The festival, is open from Friday September 1 at the Metro in London's Rupert Street (just off Piccadilly). Even though there's been plenty of Brazilian cinema around this year, this lively programme affords the opportunity to experience films from lesser lauded industries, like Ecuador and Venezuela, as well as Latin-influenced features from Europe and a selection of documentaries and shorts, writes David Parkinson.

The selection includes work by such renowned directors as Fernando Solanas (The Cloud), Vincente Aranda (Jealousy), Luis Alberto Pereira (The Man in the Box) and Miguel Littin (Tierra del Fuego).

Made as part of the celebrations to mark the 500th anniversary of the 'founding' of Brazil, Sergio Rezende's Maua, The Emperor and the King is a sprawling historical epic tracing the career of Irineu Evangellista de Souza, the 19th-century tycoon who amassed and lost a colossal fortune. Drawing parallels with contemporary government economic policies, Rezende reinforces Maua's status as a national icon, primarily by emphasising his role in the abolition of slavery. Meticulous in its period detail, lovingly photographed and impeccably played, this may err on the side of hagiography, but it's less simplistic than many of today's Euro-American biopics.

Set in the twilight of Evita's romance with Argentina, Jana Bokova's Harbour is based on a short story by Julio Cortazar. Acting as an amanuensis for the prostitutes based at a dockside bar, German Palacios fools himself into believing he's gathering material for a long-gestating novel. But his obsession with one of the girls, Silke, draws him into the sinister world of drugs and white slavery.

Slow-moving and seductively atmospheric, this simmering drama is strewn with allegorical references to the nation's image of itself and in the wider world. But, while the performances are impressive, the wealth of secondary characters proves distracting. Based on a true story, Sergio Bellotti's My Treasure is a wryly melancholic study of mid-life crisis and the extreme measures taken by a paunchy Argentinian bank clerk to rectify matters. Bored with his routine and his wife's endless criticism, yet too timid to take off with his mistress, Gabriel Goity has become inured to creeping defeatism.

But, on reaching 40 and discovering Edda Bustamante's infidelity, he summons up the unexpected assurance to exploit the branch manager's absence. With Bellotti making atmospheric use of enclosed spaces and stylised skyscapes, this is an engaging meander towards an inevitable conclusion. But, despite the efforts of Goity and Bustamente, we never come to care about the characters or their fate.

Admirers of Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive will be intrigued by Secrets of the Heart, an Oscar-nominated tale of childhood innocence and the lure of the unknown. Set in the Basque country around Pamplona in the sixties, the film doesn't overplay its allegorical hand, even though the symbolism of the abandoned house, with its locked rooms and buried secrets, is pretty blatant. Instead, Spanish director Montxo Armendariz elects to focus on the curiosity and incomprehension of nine-year-old Andoni Erburu, who is more interested in rumours that whispering ghosts inhabit the basement than in the relationship between his widowed mother, Silvia Munt, and his uncle, Carmelo Gomez. Also from Spain is Casting, a talking-heads curio, in which director Fernando Merinero seeks the opinions of a gaggle of auditioning actors on everything from orgies to fidelity, politics to nostalgia. Less determinedly trendy than Simon Rumley's recent British variation on the same theme, Strong Language, it throws up the odd interesting idea. But they have no context and too few of the interviewees emerge as sufficiently appealing personalities for their views to carry much weight.

Intense, sombre and somewhat protracted, Enthusiasm is a testing examination of the price paid for unworldly idealism by both the dreamer and their loved ones. In the decade since he first conceived of an 'independent republic' outside the Pinochet dictatorship, Alvaro Escobar has allowed his vision to be corrupted by material concerns much to the disappointment of his photographer friend, Alvaro Rudolphy, and the air hostess they both love, Maribel Verdu.

Spinning out of control as his enthusiasm turns to workaholism, Escobar becomes marginalised and director Ricardo Larrain shifts his focus onto Verdu's struggle to raise their son in his absence. Ultimately, the human drama overwhelms the political theorising, to the point where Escobar and his loyal assistant (a cameoing Carmen Maura) end up on the run from unexplained danger, just as Verdu abandons hope of resuming their relationship. Like Escobar's impossible utopia, the film has an intriguing idea. But it's all too quickly consumed by the mundane realities of life. Chile is also the setting for the best of the documentaries, Victor Jara: The Right to Live in Peace. Murdered in the first days of the Pinochet coup in 1973, Jara emerged from shanty town poverty to become one of Chile's biggest stars. Having forged his reputation as a theatre director, he found greater fame as a collector of folk songs and a protest singer. With fellow musicians and his English wife, Joan, sharing their recollections, this is a fascinating portrait of a life-loving individual who touched a nation's soul. If only the distributors had thought to subtitle the lyrics of his songs, it might have been an even more rewarding experience.

More moving, but too impressionistic to convey fully the moment of such a significant occasion, is Danish director Anders Leifer's The Faithful Dead. Counting down to the famous Day of the Dead on November 2, this documentary explores the meaning of the various ceremonies and superstitions associated with the Mexican obsession with Death.

Alternating between rural and urban interpretations and gauging the opinions of all strands of society, the film occasionally recalls the footage shot in the thirties by Sergei Eisenstein for Que Viva Mexico! But, while Leifer is a competent anthropologist, he's not in the same league as a visual poet.