We are proud to have played a big supporting role in the 7th annual Vancouver Latin American Film Festival. The year’s program includes an extraordinary selection of 29 full-length features and 33 short films from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay and Venezuela. In recent years, Latin American cinema has taken the international stage by storm. Chilean films, in particular, have been making a splash at film festivals around the globe since 2006, thanks to renewed government funding and a commitment to the seventh art. These days, Chilean cinema is alive and well – the country rolls out more than a dozen films per year. In honour of this rich cinematic revival, VLAFF is proud to present a stellar lineup of award-winning, internationally acclaimed films made in Chile, including Andrés Wood’s La Buena Vida (The Good Life) and Tony Manero, a distinctly Chilean answer to Saturday Night Fever. The beautifully shot La Buena Vida has won numerous accolades, including Best Latin American Film at the Spanish Goya Awards. Tony Manero, meanwhile, follows the unlikely rise to fame of a man obsessed with impersonating John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever, set against the backdrop of the Pinochet dictatorship. With these films and a selection of shorts, documentaries and dramas, VLAFF proudly shines its cinematic spotlight Chile in 2009.