Meet Chumpi, a young indigenous Achuar boy from Chicherta Village in the remote headwaters of an Amazon tributary deep in the Peruvian rainforest. Watch and share this award winning documentary about Chumpi’s journey in search of the vision of his Achuar ancestors.

The Achuar are up against Talisman Energy and other ruthless companies that are on the verge of drilling for oil in their ancestral territory. Their culture and entire way of life is at stake.

Let Chumpi take you into daily life in an indigenous village faraway in the Amazon. Learn how the Achuar survive off the land and rivers, and maintain the ancient culture of their elders. Travel through lush virgin jungle to a sacred waterfall in search of rainforest spirits who give vision and strength.

The Achuar made this film to show you how their extraordinary rainforest home is critical to survival. Watch it, share it, and stay tuned for ways you can be a part of preventing irreparable destruction of their world.

Let thy Food be thy Medicine and thy Medicine be thy Food – Hippocrates. That is the message from the founding father of modern medicine echoed in the controversial new documentary film Food Matters from Producer-Directors James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch.

With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what’s wrong with our malnourished bodies, it’s no wonder that modern society is getting sicker.

Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide sickness industry and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for overcoming illness naturally.

In what promises to be the most contentious idea put forward, the filmmakers have interviewed several leading experts in nutrition and natural healing who claim that not only are we harming our bodies with improper nutrition, but that the right kind of foods, supplements and detoxification can be used to treat chronic illnesses as fatal as terminally diagnosed cancer.

The focus of the film is in helping us rethink the belief systems fed to us by our modern medical and health care establishments. The interviewees point out that not every problem requires costly, major medical attention and reveal many alternative therapies that can be more effective, more economical, less harmful and less invasive than conventional medical treatments.

Food Matters is a must see for those looking to take control of their health.

For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. Debtocracy seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media.

Debtocracy is a 2011 documentary film by Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou. The documentary mainly focuses on two points: the causes of the Greek debt crisis in 2010 and possible future solutions that could be given to the problem that are not currently being considered by the government of the country.

Aris Hatzistefanou, 34, is accustomed to uncomfortable reporting. A journalist since his teens, his long-running show info-war on Sky Radio was cancelled just as his thought-provoking documentary, Debtocracy, was released.

The documentary is available in Greek and English, with subtitles in at least five other languages (Italian, Spanish, German, French, and Portuguese). Click here to watch the documentary in full online with English subtitles.

Some of you will probably be thinking what has this got to do with Latin America? Well, the documentary reviews the debt crises of Argentina and Ecuador and the divergent paths they took to resolve it.

Debtocracy draws clear parallels between the Argentine economic crisis of 1999-2002 and the current economic crisis in Greece. Argentina is dubbed the “mirror image of Greece at the opposite end of the world” in terms of its economic collapse, and an example of what might happen to Greece if it continues to follow the same neoliberal policies that the IMF had implemented in Argentina and are currently being implemented in Greece.

The documentary suggests the case of Ecuador as an alternative government reaction to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, sensitive to social justice, that saves the people from having to pay for a loan that didn’t benefit them.

In 2006, the Prime Minister of Ecuador, Rafael Correa reacted to the huge public debt that the country had, with a series of actions that aimed in the protection of the rights of the people of Ecuador. First, Correa decided that the funds from the natural resources of the country (exploitation of oil) would be used for public policy, and not for the payment of the debt. Second, Correa decided that only 20% of the annual budget should be used for the debt, instead of 50%. Third, he organized a committee to analyze the public debt. Despite the obstacles and the reactions to this, the committee was able to complete the analysis of the debt, and to find that it was illegal on the basis that the loans taken were used for projects that benefited only a “few,” the governments signed the contracts without informing the people, and the bankers were aware of this. In the end, Ecuador was able to save about $7 billion.

The moviemakers offer this as an alternative to the sever austerity policies now facing Greece.

