourism at it’s finest, escapism and adventure that won’t damage your credit card nor risk your life. Spoken in Spanish with English subtitles - we’ll take it!

Your Mexican “holiday” could never be dull – imagine a odyssey across the Latin American countryside, encountering teenage gang members and drug dealers along the way, experience a dramatic and passionate love affair and witness love at first sight on a remote beach, run away with a cursed circus or travel back in time to the political turmoil of the 30s and 40s...Oh, you’ll see poverty, hardship, lust and betrayal, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and all for the cost of a movie ticket. Si, por favor! Muchos gracias!

Better yet, the Hola Mexican Film Festival is travelling all around the country –
Sydney 18 - 30 November Dendy Newtown and Opera Quays
Canberra 27 - 30 November Dendy Canberra Centre
Brisbane 1 - 6 December Dendy Portside Cinemas
Adelaide 4 - 9 December Mercury Cinema
Perth 10 - 15 December Cinema Paradiso
Melbourne 15 - 21 December ACMI Cinemas

And here’s the Truthbooth picks for best of the bunch: Stay tuned for the official reviews!

ARRANCAME LA VIDA, TEAR THIS HEART OUT
Based on the novel by Angeles Mastretta, and set in the backdrop of Mexico's post-revolution of the'30s and '40s. The film evokes the politics, love, murder and passion of the time. Story begins with the beautiful Catalina Guzmán (Ana Claudia Talancón) who at an early age, marries an older, charismatic and cunning General, Andrés Ascencio (Daniel Giménez Cacho). Dazzled by his world, Catalina escorts him on his political campaigns, observing at his side the intriguing political system in order for her to obtain social justice. She soon discovers, that by dedicating her life to the General, she might not attain her freedom. Tear This Heart Out was Mexico's official entry for the Academy Awards® consideration and one of the most expensive and successful films in Mexican cinema history.

LOS QUE SE QUEDAN, THOSE WHO REMAIN
Those Who Remain is a film about the families of those who have crossed the border to the United States in search of better opportunities. A film that explores the melancholy, memories and identity of the families of those who have crossed the border to the United States in search of better opportunities. A film about absence, about the families whose lives are defined by the voids emigration has created.

CONOZCA LA CABEZA DE JUAN PEREZ, MEET THE HEAD OF JUAN PEREZ
One of the funniest comedies to come out of Mexico in recent years! The story is set on a not-sotypical Mexican circus, where Juan Perez The Magician, decides to bring the glory back to the dying circus by stealing a 16th century guillotine for a final act, but he doesn!t know that it also carries a deadly curse.

AMAR A MORIR
The young heir to a vast Mexico City banking empire runs away from the cold, corrupt, racist, money-driven, super-elite, super-rich, classist world into which he was born, takes a wrong turn down a wrong road, and finds himself stranded in a poor, remote, beach community where he experiences a love at first sight with an exotically beautiful local girl—one that will place him—and her—in grave danger at the hands of a ruthless drug lord.
(And yes, that IS Aussie actor Craig McLachlan you see on screen!)

AMOR, DOLOR Y VICEVERSA, LOVE, PAIN AND VICEVERSA
This hypnotic sexual thriller, one of a new genre of commercially savvy Mexican productions, takes the audience on a dark journey through a psychological hall of mirrors. Upscale architect Chelo (Mori) has never met a flesh-and-blood man who could measure up to the dream lover she rendezvous with in vivid detail every night. Determined to bring him into the waking world, she devises the bizarre scheme of roughing herself up and claiming she has been raped in order to set the police on the trail of the man who visits her in her dreams.

SIN NOMBRE
Making its world premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Sin Nombre is an epic dramatic thriller from award-winning director Cary Fukunaga. Seeking the promise of America, a beautiful young Honduran woman, Sayra (Paulina Gaytan), joins her father and uncle on an odyssey to cross the gauntlet of the Latin American countryside en route to the United States. Along the way she crosses paths with a teenaged Mexican gang member, El Casper (Edgar M. Flores), who is manoeuvring to outrun his violent past and elude his unforgiving former associates. Together they must rely on faith, trust and street smarts if they are to survive their increasingly perilous journey towards the hope of new lives.

Click here to see session times and more on the Hola Mexico Film Festival website.