Las Cruces

With Carlos Vasquez Mendez and Terese Arredondo Lugon in person

Dirs. Carlos Vasquez Mendez, Terese Arredondo Lugon. Chile. 2018, 80 mins. Digital projection. In Spanish with English subtitles. Both an inventive approach to political history, and a rigorously structured work of cinema, Las Cruces excavates the ghosts of a haunted landscape. Shortly after the violent coup against the Allende government on September 11, 1973, a group of nineteen union members who worked at the same paper factory were arrested and not seen again, until their corpses were found in a cemetery six years later. As we hear actors read testimony from the family members of the victims and confessions by police involved in the massacre, the filmmakers train their camera on the forest landscape where the events took place. The effect is both illuminating and cathartic, a clear-eyed study of a state-controlled crime that evokes the films Claude Lanzmann, but with a roughly hewn 16mm aesthetic. North American premiere.

Tickets: $15 (Free for members at the Film Lover level and MoMI Kids Premium levels and above). Order tickets online. (Members may contact [email protected] with questions regarding online reservations.)