From the start, it’s impossible not to like seventeen year old Maria Avarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno.) The opening shots of Joshua Marston’s powerful first feature “Maria Full of Grace” quickly establish character. We see Maria, mind-numbingly bored, her fingers covered in Band-Aids, as she removes sharp thorns from flowers at her job at a rose plantation, and later, Maria with her boyfriend, still bored, as she breaks away to climb up to the roof of a two story abandoned house just to see the view. Maria is tough, independent, and intelligent. She is also strikingly pretty, and achingly, palpably, full of longing.

Long before Maria puts herself in the path of danger, she is someone we care and worry for. She lives in an overcrowded apartment. Her mother doesn’t understand her. Her boyfriend certainly isn’t worthy of her. After she quits at the flower factory, she needs to find a new job – and chances are there isn’t anything better waiting for her. Worse, she is pregnant. Maria clearly wants so much from life, and so little seems possible. When Maria meets Franklin, who can get her a high paying gig as a drug mule, trafficking heroin from Colombia to the United States, the worry we feel for Maria positively skyrockets.

Through Maria’s story, we learn what it means to be a drug mule. Like Stephen Friar’s terrific “Dirty Pretty Things” about illegal immigrants in London who earn cash by giving up organs, Marston completely immerses us in a harrowing, alternate universe where young women without hope ingest sixty-two heavy rubber pellets filled with heroin and travel long distances to seedy unknown hotel rooms just to make their way in life.

The presentation of logistic details is never less than compelling; what once was an obscure concept becomes real. The stereotypical image of a Colombian drug dealer, a handsome Al Pacino type in a slick suit with a machine gun, has been replaced with the terrified faces of women. Not only Maria, but three other women are on her flight from Colombia to New York, her childlike friend Blanca, the seemingly more worldly Diana who says she is making one last run, and yet another woman whose name we never learn as she is taken from the customs office in handcuffs.

“Maria Full of Grace” is a good film because it connects on an emotional level. Wisely, Marston decided not to make an overt political statement. Instead, he focuses on the intimate details of one woman’s story. Catalina Sandino Moreno, making her film debut as Maria, gives a moving performance that will stay with you.

You don’t need to know, or care, about motor racing to enjoy Senna. In sports-cinema terms, it’s closer to something like Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane than recent releases like TT3D or From the Ashes: an inventively crafted portrait of an exceptional individual. Yes, we’re taken chronologically through the Brazilian driver’s stellar track career, with team-mate Alain Prost as his Dick Dastardly-like arch-rival. But beneath the helmet, Ayrton Senna was a fascinating, contradictory mix of religious faith, boyish innocence, global celebrity and reckless determination; you couldn’t have made a film like this about Nigel Mansell. The film’s masterstroke is its exclusive use of archive footage, with no visible talking heads or modern-day interruptions. With so much recorded footage of Formula One available, it has been possible to fashion Senna’s story as a live action drama rather than a posthumous documentary; we’re not so much hearing what happened in the past as seeing it happen before our eyes. The immediacy of the approach is exhilarating and, as we approach the inevitably tragic ending, undeniably emotional.

In December of 2002, McDonald’s had to shut down their restaurants in Bolivia. The company cited financial problems, but the real reasons were to be found elsewhere. Bolivia may be a small, poor nation on the global market, but strong traditions and national tastes are sometimes more powerful factors than economic clout. In his first feature-length documentary, Fernando Martinez shows what happened. His story is driven by the characters behind the events and their life stories, not by fact. The symbolism is obvious when a multinational giant is brought to its knees by a country’s traditions and heritage. The film was made with support from Göteborg International Film Festival Fund.

Take a look at the Fast Food Off the Shelf trailer on YouTube.

The Crying Forest is a documentary about Ze Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, an Amazon rainforest activist, and his wife, who were gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon on 24 May 2011.

Figures suggest that since 1996 at least 212 Amazon activists have been murdered in their battle to preserve the rainforest. As one of the most prominent activists Ze Claudio’s death has struck a particular chord, especially on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Orkut which largely publicised the circumstances of his death.

