October 23: Las analfabetas (dir. Moisés Sepúlveda, Chile, 2013)
4:30 p.m. Room
SYNOPSIS
Ximena is an illiterate woman in her fifties, who has learned to live on her own in order to keep her illiteracy as a secret. Jackelin, is a young unemployed elementary school teacher, who tries to convince Ximena to take reading classes. Persuading her proves to be an almost impossible task, until one day, Jackeline finds something Ximena has been keeping as her only treasure since she was a child: a letter Ximena’s father left when he abandoned her many years before. Thus, the two women embark on a learning journey where they discover that there are many ways of being illiterate, and that not knowing how to read is just one of them.
QUOTES
“Full of meanings that reverberate way beyond the small room in which it’s mostly set, Chilean debutante Moises Sepulveda’s Illiterate is a richly metaphorical and emotionally subtle two-hander about the painful efforts of a middle-aged woman learning how to read.” – Jonathan Holland, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
