Juan Carlos Lemus Polanía, born in Colombia, is a well-known film critic from Latin America. A graduate of a Creative Writing program at the Escuela de Escritores in Madrid, he publishes articles on cinema, music, and philosophy, mainly in Spanish, in magazines from Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and the USA (“El Tiempo”, “Cinéfilos frustrados”, “CineVista”, “La Ventana indiscreta”, “Rolling Stone”, etc.). It seems that the Spanish language helps him establish such an international career. Together with other Latin American colleagues, he hosts “Cine Con Acento”, a podcast where they discuss the cinema of South America, but also that of the Global South. Practicing film criticism across several media, he is often invited to appear on TV shows. As he states, he stays away from home for at least two months a year, being involved in following festivals and other events. His personal mantra is “Push the body to silence the mind”.
As we were recently colleagues on the FIPRESCI Jury at the Berlin Film Festival, where Latin American cinema was among the most selected and awarded in various sections, I wanted to expand our discussions into an interview.

Q: I would like to start with a question regarding cinema in general. Do you think that the recent edition of the Berlin Film Festival has brought evidence of important changes in cinema or not? Is cinema today “more political”?

A: In general, I don’t think ten days are enough to prove any real change in the medium, at least in cinema. Ten days will absolutely give you impressions – hunches, irritations, bursts of enthusiasm – but “proof” is something else entirely.

As for whether cinema is now more political, I’d point, precisely, to the president of the International Jury this year – Wim Wenders. Back in 1988, in “The Logic of Images”, he made a point I still find decisive: even entertainment films are among the most political, because they sell the world as a closed destiny – a permanent advertisement insisting that everything is basically fine, and that nothing really needs to change.

People are allowed to contradict themselves – I’d go further and say it’s a human right. The problem is that when Wenders asks cinema to keep its distance from politics, he forgets that politics rarely returns the favour. Politics enters cinema, whether cinema likes it or not.

You could see that brutally clearly when Abdallah Al-Khatib, receiving an award for Chronicles from the Siege, used the stage to tell the German government – directly, to its face – that it was complicit in the genocide being committed in Gaza. Germany’s environment minister, Carsten Schneider, stood up and walked out. Later, he said the Palestinian filmmaker’s remarks were unacceptable, and that was why he’d left the ceremony.

And it didn’t stop there. Once the festival was over, Germany’s culture and media commissioner, Claudia Roth, convened a meeting to discuss the Berlinale’s future direction. “Bild” was already reporting that the festival director, Tricia Tuttle, might be pushed out. So, – as “The Guardian” noted, – the Berlinale is political, but it’s also an institution financed and administered by the German state. That detail isn’t minor. At that point, you’re no longer talking about “culture” in the abstract; you’re talking about governance. About who controls the frame. About who “owns” the narrative. About who gets to decide what counts as acceptable “expression” and what is branded “inexcusable”.

Q: Yes, but at the beginning of March, the same media announced that, as a result of the hundreds of messages of sympathy and admiration for Tricia Tuttle, she had been confirmed as the director of the next edition, too.

A: In the recent past,for No Other Land, which also won a prize in Berlin, things became incredibly fraught – speeches, cross-accusations, politicians losing their minds. Claudia Roth ended up offering what I can only call an absurd clarification: that she had applauded the Israeli director’s speech, but not the Palestinian’s. Two directors: Yuval Abraham, Israeli; Basel Adra, Palestinian. And the fallout was such that the festival leadership – Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek – had to resign and then explain what had happened to their own team.

So, no: I don’t think cinema has suddenly “become” political. I think it always was. What may have changed – because of the moment we’re living through – is the level of noise around that fact. And it’s not only about politics inside films – the politics of form, of representation, of what a film shows – but also about the positions filmmakers, actors, critics take in public, in relation to whatever crisis the world is currently processing.

Q: Do you think that today we are witnessing a more pronounced differentiation between mainstream cinema (especially Hollywood) and other forms (art film, national cinemas)?

A: If there’s one thing we should thank the United States for, it’s the practicality of its vocabulary. They’ve always drawn a line: movies are made to entertain; films are the more “artistic” ones – the ones that carry politics on their sleeve.

