Cine Latino Bringing Fresh Spanish Films To St. Anthony Main

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – 'Tis the season to explore via cinema.

Sound Unseen was here last week, bringing Twin Cities audiences new films about music and musicians, and this week the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul is hosting Cine Latino, an annual showcase of new works in Spanish-language cinema.

The week-long event kicks off on Thursday with The Thin Yellow Line, which is about five broke guys who get a job painting the center line of a road connecting two villages in Mexico. Along the way, the group discovers that the distinction between right and wrong is sometimes pretty slim. After the screening, there's a free opening night party at the Aster Café.

All Cine Latino screenings are at the St. Anthony Main Theatre. While the program focuses on Spanish-language films, not all the movies in the line-up are in Spanish. Instead, they might be directed by Latino or Spanish filmmakers.

Over the weekend, more than 10 different films will play. They include Sebastian Silva's Nasty Baby, which stars Silva, Kristen Wiig and Tunde Adebimp, of TV on the Radio, as a trio trying to have a baby in Brooklyn. There's also Kingdom of Shadows, a documentary casting a human lens on the drug war and its consequences for those on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Another is Silence in Dreamland, which explores the reality and dreams of Ecuadorian woman who's recently lost her husband and who befriends a street dog. The director, Tito Molina, will be present at two weekend screenings.

The program ends early next week, with films such as Paulina and A Perfect Day. The former is a thriller about social injustice in Argentina and the latter is a set in the worn-torn Balkans of the '90s with Benicio del Toro as an aid worker.

It all ends next Wednesday with The Pearl Button, filmmaker Patricio Guzman's poetic exploration of the Chilean coastline. The film is about the sea and its connection to the history of the country with the largest archipelago in the world. The Pearl Button won the best script award at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

For a full list of Cine Latino films, click here.