Introduction

The leap to prominence of the Latin American road movie within film studies over the past five years (Brandellero 2013; Pinazza 2014; Garibotto and Pérez 2016; Lie 2017) has testified to the rethinking of the road movie as a global film category instead of a quintessentially US genre (Berry 2016). Such a reframing foregrounds the diversity of Latin American road movies and their contribution to global film production, and refutes the notion that these films are mere attempts to copy Hollywood. Clearly, treating film production from different parts of the world as Hollywood's ‘other’ is not a problem exclusive to the road movie genre or to Latin American cinema. In this respect, Lúcia Nagib, writing on world cinema, argues that ‘in multicultural, multi-ethnic societies like ours, cinematic expressions from various origins cannot be seen as “the other” for the simple reason that they are us’ (2011: 1). In a similar vein, this chapter will argue that Latin American road movies are integral to the development of the genre, and examine the way in which some of these films have dialogued with transnational aesthetics and themes.

This chapter's approach to Latin American road movies draws on Ella Shohat and Robert Stam's notion of ‘polycentric multiculturalism’, which is ‘reciprocal, dialogical’ and ‘sees all acts of verbal and cultural exchange as taking place not between discrete bounded individuals or cultures but rather between permeable, changing individuals and communities’ (1994: 49). Indeed, the increasing number of Latin American films in the road movie genre is particularly significant in relation to the transnational cultural exchanges and sociopolitical challenges faced by Latin American countries in the past twenty years. Road movies such as Historias mínimas/Intimate Stories (Carlos Sorín, 2002), Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) and Central do Brasil/Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998) were milestones for the consolidation of national cinemas in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico at the turn of the century. The national and international appraisal of Latin American road movies was accompanied by the success of transnational Latin American auteurs, including Cuarón, Campanella, Inárritu, Salles and Padilha.