The Devil Never Sleeps
The Devil Never Sleeps
Special guest: Post-screening conversation with writer, director, producer Lourdes Portillo and film editor Vivien Hillgrove.
When her tío Oscar Ruiz Almeida is found dead, filmmaker Lourdes Portillo grabs her camera and brings it on a homecoming to her birthplace of Chihuahua, Mexico, seeking answers to the sudden tragedy. Equal parts diary film, home movie, experimental travelogue, and murder mystery, Portillo’s unclassifiable investigation of her family history and its many secrets premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1994, and, in late 2020, was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as a film notable for its historical, cultural, and aesthetic contribution to the art form.
DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Lourdes Portillo. WITH: Ofelia Almeida, Oscar Ruiz Almeida, Jesus de la Torre. 1994. 87 min. Mexico/USA. Color. Spanish, English. DCP. Courtesy of Harvard Film Archive.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
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