Here is a quote from the film’s producers about Ze’s position and fateful end:

Renowned for standing up to the illegal loggers and ranchers who have laid waste to the world’s greatest tropical forest, Ze Claudio had long known he was a marked man. Investigations into the assassination are ongoing, but few doubt he was killed because of this unflinching struggle in defence of the environment. After riddling his body with bullets, the gunmen cut off one of Jose Claudio’s ears – proof, police say, that they had successfully completed their mission.

Director Gabriel Elizondo, from Al Jazeera, has used a mixture of original and archive footage, and interviews, the film explores the death of Ze Claudio, how he had already predicted his own execution and the legacy of this event.

The Crying Forest paints a shocking portrait of life in the Brazilian Amazon through the story of a couple that lived and died for the rainforest.

The Crying Forest was made by Al Jazeera and can be viewed in full on YouTube.

This groundbreaking documentary brings us the voices of the Mayan people as they share their perspectives on the prophecies of their ancestors and their fight to defend Mother Earth and their culture from destruction.

2012 The Mayan Word is both a message of hope and a call to action. Featuring testimonies from contemporary Mayans throughout Mesoamerica, from spiritual guides to activists, community leaders, farmers, artists, teachers, and children, this film is an extraordinary journey into the heart of Mayan struggle and spirituality.

The latest Undercurrents movie will be UK premiered in December. Click on the link above to watch the trailer on YouTube.

Fernando Spiner’s Western “Aballay, el hombre sin miedo” (Aballay, the Man Without Fear) was unveiled Monday as Argentina’s candidate for Oscar nomination in the foreign-language film category.

“Aballay” is the bloody and violent tale of a young man’s quest to avenge his father’s death at the hands of a now aging gaucho who wants to end his life of crime.

Film stars Nazareno Casero (“Buenos Aires, 1977″), Pablo Cedron (“The Aura”) and Claudio Rissi (“Nine Queens”).

“Aballay” won 22 of the 69 votes cast for the Oscar runner, beating comedy “Un cuento chino,” starring Ricardo Darin, and politically charged “El estudiante” (The Student) by Santiago Mitre, a screenwriter on Pablo Trapero’s multi-laurelled “Lion’s Den” and “Carancho.”

Boya Films and KV Entertainment produced “Aballay,” which won the public’s nod in the international competition at the 2010 Mar del Plata Film Festival, the second-biggest fest in Argentina.

The 84th Academy Awards will be held on 26 Febuary 2012 at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood.

Here is a full list of Latin American submissions to the 84th Academy Awards for best foreign language film:

Argentina: Aballay, el hombre sin miedo (Aballay, the Man Without Fear), Fernando Spiner

Brazil: Tropa de Elite 2 – O Inimigo Agora É Outro (Elite Squad – The Enemy Within), José Padilha

Chile: Violeta Se Fue a los Cielos (Violeta), Andrés Wood

Colombia: Los Colores de la Montaña (The Colors of the Mountain), Carlos César Arbeláez

Mexico: Miss Bala (Miss Bala), Gerado Naranjo

Peru: Octubre (October), Diego and Daniel Vega

Uruguay: La Casa Muda (The Silent House), Gustavo Hernández

Venezuela: El Rumor de las Piedras (The Rumble of the Stones), Alejandro Bellame

Rodrigo and Mariana are an affluent, loving young couple on a New Year’s break. Late one night, they are driving along the remote south Pacific coast when they come across seven-year-old Karina, who appears lonely and desperate. She tells the couple that she has run away from home, and confesses to them a dark secret. Rodrigo and Mariana resolve to stay with the girl through the night and help her, but in the morning, Karina is gone. The couple check into a hotel and continue with their holiday, but Mariana is haunted by what the girl has told her, and becomes increasingly more distressed. In the meantime, Karina has returned to where her family are camping on the beach close to a nature reserve, where adults fear falling into the tunnels their children have built under the sand and poisonous sea snakes have made their way onto land. The arresting debut feature from London Film School graduate Paz Fábrega, Cold Water of the Sea is set in a place of idyllic beauty, though the focus is on the experiences of two women of different ages, from different social backgrounds, and the internal, psychological troubles in their paradise.