LATIN American film may have come to prominence thanks to the Oscar-nominated film, Babel, and to its poster boys Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, but the Cornerhouse is offering the chance to get acquainted with some less mainstream titles.

Highlights of the fiction films include Alatriste, starring Viggo Mortensen as a 17th-century swashbuckler forced to retire and live as a sword-for-hire. In Buenos Aires, 1977 director Israel Adrian Caetano tells the true story of four young men disappeared' in 1977, under Argentina's military dictatorship.

In El Aura Ricardo Darin stars as an introverted taxidermist who gets his chance to fulfill his dream of pulling off the perfect crime, while in Madeinusa classic westerns are mixed with Latin American magic realism in a tale of a remote Peruvian village with a secret celebration.

Also incorporated into the festival is a Spanish and Latin American horror season.

On Tuesday March 20 there will be an introduction to Latin American horror, and amongst the gory film treats on offer is Oscar-nominated director Guillermo del Toro's Cronos, an imaginative reworking of the vampire genre where an elderly antiques dealer discovers a strange artefact hidden by an alchemist centuries ago.

There will also be a number of documentaries and talks.

For more information, visit www.vivafilmfestival.com.

Viva Spanish and Latin American Film Festival, March 15 to 25, the Cornerhouse, Manchester.