But I don’t think we’ve witnessed some great aesthetic revelation in that divide. And we should be honest: genre cinema can be brilliantly made, and auteur cinema can fall into very poor habits. There’s no point in romanticising either side.

What we’re really talking about is the economy that circulates around audiovisual production, which is why I’d say we’re seeing two systems of circulation rather than two styles. You can see, more clearly than before, who controls the risk, how the risk is distributed, and how much money is at stake.

Hollywood has become more comfortable – less inclined to gamble, – and that’s why we’re drowning in franchises, sequels, brands. This leaves less empty space for genuine experimentation. I believe it was in 2024 when the US box office was, plain and simple, led by sequels. That isn’t random. It doesn’t “just happen”. It’s a symptom.

On the other side, you have what we call art cinema, auteur cinema, national cinemas: Romanian cinema, Colombian cinema, and so on. Peripheral, “festival” cinema. Some people say that affectionately; others say it with a certain sneer, as if to imply nobody watches those films anyway. But it’s not a little island. And it runs on different rules.

Budgets are far smaller. Co-productions have become the norm – films with seven or eight countries attached. Public funding, especially in Europe. Fragile windows. And a lifespan that depends far more on the festival journey: what prizes are won, what the specialised press – us – says about the film, and then, eventually, how it funnels into platforms: Netflix, Mubi, or whatever.

Where it gets complicated – and here I feel it very sharply – is that, thanks to the technologies now in play, platforms can measure what a Colombian viewer consumes, what a Romanian viewer consumes, and they start to flatten us into the same taste profile. You begin to notice the same “orange sunsets”, the same finishes, the same visual formulas – because that’s what the platform wants in order to pick up, package, and circulate the work. There’s an implied palette, an implied technical look, and an implied production “readability” that makes a title more buyable. And since these films often have no other reliable way to be exhibited or to recoup money, the result is aesthetic homogenisation. For me, that’s a problem.

So again: more than two styles, I see two circulation systems – one that can be bought at a global scale, and another that fights for tiny spaces just to be screened. And you’ve probably noticed it too: many auteurs are becoming more “generic” precisely in order to travel.

Q: As was quite obvious in Berlin, Latin American cinema is becoming increasingly appreciated and awarded (see also the success of the Brazilian feature film The Secret Agent, by Kleber Mendonça Filho, and its lead actor, Wagner Moura, at Cannes and beyond). Of course, looking at the list of different sections in Berlin, we can find other evidence. For example, the winner of the FIPRESCI Prize in the “Panorama” section went to Narciso, by Marcelo Martinessi, a multiple co-production between Paraguay, Germany, Uruguay, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, and France, the Ecumenical Prize for Competition was won by the Mexican film Moscas, the Crystal Bear in the “Generation KPlus” section went to the Brazilian Feito Pipa/Gugu’s World, by Allan Deberton, etc.

A: I disagree slightly with you here; I don’t find it so obvious. Especially over the last two years – and I’ve discussed this with other Latin American colleagues – it has felt as if productions from Latin America, exceptBrazil (and I’ll come back to that), are no longer present in the biggest competitions. They’re not really contesting for the Golden Bear. If I remember correctly, this year, there was only one Mexican film (Moscas); in previous years, there was more variety. That’s why I return to what I said earlier: in Cannes and Berlin – a little more in Venice (wherein Roma won the highest prize in 2018) – our presence has diminished.

Now, there are two countries that remain unavoidable: Mexico, which has long been a strong presence, and Brazil, which is also strong. But Brazil is strange, because its visibility can feel like it belongs to a neighbour you barely speak to – the kind of neighbour you nod at in the lift and that’s it. I suspect they feel the same way. There’s a genuine cultural disconnect. In Colombia or Peru, it’s easier for people to speak English than Portuguese; I doubt Brazil is immune to a similar asymmetry. And that’s where the notion of “Latin America” as a single bloc starts to collapse.

I should also say: unfortunately for Spanish-speaking Latin America, Argentina’s influence has diminished – and for a while, up through the early 2000s, Argentina could feel like one of our aesthetic and ethical lighthouses. Chile has grown a little stronger. The rest of us come in bursts: sporadically, you’ll see a Colombian film, like Un poeta in Cannes last year, a Peruvian, Venezuelan, something from Central America – but they’re bursts. There’s no sustained presence.

