Juan Carlos Gené Movies

This Venezuelian film closely follows Juan Carlos Gene's two act play. The picture set, in an unnamed South American country, is an emotional examination of two courageous nuns who provide refuge to a rebel soldier. Ana and Ursula are nuns belonging to an order that believes clergy and lay people to be equal. When a rebel soldier, considered an enemy of the state, suddenly appears at their small home, they readily take him in. In time, the nuns arouse the suspicions of Mayor Cerone. Because they are nuns, paragons of the Church, and because he has been having recent difficulties with the Church, Cerone accepts their word and does not search their home. Cerone is concerned about the reputation of his town. The forceful military captain cares nothing for Cerone's town politics and violently searches the nun's house. The rebel is found and shot and both Cerone and Ana must face the consequences. For Ana, they could mean death. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Inspired by a real crime in Caracas, Venezuela, this is a fictional story about a kidnap victim who was murdered but whose case was not pressed through to the end. It turns out that his kidnappers belonged to influential families that had the power to buy off or bully the police and the legal system. When a police detective (Miguelangel Landa) gets close to an indictment in the case, he is stopped from revealing who the perpetrators are -- and he agonizes over the cover-up, at odds with his own conscience. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The rapacious exploitation of South American resources by foreign companies is not a new phenomenon; it began with Christopher Columbus and continues today. However, the cynicism, greed and inhumanity of a 19th-century British company in exploiting the quebracho forests of the Chaco in northern Argentina has rarely been equalled. This drama shows how the corporation, with the cooperation of authorities, enslaved the local population to harvest every one of the tannin-producing (but slow-growing) quebracho trees, leaving behind a decimated and impoverished population and a wasteland with no quebracho trees. The film also shows how the resistance of the local people was brutally suppressed so that the lucrative trade could continue. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This film version of the classic Argentine novel by Ricardo Guiraldes features Don Segundo Sombra as the heroic gaucho who rides the treeless pampas of his native land. The author's nephew Adolfo Guiraldes, an expert on Argentine folk stories, was chosen to play the title role. The director used the book instead of a script, as he faithfully shot scenes page-by-page to insure the authenticity demanded by the writer's heirs. A handful of professional actors augment the largely local cast of this slice of Argentine life from the beginning of the 20th century. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi