• Mar del Plata International Film Festival

    FEISAL Award
  • Havana International Film Festival

    Caminos Award, Martin Luther King Association
  • Huelva Iberoamerican Film Festival

    Best Director
  • Santiago International Film Festival

    Best Film, Audience Award
  • Viña del Mar International Film Festival

    Winner, Work-in-Progress
  • Sao Paulo International Film Festival

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Spanish with English subtitles

With Paulina García, Valentina Muhr

Ximena is an illiterate woman in her fifties who has learned to live on her own in order to keep her illiteracy a secret. Jackeline 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. 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.

ILLITERATE IS ONE OF THE MANY FILMS INCLUDED IN THE CATALOGUE OF SPANISH FILM CLUB. SFC AFFILIATED UNIVERSITIES CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF A SPECIAL PRICE OF $99 IF THE TITLE HAS BEEN INCLUDED IN THEIR SFC FESTIVAL. PLEASE CONTACT SFC STAFF AT FILMCLUB@PRAGDA.COM FOR MORE DETAILS.

 

WHAT SFC AFFILIATED UNIVERSITIES ARE SAYING

When the credits came up, they all applauded. After talking to the [students] during the reception, most of them liked the irony of the story, as well as the comedy in the interactions of the main character.” – Karem Orrego, Founder & Executive Director of Crisol Film initiative, University of Utah

They were extremely excited to see a movie on a really unusual topic and shot in such a wonderful way.” – Sara Villa, Assistant Professor of Spanish, The New School

Press

“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

“When the credits came up, they all applauded. After talking to the [students] during the reception, most of them liked the irony of the story, as well as the comedy in the interactions of the main character.” – Karem Orrego, Founder & Executive Director of Crisol Film initiative, University of Utah

“They were extremely excited to see a movie on a really unusual topic and shot in such a wonderful way.” – Sara Villa, Assistant Professor of Spanish, The New School

About the Director
Moisés Sepúlveda is a filmmaker, scriptwriter and professional magician. He has written and directed music videos, shorts and TV series. He is currently working on his second film: “Sed, la historia detrás del fraude”. Las analfabetas is his feature debut.
Notes on Film

Starring Berlin award-winning actress Paulina Garcia, Illiterate tells the story of an illiterate woman in her fifties, who has managed to invent everything she was not able to learn through reading. Language, religion, and politics develop within a logic of their own in the solitary life she has created to hide the fact she can’t read. On the other hand, Jackeline, a young teacher, has read about all the things she has been unable to create and lives trapped in the conventional wisdom that serves as a buer zone in an unstable world. My interest is to set these conflicting views against each other, discuss a concept of education in which meaningful learning can only occur when conservative pedagogical structures corrode.