Not to be confused with Na Hong Jin’s 2016 South Korean horror film of the same name, The Wailing / El Llanto (2024), directed by Pedro Martín-Calero and written by Martín-Calero and Isabel Peña, had its World Premiere at the 2024 San Sebastián International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Seashell for Best Director. Picked up by Film Movement for U.S. distribution, The Wailing enjoys its Canadian premiere at the 29th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival (“Fantasia”).
For his debut feature, director and co-writer Martín-Calero has crafted an intense thriller layered in chapters examining sustained violence against women—one might say an institutional violence disguised as a supernatural curse—where the women are victimized by an assailant they cannot see, though one susceptible to documentation. It’s as if to say that over generations there can be no denying women have suffered violence, statistics document as much, though for each woman it feels singular and unexplainable; a horrific unjust mystery. The interstitial proof in The Wailing is captured on film, witnessed indirectly on camcorders and—decades later—on laptop screens and smartphones. What is witnessed is embodied in the figure of an old man, otherwise an invisible presence, hovering in the background, claiming his victims, passing from mother to daughter to younger sister.
The source of this generational curse or why it has attached itself to these particular women is not forthcoming in Martín-Calero’s narrative, which lends the threat power for not being fully understood. Was there a past action, a sin, that initiated this embodiment, this entity, that enforces punishment? How has it attached itself to a bloodline of women, influencing them physically, emotionally, and mentally? Is this violence against women and those they love a demon unto itself? Can it be undone? Which is the main question of the film, isn’t it? It’s the sound of the wailing, the weeping, heard by the women as they near danger. Can violence against women be undone? Can danger be averted? Or are women doomed to join the wailing, generation after generation?
It begins with Andrea (Ester Expósito) who discovers herself adopted, given away at birth by a woman institutionalized for being criminally insane. Notified of her mother’s death, Andrea goes looking for answers and finds them in an abandoned apartment building that—for all extents and purposes—could be considered a doorway to a nightmare. The next chapter introduces us to Camilia (Malena Villa), an aspiring filmmaker whose voyeuristic infatuation with Marie (Mathilde Ollivier) inadvertently reveals through her film footage the malevolent spirit attached to Marie who we next discover is Andrea’s mother. Marie’s backstory helps to piece together the patterns of violence, if not the reasons. Engaging and unflinching, The Wailing establishes dread early and sustains it throughout.
“How far would you go to reach Heaven?” asks the tagline for Cielo (2025), Alberto Sciamma’s magical realist fable about the tenacity of the feminine spirit. Winner of the Special Jury Prize, the Audience Award, and Best Cinematography at Fantasporto, where Cielo had its World Premiere, Fantasia claims its North American premiere in their flagship section Cheval Noir.
From the moment that Santa (movingly portrayed by newcomer Fernanda Gutiérrez Aranda) swallows a fish whole, we enter the realm of magical realism, long established in Latin American culture as a means of expressing deep political and psychological truths. Borrowing from Buddhism, the fish—often shown in pairs (frequently referenced as Pisces in Cielo)—represents happiness, freedom, and liberation from the cycle of life and death, which is what Santa wishes for her mother, who has been maltreated by her cruel drunkard husband far too long. Pisces likewise references the navigation between fantasy and reality, informing and guiding Santa’s many adventures.
In the years that I was a student of mythologist Joseph Campbell, women participating in his seminars frequently questioned his gendered monomyth thesis regarding the hero’s journey. They wanted to know why women weren’t represented in his schemata? Just as frequently he would dutifully reply that it was up to women to interpret the monomyth by their own gender. Cielo certainly tracks with that impulse as Santa invites her allies to help her deliver her mother to Heaven. Her allies are multiple: a dead condor that she brings back to life, a fish in a bucket named Manolo (nicknamed Manolito), a spirited luchadora known as La Reina (Mariela Salaverry), a disspirited priest (Luis Bredow), and a weary cop (Fernando Arze Echalar) imprisoned by reason and logic and oh so susceptible to the flourishes of fancy that Santa brings to his world and which—like a firefly—he wants to capture in a jar.
