Film at Lincoln Center and Cinema Tropical announce the seventh edition of Neighboring Scenes, the annual wide-ranging showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema featuring established auteurs as well as fresh talent from the international festival scene, February 24–28.

Tickets for Neighboring Scenes are now available!

The selections in this year’s slate of premieres exhibit the expansive styles, techniques, and approaches of Latin American filmmakers today, representing a wide variety of countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Kicking off the festival is Opening Night selection The Other Tom, the fifth and most recent collaboration between Rodrigo Plá and Laura Santullo, who also wrote the novel on which it’s based. The Centerpiece selection is The Box, Lorenzo Vigas’s complex psychological thriller that takes a critical look at Mexico’s maquiladora system. Two Cannes 2021 Directors’ Fortnight selections to be presented are The Employer and the Employee, writer-director Manolo Nieto’s provocative Brazilian border-set drama starring Nahuel Pérez Biscayart [BPM (Beats Per Minute)]; and Medusa, Anita Rocha da Silveira’s visionary follow-up to Kill Me Please (ND/NF, 2015), a reinterpretation of the mythological Greek figure of the title in a misogynistic, Bolsonarist Brazil. Additional notable presentations include Aurora, director Paz Fábrega’s delicate drama on motherhood and maternity; and Red Star, Sofía Bordenave’s film essay revisiting the locations where the Russian Revolution occurred 100 years earlier.

The lineup showcases multiple New York, U.S., and international debuts such as the documentary Dirty Feathers, produced by Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini and directed by Carlos Alfonso Corral, a sensitive portrayal of the residents of a homeless community on the U.S.-Mexico border; About Everything There Is to Know, Sofía Velázquez’s playful debut documentary set in Santiago de Chuco, birthplace of César Vallejo, one of the most important Latin American authors of the 20th century; Thais Fujinaga’s The Joy of Things, from acclaimed Brazilian production collective Filmes de Plástico, portraying the routines of a middle-class family; Me & the Beasts, a deadpan comedy by Nico Manzano about finding meaning in the least expected of places; The Sky Is Red, Francina Carbonell’s powerful film about the 2010 fire at San Miguel prison in Santiago, Chile, using images from security cameras, archival audio, and extant documents; and Natalia Garayalde’s potent 2021 Jeonju Film Festival Grand Prize–winner Splinters, revisiting footage she recorded in 1995 of a major military factory explosion in her hometown of Río Tercero (Argentina).

Neighboring Scenes also presents a dazzling array of short films, including León Siminiani’s dystopian twist on Colombian history, The Stillness Syndrome, featuring filmmaker Luis Ospina; Dear Chantal, a moving tribute to filmmaker Chantal Akerman by Nicolás Pereda (Fauna, NYFF58); Sol de Campinas, from another NYFF alum, Jessica Sarah Rinland, following the work of a group of archeologists in a Brazilian city; Pablo Marin’s mesmerizing Super-8-shot Light Trap; Azucena Losana’s Holiday, a visual journey through images of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo shot on 16mm; and Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s (The Wolf House, NS 2019) stop-motion The Bones, winner of Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival.

Organized by Carlos A. Gutiérrez and Cecilia Barrionuevo.