Urban Youth: City, body, virtuality in Latin American cinema (Chile, Argentina and Mexico)

This article analyzes the representation of current youth in the urban setting in Latin American fiction cinema, addressing various tensions related to a changing city, away from its traditional representation and adapted to the performative identity of young people, who provide a sensitive sense to the spaces they inhabit. The analysis will focus on the films Ya no estoy aqui by Fernando Frias (Mexico, 2019), Ema by Pablo Larrain (Chile, 2019) and El auge del humano by Eduardo Williams (Argentina, 2016), all starring adolescents. In them we identify verbally hermetic characters who emancipate themselves in their urban wandering, building fabrics or transit surfaces where both their artistic/cultural affinities and their immersion in the digital world; all this considering the mediation of the local context of the characters and their belonging to a globalized community.