El Merchi - BLU-RAY

?2017 marked the 450th anniversary of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi - one of the founders of opera and hailed in his day as 'the creator of modern music'. Monteverdi transformed vocal music beyond Renaissance polyphony into an entirely new genre that expressed powerful feelings and emotions within a gripping narrative. This set brings together Monteverdi's three surviving operas the splendorous L'Orfeo and, from later in his life, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea with their visceral passions and dramatic dilemmas, all elements that have animated the history of opera for centuries. John Eliot Gardiner's acclaimed Monteverdi 450 series of semi-staged performances produced in Venice's historical Teatro La Fenice is a living confirmation that Monteverdi 'will be sighed for in later ages, for his compositions will surely outlive the ravages of time.'

The search for a missing woman unspools in two unexpectedly interconnected parts in Laura Citarella's playful new feature. The missing woman is Laura (Laura Paredes), a biologist cataloging plant species in and around the Argentinean city of Trenque Lauquen. The men searching for her Rafael, her boyfriend, and Ezequiel, a coworker who has come to mean more to her in recent days. But in order to uncover the truth of Laura's disappearance, a profusion of mysteries must be explored. There's the question of love letters hidden in books in the local library, the discovery of a new species of flower, and then there's the mysterious being, rumored to be haunting the lake at the center of town. From El Pampero Cine, the collective behind La Flor, comes a labyrinthine tale of obsessive pursuit and the quest for personal freedom.

The Boys in the Boat [Blu-ray]