Argentina’s María Aparicio Wins Top Prize at Venice Days With SOMETIMES SADNESS, SOMETIMES REBELLION

Argentine filmmaker María Aparicio has won the GdA Director’s Award, the top prize of the 23rd Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days), for her latest feature Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion / A veces me entra tristeza, otras veces rebelión, which had its world premiere in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.

The award was presented by the Giornate degli Autori jury composed of Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, Italian filmmaker and editor Sara Fgaier, and Hania Mroué, director of Beirut’s Metropolis Cinema. The GdA Director’s Award comes with a €20,000 prize, shared between the filmmaker and the film’s international distributor to support its international promotion.

In announcing the award, the jury praised Aparicio’s film for the way it brings together the intimate and the political through a story of solitude, work, immigration, and privilege. The jury highlighted its delicate attention to small gestures and its merging of “the personal and the collective, fiction and documentary, history and the present.”

An Argentina-Spain co-production, A veces me entra tristeza, otras veces rebelión stars Eva Bianco as Eva, an Argentine woman passing through Madrid who spends her days wandering the unfamiliar city alone. An encounter at the Museo Reina Sofía introduces her to Dante (Roger Koza), an Argentine historian researching labor struggles in his country and the life and work of Juan Bialet Massé. Their meeting becomes the starting point for a meditation on work, displacement, human relationships, and contemporary life.

The film was written and directed by Aparicio, with cinematography by Ezequiel Salinas, editing by Ramiro Sonzini, and sound by Federico Disandro. It is produced by La Buena Hora and Las Flores, with co-production partners in Argentina and Spain, and international sales handled by Paper Moon.

Born in Córdoba, Argentina, Aparicio made her feature debut with Las Calles (2016), followed by the acclaimed Sobre las nubes (2022) and Las cosas indefinidas (2023), which won the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Film. Her latest film continues the filmmaker’s distinctive exploration of the porous boundaries between fiction and everyday life.

Following its Venice world premiere and GdA Director’s Award win, Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion is set to continue its festival run in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

Oscars: Panama Selects CHICHERO as Its Best International Feature Contender

Panama has selected Chichero, directed by Arturo Montenegro and Aarón Bromley, as its official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards. The film will also represent the Central American country in the Best Ibero-American Film category at Spain’s 41st Goya Awards.

Set against the backdrop of Peru’s internal armed conflict during the 1980s, Chichero follows Josué (Júnior Béjar Roca), a young Quechua man who flees Peru and migrates to Panama in search of a better future. Struggling to make a living by selling chicha and empanadas on the streets, he holds onto his dream of becoming a boxing champion. His path crosses with Gaby, a young woman facing struggles of her own, as the two find an unexpected source of hope in each other while confronting displacement, precarity, and the sacrifices demanded by their ambitions.

A story of migration, love, and resilience, the film stars Júnior Béjar Roca alongside Andrea Pérez Meana, Mafe Achurra, Gaby Gnazzo, Diego de Obaldía, Domil Leira, Elmis Castillo, and Mayra Hurley.

Chichero was a winner of Panama’s 2023 Fondo Cine competition, receiving support in the feature fiction and animation category. The film is scheduled to open theatrically in Panama later this September.

The selection marks the third time a film directed by Montenegro has been chosen to represent Panama at the Academy Awards. His Everybody Changes / Todos cambiamos was the country’s submission for the 92nd Academy Awards, while Birthday Boy / Cumpleañero represented Panama at the 95th Academy Awards. Chichero marks Bromley’s first film selected as Panama’s Oscar submission.

Panama has yet to receive a nomination for Best International Feature Film, but came closest with Abner Benaim’s acclaimed Plaza Catedral, which made the 15-film shortlist for the 94th Academy Awards in 2022—the first Panamanian film to advance to the category’s shortlist.

The shortlist for the 99th Academy Awards will be announced on December 15, with nominations to follow on January 21, 2027. The 99th Oscars will take place on March 14, 2027.

North American Premiere of DONKEY PRINCESS From Visionary Chilean Duo Cociña + León at Fantastic Fest

Donkey Princess / Princesa burro, the inventive new live-action feature from acclaimed Chilean directors Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña (The Wolf House), will celebrate its North American Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026, running September 17–24 in Austin, Texas, following its recent World Premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.

Loosely reimagining Charles Perrault's 17th-century fairy tale Donkeyskin—famously adapted for the screen by Jacques Demy—the film follows Princess Diana (Antonia Giesen), who defies a royal ban on love to be with Lalo. When he is exiled, Diana uses a magical bracelet to traverse parallel space-times in search of him. Her journey continually mutates as she passes through distinct cinematic genres: beginning in a classic fairy-tale realm, slipping into a domestic thriller, boarding a 1960s TV-style spaceship, and ultimately arriving at the starkness of physical reality as her quest descends into horror.

Crafted largely within an open gallery space at Matucana 100 in Santiago, Donkey Princess eschews modern CGI in favor of practical, retro techniques. León and Cociña constructed the film's multidimensional universe before a live audience using rear-projected scale models, hand-drawn illustrations, and painted backdrops. This handmade approach gives the film a tangible, analogue quality that evokes mid-century genre productions while retaining the duo’s unmistakable visual language. The film features an original score by Jean-Benoît Dunckel, one half of the acclaimed French electronic duo Air.

Emerging from the same creative cycle as The Wolf House and The Hyperboreans, Donkey Princess stands as the duo’s most narrative-driven work to date. By channeling classic genre tropes through live-action performances, León and Cociña combine structured storytelling with their signature embrace of the organic and accidental, yielding a film that is equal parts monstrous, wild, and tender.

Oscars: THE CONDOR DAUGHTER Is Bolivia’s Official Submission

Bolivia has selected Álvaro Olmos Torrico’s The Condor Daughter / La hija cóndor as its official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards. The Association of Bolivian Filmmakers (ASOCINE) selected the film unanimously, praising its “honest and respectful” portrait of contemporary Bolivia and the strength and humanity of its two female protagonists. The film will also represent Bolivia in the Best Ibero-American Film category at Spain’s Goya Awards.

A co-production between Bolivia, Peru, and Uruguay, The Condor Daughter follows Clara, a teenager growing up in a small Indigenous community high in the Bolivian Andes. Raised by her adoptive mother, a traditional midwife, Clara has learned the ancient Quechua songs passed down through generations to guide women through childbirth. But while she carries this ancestral tradition, she dreams of leaving the mountains behind to become a folkloric music star in the city.

When Clara sets out to pursue that dream, the film explores the tensions between tradition and modernity, cultural inheritance and individual freedom, while foregrounding the preservation of Quechua language and Indigenous knowledge.

Written and directed by Cochabamba-born filmmaker Álvaro Olmos Torrico, the 109-minute drama stars María Magdalena Sanizo, Marisol Vallejos Montaño, and Nelly Huayta. The film is Olmos Torrico’s second feature following Wiñay. The Condor Daughter was filmed in the same Andean community where the director had met a traditional Quechua midwife whose life and work helped inspire the project.

The Condor Daughter had its World Premiere in the Centrepiece section of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and has since enjoyed an extensive international festival run. Its accolades include Best Supporting Actress and Best Music at the Málaga Film Festival, as well as an acting prize at the Guadalajara International Film Festival.

The film is now set for its U.S. theatrical release through Outsider Pictures, opening in New York at Cinema Village on Friday, September 18, followed by a Los Angeles engagement at Laemmle Theatres.