The scene where the Cholita female wrestlers joyously board their bus laughing and talking all at once is sheer beauty, as are many of Bolivia’s dramatic landscapes through which their bus travels. My breath halted in my chest as they negotiate a narrow rutted road high in the mountains: one of many moments demonstrating Alex Metcalfe’s cinematographic brilliance.
As Kat Ellinger nails it for Fantasia’s program capsule: “The film is not content with drab realism, and instead, via its bold primary color palette, its fantastical use of overpowering, sublime landscapes, and its dedication to joy, dance, and female intuition as defiance, ventures into the realm of myth, where survival becomes a sacred act: a ritual of the divine feminine.”
I adored this film and it has emerged as one of my favorites from the festival. The translated lyrics of Cielo’s closing rap anthem “La Boliviana”, written and performed by Alwa, bear reciting:
I am the Bolivian woman, bearer of my sorrows. / My life is mine alone, my karma all my own. / My hope is always here, dreams forever clear. / What I want is to fly, soar without guilt. / I will stride the road with no compass or fear. / I will touch the sky, words to my dreams. / The road is long, the going can be slow. / But the wind has told me: you’re going to touch the sky. / My fate is written, the future a done deal. / In my life is a fire that no one can extinguish. / May time forgive me when I despair. / When I lose myself, let life be fair. / I will escape beyond, running from my fear. / Aware of my mistakes, they cannot be eternal. / The path of my life is far from easy. / Despite heavy burdens I don’t give up. / If this is my destiny, it is what I live for. / And to that alone I dedicate my heartbeats. / My search for love and peace are my survival. / Leaving my solitude and reality behind. / I seek happiness, no matter what it takes. / I am the Bolivian who fears nothing. / No matter what I must endure, I will not doubt it. / Following the stars, I will surely get there; / Following the moon, I will find you. / I want to embrace your soul; not lose hope. / If joy reaches me, it won’t be out of ingratitude. / I am the Bolivian Woman, no longer bearing sorrows; / Owner of my life, unfollowed by my Karma. / I am now in Heaven; I am now with my Mother.
I Am Frankelda (2025), a North American premiere in Fantasia’s Animation Plus section, is framed by Rupert Bottenberg in Fantasia’s program capsule: “The task of crafting Mexico’s very first stop-motion animated feature film could not have fallen to four more worthy hands than those of Rodolfo and Arturo Ambriz.” Los Hermanos Ambriz, proteges of Guillermo del Toro, first gained widespread recognition with the short film Revoltoso (Fantasia 2016).
Mexico’s zoomorphic alebrijes achieved voice and characterization in Revoltoso (which translates as “rebellious”) “demonstrating daring ideas and a bedeviled attention to detail” (again, Fantasia). The band Altermutz who scored the short received a Certificate of Outstanding Achievement for Best Original Score at the Brooklyn Film Festival. That score is available on Spotify.
Rebellion abounds in Revoltoso, which features a “revolting” three-eyed boar named Jabalito who is on the scene of one of the first filmed wars in history: the Mexican Revolution. Los Hermanos Ambriz followed up with Frankelda’s Book of Spooks (2021), a five-episode miniseries on Cartoon Network Latin America and HBO Max, introducing the phantom “ghostwriter” Frankelda and her companion Herneval, a grumpy enchanted book, both trapped in a sentient haunted house. Eager to tell her handful of spooky stories, Frankelda addresses stories of children not wanting to be themselves and the danger that wishes come true, not free. The series ended on a disappointing cliffhanger and so I Am Frankelda remedies that by fleshing out Frankelda’s origin story. “It turns out that the most astonishing tale the two have to tell is their own!” Fantasia asserts. “The dazzling I Am Frankelda explores the challenging childhood of Francisca Imelda, and how she came to befriend Herneval, prince of the realm that lies on the other side of our dreams.”