Eugenio Polgovsky
OVID is proud to present this retrospective of the films of Eugenio Polgovsky (1977-2017). He studied film directing and cinematography at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico City and his first documentary, Tropic of Cancer, screened during the International Critics’ Week at Cannes in 2005, and was included in the Frontier section at Sundance.
In 2004, Polgovsky received the National Youth Award in Mexico. He worked as a cinematographer for documentaries, narratives, and visual arts projects, collaborating with artist Jae Eu Choi and renowned butoh dancer Yuzhio Amagatzu in Japan, among others.
In 2008, he directed Los Herederos (The Inheritors), a documentary about the children who work in the Mexican countryside. He spent three years working on the project, which premiered at the 65th Venice International Film Festival. Los Herederos was the first documentary invited to participate in the competition section Generation Kplus at the Berlin Film Festival. It garnered a number of awards, among these, two Ariel Awards (Best Documentary and Best Editing), Mexico's equivalent to the Oscars.
His films have all recently been restored and are streaming exclusively on OVID.
"A major talent." —The Hollywood Reporter
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Malintzin 17
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky and Mara Polgovsky • Documentary • 2022 • 64 minutes
Filmed from the unusual vantage-point of a second-floor apartment window, MALINTZIN 17 portrays two parallel expressions of parental care.
For seven days and nights filmmaker Eugenio Polgovsky and his five-year-...
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The Inheritors
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky • Documentary • 2009 • 90 minutes
The most highly praised and awarded Mexican documentary in many years, THE INHERITORS by Eugenio Polgovsky immerses us in the daily lives of children who, with their families, survive only by their unrelenting labor.
The film takes...
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Resurrección / Resurrection
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky • Documentary • 2016 • 93 minutes
The once-paradisiacal waterfall of "El Salto de Juanacatlán" in Jalisco used to be known as the "Mexican Niagara”, a source of pleasure and sustenance for the villages surrounding it. This natural idyll was heavily polluted when an ...
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Trópico de Cancer / Tropic of Cancer
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky • Documentary • 2004 • 52 minutes
Polgovsky’s stunning debut immerses the viewer in the impoverished lives of families in the arid desert region of San Luis Potosi in Mexico (situated on the global parallel known as Tropic of Cancer), who survive by selling plants a...
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Mitote / Mexican Ritual
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky • Documentary • 2012 • 54 minutes
A shaman’s mystical rituals, furious electricians on hunger strike and a euphoric football crowd collide in the Zocalo, Mexico City’s central square, the ancient ceremonial heart of the Aztec empire. The documentary essay Mitote(Nah...
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Success
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky • Documentary • 2014 • 3 minutes
Filmed in Times Square, this short film presents a dystopian vision of urban life in which the celebration of high-finance rewrites the topography of the city, while landscapes and indigenous cultures have been entrapped by a hyperbo...
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Laberinto de Luz / Lightbyrinth
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky • Documentary • 2016 • 7 minutes
In Lightbyrinth 21st-century digital technology meets 19th-century animation in homage to eminent physicist James C. Maxwell. Filmed in Cambridge using his original zoetrope, the film conjures a sense of wonder at early image-making ...