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CAPITAL FOCUS AWARD

Tear This Heart Out

Arráncame la vida

ROBERTO SNEIDER
Mexico, Spain, 2008, 107 minutes, Color

This sumptuous, sweeping epic is the stormy tale of a teenage beauty who gets what she wants and it takes her on a 15 year journey of love, politics, power, corruption, infidelity, and murder. Bored by small-town life in 1930s Mexico, Catalina (The Crime of Father Amaro's Ana Claudia Talacon) is easily seduced by a dashing general, Andres. He, too, is seduced, and soon marries her. Andres is headed for the presidency, and Catalina is prepared to travel with him, even if that means accepting his infidelities, his out-of-wedlock children, and the occasional murder. Divorce is impossible in Mexico, and so the two must accommodate each other. Catalina eventually tires of life with Andres, a development that may have something to do with her interest in an handsome orchestra conductor who reawakens her lust for life and also happens to be a leftist critic of her husband's government. This is Mexico's costliest film production ever and its entry for 2008's foreign-language film Oscar®.—Mark Jenkins

In Spanish with English subtitles

Co-presented with the Mexican Cultural Institute

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