Cinema Tropical's Best Latin American Films 2000-2009

Amid the sweltering summer heat in northern Argentina, two middle-class families retreat to a crumbling country estate and a modest townhouse, where strained relationships, simmering tensions, and the presence of children and servants quietly expose the fractures of family life. Between idle days, gossip, and unspoken desires, the boundaries of ...

In Mexico City the lives and stories of three people become tied up in an intense Oscar winning film. Valeria and El Chivo have one thing in common: their souls stimulate them towards a relationship with their dogs. Amores Perros is the first in a film trilogy from Inárritus

Johan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and Man, Johan falls in love with another woman.

City of God is one of the most successful Brazilian films of all times. It depicts the raw violence in the ghettos of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970’s that even had young kids carrying guns and joining gangs when they should be playing hide-and-seek.

Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetenc...

In Mexico, two teenage boys and an older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life and each other.

When his estranged brother returns, Jacobo scrambles to find a wife to prove he's made something of himself. He approaches Marta, a worker at his sock factory, despite their tense relationship.

After running into something with her car, Vero experiences a particular psychological state. She realizes she might have killed someone.

16-year-old Amalia looks to save the soul of a middle-aged doctor.

Pans Labyrinth is the exquisitely produced fantasy film from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro who is actually famous for his works in science-fiction and horror. The film stars a little girl lost in a fantasy world. The film won three Academy Awards in 2007.

An Argentinian crime drama revolving around a sheet of rare stamps (the Nine Queens).

Freddy emigrates to Buenos Aires in search of a more prosperous life. In his native country, Bolivia, he left his family. But the capital of Argentina is not the paradise he dreamed of, and much less for illegal immigrants like himself. But even with that, he gets a job as a griller in a restaurant.

Raquel has been the live-in housekeeper for a kind, reasonably wealthy family for half her life, and the joyless repetition of the job has begun to take its toll. Increasingly dependent on painkillers, Raquel resorts to pranks and childish avoidance to antagonize the family’s college-age daughter and a procession of new servants, all in the hope...

In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro of the 1930s, João Francisco dos Santos is several things — son of slaves, ex-convict, thug, homosexual and adopted father for a number of pariahs. João expresses himself on the stage of a cabaret as Madame Satã.

A painter from the big city goes to a remote canyon to commit suicide. To reach some calmness he stays at the farmstead of Ascen, an old religious woman. Although but a few words are spoken love grows.

Three people and a baby set off on separate journeys, along the same road; their disparate dreams and stories intertwine amidst the breathtaking deserted Patagonic route.

A woodcutter goes about his work.

Fausta is suffering from a rare disease called the Milk of Sorrow, which is transmitted through the breast milk of pregnant women who were abused or raped during or soon after pregnancy. While living in constant fear and confusion due to this disease, she must face the sudden death of her mother. She chooses to take drastic measures to not follo...

"The Motorcycle Diaries" is based on the journals of Che Guevara, leader of the Cuban Revolution. In his memoirs, Guevara recounts adventures he, and best friend Alberto Granado, had while crossing South America by motorcycle in the early 1950s.

This is the dramatic story of a 15-year-old hermaphrodite. She lives with her parents, who have to cope with the challenges of her medical condition.

Documentary about Santiago, a peculiar man who used to work for the director and his parents as a butler. The material was filmed in 1992 but, for some strange reason, the director felt he couldn't edit it and put it aside. In 2005 he remembers the unfinished film and starts its edition.

Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

In an unnamed Latin American country that closely resembles Mexico, the government fights a rural insurgency with torture, assault, rape, and murder. Soldiers descend on a town, cutting off the rebels from their cache of ammunition hidden in a field. A family of grandfather, son, and grandson are among the rebels in the hills. The grandfather, w...

A story of a teenager and the strange events that take place in his small town.

In 1977, when she was four years old, Albertina Carri's parents vanished without a trace, victims of Argentina's brutal military junta. In this fresh and politically daring film, the young Argentinian filmmaker attempts to unravel the mystery, piecing together her memories and fantasies in a quest to understand her parents' untimely fate.

In 1998, a small South American village is in a flurry over the Pope's upcoming visit for the business opportunities that it will provide. While most of the residents plan to sell food at the parade, a smuggler family man decides to build a pay toilet.