Q: Of course, it is not easy to distribute films made in Latin America. Do you think a parallel can be drawn here with Romanian cinema? Have you seen some of our films, especially after the film world recognized the New Romanian Cinema?

A: The parallel between Romanian cinema and Latin American cinema is, to me, deeply uneven. I say that because, at least in Colombia and Peru – where I’ve lived – Romanian cinema is legible and has real cultural positioning. There are names that immediately attach to Romania and to a certain way of seeing life: Cristi Puiu, with The Death of Mr Lăzărescu, in the mid-2000s; Cristian Mungiu, with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the Palme d’Or in 2007; Radu Jude, whose work is extraordinary and genuinely admired in Latin America; you could name Corneliu Porumboiu, too.

But Latin America is enormous. Even if we share a language and the historical wounds of conquest and Spanish colonialism, the differences within the region are massive – and they get crushed when we speak as if it were one thing. Mexico is not Argentina. The Andes are not the Caribbean. Central America is a world of its own. And if you add Brazil – that “lift neighbour”, – it becomes even more complex.

If you want an analogy, the closest would be to treat Romanian cinema as part of Eastern European cinema – as a regional constellation. Then yes: Romania, some Hungary… less is known about the Balkans. But “Latin American cinema” as a single label is like saying “Asian cinema” or “African cinema”: yes, but not really. Iran is not South Korea. Japan is not Indonesia. Afghanistan is not the same as – well, you get the point. It becomes misleading when geography is used to iron out cultural production.

In short, Romanian cinema has achieved consolidation and circulation; it’s known across Latin America. But I imagine that in Romania, what’s known of Latin American cinema is more of a broad “shelf” – not Colombian cinema, Ecuadorian cinema, Peruvian cinema, each with its own specificity.

Q: As we discussed in Berlin, Romanian viewers are more familiar with Latin American series. For example, the Netflix platform broadcast the series One Hundred Years of Solitude, which it co-produced with Colombian cinema, familiarising the audience with the novel of the same name by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. I watched the series, but I was not too mesmerised by it. Perhaps I was expecting more magic than it delivered. Was the series a success in Colombia, Márquez’s native country?

A: And here we step into another mess: One Hundred Years of Solitude. That Netflix production in Colombia was up against a myth – García Márquez: Nobel Prize, national pride, a monument. So, it’s complicated.

For me, speaking about the series is even more complicated because I don’t live there. And because, as a critic, I’m inevitably biased by my professional environment. The people around me – critics, programmers, cinephiles – don’t map neatly onto popular taste. Therefore, if I gather impressions from that circle, it didn’t land well: some people – and I include myself – didn’t even try it; others didn’t get past the first episode. Partly because certain details immediately irritated people. For example, Aureliano Buendía looks more Mexican than Colombian Caribbean. For Colombians, that grates. And then you pile on the small things that become huge when the source text is a monument: are the actors Colombian, or not; where exactly was it shot; those “little” questions that never stay little in this case.

But honestly, I don’t know. We’d have to ask Netflix how it performed in Colombia and across Latin America. One thing is the judgment of my bubble; another thing is the actual data.

Q: Could we anticipate the changes in art and the film industry influenced by the new technologies? Should we fear the intervention of AI?

A: You don’t need to be Nostradamus to anticipate it, because we’re already living it. In 2023, there were new “guardrails” in the WGA agreements after the Hollywood writers’ strike. But the broader movement feels inevitable.

A couple of days ago, I watched Antonio Banderas say he’d been offered a film in which his image would be absorbed: he would only need to provide the voice. That is going to happen. And he said that was one reason he was moving closer to theatre – because theatre would remain “more real”.

So, what changes are coming? Beyond how films will be made – and yes, I can imagine something increasingly automated: scripts generated by AI, performances built from synthetic images, – the bigger transformation may be distribution and consumption. Netflix will standardise taste, at least regionally. And the spectator will become more solitary: more alone, more at home, no longer sharing the space of the cinema.

And I think specialisation will go so far that you and I might watch the same series with different protagonists – because the system can customize the story to flatter our individual appetites.
There’s also the aesthetic of diminished attention. You see things like TikTok becoming an official sponsor of Berlin and Cannes. That’s where we are. And honestly, I’m convinced that in less than three years, the whole landscape will look like something else.