The 38th Chicago Latino Film Festival, presented by Corona Extra, announced its selections for their Closing and Late Night screenings at ChiTown Movies Drive-In, 2343 S. Throop St., Saturday, April 30th.
The Festival closes with the Midwest premiere of Chilean director Francisca Alegría’s feature debut The Cow who Sang a Song into the Future starring Mía Maestro, Alfredo Castro and Leonor Varela. The gates for the Closing Night screening open at 6:30 pm with the film scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. The Cow who Sang a Song into the Future will screen exclusively at the Drive-In.
It will be followed by a late night screening of Blood-Red Ox, Bolivian director Rodrigo Bellott’s first incursion into horror and the first film in a potential trilogy. Gates for this Late Night screening open at 10:00pm with the film scheduled to start at 11 p.m. Blood-Red Ox will be available to screen virtually via Eventive on April 30th and May 1st to residents of Illinois and the Midwest states of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana.
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There will be one more day of in-person screenings at the Landmark Century Center, 2828 N. Clark St., on Sunday, May 1st with most films still available online throughout the Midwest.
The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future opens with thousands of fish dying in a polluted river in southern Chile. They sing as they gasp their final breaths and a woman dressed in a motorcycle jacket and helmet emerges from among their bodies. She is Magdalena (Mía Maestro), a woman who committed suicide many years ago. Upon seeing her in the streets of the nearby town, her widowed husband (Alfredo Castro) suffers a heart attack. Their daughter Cecilia (Leonor Varela) arrives with her children to help her brother tend to the family’s farm as her son Tomás, who identifies as a woman, establishes a deep connection with his mostly silent resurrected grandmother. That description barely scratches the surface of Francisca Alegría’s impressive fable-like feature debut about the fragility of family and the environment.
With Blood-Red Ox, Bellott (Tu Me Manques, an official selection of our 36th edition) follows the footsteps of horror masters of Dario Argento and Mario Bava to tell the story of Lebanese American journalist Amir and his boyfriend Amat who visit a town in Bolivia that is being threatened by an oil company. Amat suddenly starts to see visions of a giant blood red ox; as Amir tries to save him from these paranoid attacks, he begins to wonder if he is also losing his mind. The first film in a projected trilogy, Blood-Red Ox will take viewers on an intense hallucinogenic trip to the heart of madness.
“Family relationships may be at the heart of Francisca’s feature debut, but deep down her film is much more than that. It’s a thought-provoking visually rich exploration of our fragile relationship with the environment,” said Pepe Vargas, founder and executive director of the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago. “Bellott, like Panama’s Abner Benaim and Guatemala’s Jayro Bustamante, has become a one-man film industry in his country. Blood-Red Ox is a great example of his willingness to experiment with other genres and elevate his country’s profile in world cinema.”
Produced by the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, the 38th Chicago Latino Film Festival, April 21st-May 1st, will showcase films from all over Latin America, Spain, Portugal and the United States. The Festival will once again adopt a hybrid format with in-person screenings at the Landmark Century Center, 2828 N. Clark St., several Drive-In presentations at ChiTown Movies, 2343 S. Throop St., and with virtual screenings via Eventive accessible to residents of Illinois and the Midwest states of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana.
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