Latin Noir: Latin America Through Its Crime Novelists
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An explosive fusion of history, literature and crime. The documentary Latin Noir was premiered at the 38th edition of the Miami Film Festival, which took place in March 2021 in a hybrid version, and with programming available online in the United States. Through the stories and characters of Leonardo Padura (Cuba), the recently deceased Luis Sepúlveda (Chile), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico), Santiago Roncagliolo (Peru) and Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina), the documentary presents an overview of the recent Latin American political history. The film also introduces a generation of emboldened novelists who emerged from the student movements of the late 1960s to reflect on the societies in which they found themselves through a new literary genre—the noir. As military dictatorships seized power in Latin America in the 1970s, this new generation of crime story writers expressed what their governments denied through the power of literature—black fiction. These storytellers found a way to describe their collective past and the truths of their present. Out of the daily crime in Latin America during the 1970s, a new type of novel emerged that differed from its counterparts of the same genre in Europe and North America; a new crime novel that specifically addressed the urban nexus of power, violence and terror. Latin Noir offers a history of this genre while showing us how this new narrative became an undeniably useful tool for writers to reveal to society the crime networks that existed around them. |
Taking the viewer through the storylines and protagonists of Padura, Sepúlveda (who died last year in his 70s from Covid-19), Taibo, Roncagliolo and Piñeiro, the documentary highlights the lasting repercussions of the dictatorships in the Latin American psyche and the development of the region's specific artistic and literary traditions. Both a history lesson and a reflection on the power of art in society, Latin Noir is a valuable tool for studying the Latin American literary canon.
About the director: Andreas Apostolidis is a filmmaker and one of Greece's leading crime novelists. He has written eight crime novels and short story collections and has translated more than 30 works of crime fiction, including authors such as Hammett, Chandler, Ambler, Highsmith, and Ellroy.
About the director: Andreas Apostolidis is a filmmaker and one of Greece's leading crime novelists. He has written eight crime novels and short story collections and has translated more than 30 works of crime fiction, including authors such as Hammett, Chandler, Ambler, Highsmith, and Ellroy.
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4/10/2021
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