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In the late 1990s and early 2000s Latin American films Amores perros, Diarios de motocicleta, El hijo de la novia, Y tu mamá también, and Cidade de Deus enjoyed unprecedented critical and commercial success in global markets. Benefiting from external financial and/or creative input, these films were considered examples of transnational cinema. This book examines the six transnational directors (Iñárritu, Cuarón, del Toro, Meirelles, Salles and Campanella), who made these and the subsequent commercially successful and mostly ‘deterritorialized’ films (21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, El espinazo del Diablo, El laberinto del fauno, Blindness, The Constant Gardener, Children of Men, On the Road, El secreto de sus ojos). Arguing against criticism in which these films’ commercial (Hollywood) and transnational features efface the authorial sensibilities of these directors and make them irrelevant to Latin American trends and politics, this book shows how they engage with national, continental and hemispheric politics and identity. Bringing a new perspective to the transnational films of Latin America’s transnational auteurs, including the recent Gravity, The Revenant, Birdman, and Crimson Peak, this book facilitates understanding how different genres function across cultures.

At most recent count, there are no fewer than forty-five women in Brazil directing or codirecting feature-length fiction or documentary films. In the early 1990s, women filmmakers in Brazil were credited for being at the forefront of the rebirth of filmmaking, or retomada, after the abolition of the state film agency and subsequent standstill of film production. Despite their numbers and success, films by Brazilian women directors are generally absent from discussions of Latin American film and published scholarly works. Filling this void, this book focuses on women's film production in Brazil from the mid-1970s to the current era. The book explains how women's filmmaking contributed to the reformulation of sexual, cultural, and political citizenship during Brazil's fight for the return and expansion of civil rights during the 1970s and 1980s and the recent questioning of the quality of democracy in the 1990s and 2000s. It interprets key films by Ana Carolina and Tizuka Yamasaki, documentaries with social themes, and independent videos supported by archival research and extensive interviews with Brazilian women filmmakers. Despite changes in production contexts, recent Brazilian women's films have furthered feminist debates regarding citizenship while raising concerns about the quality of the emergent democracy. This book offers a unique view of how women's audiovisual production has intersected with the reconfigurations of gender and female sexuality put forth by the women's movements in Brazil and continuing demands for greater social, cultural, and political inclusion.