The daily lives and routine of 37 families living in a huge 12-story building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: their drama, aspirations, intimate revelations, loneliness, dreams...

In order to get funds, a young woman living in the Northeast of Brazil decides to raffle her own body.

Santiago returns home from the Peruvian army ill-prepared to cope with the realities of life. Haunted by his violent military past, he is conflicted by his desire for education and his temptation to join his comrades in a decadent life of crime.

Flama and Moko are fourteen years old; they have been best friends since they were kids. They have everything they need to survive yet another boring Sunday: an apartment without parents, videogames, porn magazines, soft drinks and pizza delivery.

1942, in the middle of Northeastern Brazil, two very different men meet along the road: Johan, an aspirin salesman avoiding the German draft, and Ranulpho, a rural Brazilian seeking escape from the drought.

This film follows the crisscrossed fortunes of, among others, a rock musician, a flight attendant, a dog walker with an alarming penchant for over-the-counter medication, and a cab driver, who doesn’t really care about his life spiralling out of control, as long as he can sit in his old Renault 12.

Yessica is a rebellious girl who forms an unlikely friendship with quiet schoolmate Miriam. Yessica's home life is ruled by her brutal stepfather and her amoral stepbrother, Jorge, while Miriam shares a calm, loving household with her mother. The girls' friendship is shattered after Jorge arranges to have one of his friends rape Yessica.

A serial killer is obsessed with the John Travolta's disco dancing character from "Saturday Night Fever".

Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son o...

Zapa is a locksmith in a remote and quiet little town, lost somewhere deep in the province of Buenos Aires. After getting involved in a crime, his uncle, a retired policeman, bails him out and gets him a spot to join the Provincial Police as an aspiring officer in the thick urban sprawl of Greater Buenos Aires' West Zone. Soon he will get involv...

Buenos Aires is in a deep recession. As the money runs out, the relationship between an employer and her live-in maid changes dramatically.

In Buenos Aires, the twenty-something Jewish-Argentinean Ariel Makaroff ditches the University of Architecture and spends his time wandering through the downtown gallery where his mother has a lingerie shop and his brother runs an importation business. Ariel has never understood why his father left him when he was a baby, but when his dad return...

It's Easter in the beach house of a Chilean well-to-do and nowadays family. A self-centered and successful father, a disoriented mother and a son overshadowed by his successful father. The three of them, wait for the arrival of the son's first official girlfriend; a disturbing and rebellious young lady who will invade the house with her powerful...

A fascinating ride with taxi-driver, urban artist and social-visionary Oscar Brahim as he challenges Argentinean contemporary consumerism and politics with his graffiti-style transformations of advertising billboards in Buenos Aires.

A portrait of the construction workers involved in building the second deck of Mexico City's Periferico freeway.

Vargas, a 54 year old man, gets out of jail in the prvince of Corrientes, Argentina. Once released, he wants to find his now adult daughter, who lives in a swampy and remote area. To get there, he must cross great distances in a small boat on the rivers, scoring deep into the jungle. Vargas is a quiet and self-contained man. He possesses the res...

Dawn breaks in La Habana, and as the day advances we follow the simple lives of ten ordinary Cubans, with only sounds and images accompanied by music.

A suspense thriller about a reporter from Miami who travels to Ecuador in pursuit of a serial killer known as the "Monster of Babahoyo."

In 1979 and 1980, workers in São Paulo’s metallurgical industry organized a series of strikes that changed the face of union politics in Brazil. In the process, they established the groundwork for Brazil’s Worker’s Party and brought to the national spotlight union leader Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Metalworkers is a feature-length documentary abo...

Nene & Angel and their accomplice Cuervo participate in a botched bank robbery in 1965 Buenos Aires, then hide out from the police in Uruguay.

In 1997, before the visit of the pope to Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento from BOPE (Special Police Operation Battalion) is assigned to eliminate the risks of the drug dealers in a dangerous slum nearby where the pope intends to be lodged.

24 hours in the life of three street youths in Montevideo. Three teenage guys try to figure out what they're supposed to be doing with their lives in this drama from Uruguay that puts the emphasis on character over narrative.

A documentary centered on the union formed by Bolivian farmers in response to their government's (which was urged by the U.S.) effort to eradicate coca crops, and the man who would come to represent them, Evo Morales.

A married woman with a mute daughter has a forbidden relationship with the single father of a teenage boy.