A diverse array of Latin American films come to the AFI Silver this fall.

The American Film Institute’s Latin American Film Festival has offered Washingtonians a taste of modern Latino cinema for the past 23 years. AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, the host of the festival, has screened selected films from the lineup for us in advance of their festival premieres.

La Sirga

The howling wind has a near constant presence in La Sirga, a haunting portrait of an impoverished community in the Andes Mountains. La Sirga is a challenging film; its austere direction and deliberate pace seek to create and sustain a mood rather than tell a story.

Debut director William Vega possesses an impressive knack for capturing the textures and feel of a setting. The film is packed with precisely composed shots of dilapidated housing and gray wilderness, like something out of an Andrei Tarkovsky or Terrence Malick film.

Much like those influences, Vega takes a rather oblique approach to storytelling. The plot is threadbare – Alicia flees her destroyed village, seeking refuge with her uncle and bringing with her sexual tension and emotional baggage.

Rather than drive the film forward through plot, Vega presents an increasingly sinister procession of images and revelations. La Sirga’s greatest strength lies in this flow, offering an almost dream-like (or perhaps nightmare-like) mood and tone alongside its simple but affecting story of war and trauma.

A heartwarming film this ain’t, but La Sirga is made with compassion and respect for the inhabitants of its Colombian hell.

La Sirga will play at AFI Silver on Saturday at 1 p.m. Tickets are $12.

The Delay

As a study of the ravages of age and a depiction of one woman’s attempts to keep her family together, The Delay is frequently moving and heartbreaking.

Director Rodrigo Pla (The Desert Within) shoots the film thoughtfully and with an eye for gorgeous framing. Pla makes good use of setting and ambient sound effects to communicate interior moods and frustrations efficiently and effectively. At times, The Delay evokes the calculated coldness and precision of a Michael Haneke film, with similarly desperate characters to boot.

Unfortunately, some convoluted writing holds The Delay back from masterpiece status. Though the dialogue may play better in Spanish, the English translation is frustratingly bland. There’s no real eloquence or flow to the often repetitive and redundant conversations, doubtlessly compounded by the actors’ rather monotonous line reading.

The plot, which follows a harried single mother struggling to manage her family while keeping her elderly, senile father safe, moves along nicely until a plot twist threatens to spiral the film toward wholly melodramatic territory.

Pla, however, has the gumption to never push things too far and manages to keep The Delay grounded in enough emotional reality throughout to make a lasting impression.

The Delay will play at AFI Silver on Sunday at 7:15 p.m. and Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $12.

chzhang@umdbk.com