Domestic Crises, International Opportunities: Trends and Preoccupations in New Venezuelan Cinema

With the decline of the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela has become synonymous with catastrophe, yet contemporary Venezuelan cinema has received unprecedented international recognition and spectatorship. How Venezuelan film prospered in such circumstances? How can recent Venezuelan productions be regarded as a cohesive, collective movement, namely New Venezuelan Cinema? In what ways has this been marked by crisis? This article addresses these questions, offering an overview of the cinematic infrastructure in Bolivarian Venezuela, before proceeding to analyse Desde allá (Lorenzo Vigas, 2015) and La familia (Gustavo Rondón, 2016) as films that inquire into, and are marked by, the Venezuelan crisis.