SANFIC, the Santiago Film Festival in Chile and FIC Monterrey, both in their 9th annual editions, have announced their 2013 winners respectively. At SANFIC, Los analfabetas / The Illiterate (pictured), the directorial debut by Moisés Sepúlveda, was the winner of the top prize for Best Chilean film, while José Luis Torres Leiva was awarded the prize for Best Director in the Chilean competition for his most recent film Ver y escuchar.
Los analfabetas is based on a theater play by Pablo Paredes, which tells the story of Ximena, an illiterate 50-year-old woman. A young unemployed school teacher offers her to read the newspapers and to teach her to read, but a letter from her father that Ximena has been keeping since he abandoned her while she was a kid, might invert the roles of the teacher and the student.
In Monterrey, Salvadorean-born Mexican director José Luis Valle's Las búsquedas / The Searches was awarded with the top prize as Best Mexican Feature Film, while Alfredo Marrón's Celso Piña: El rebelde del acordeón was awarded with the prize for Best Mexican Documentary. Las búsquedas is a story of revenge, redemption and fate. A man runs his errands: cleans the house, picks up the dry cleaning, pays his debts and buys groceries. Then, inexplicably commits suicide. His death smites his wife, Elvira, who is unaware of the reasons for suicide. At another point, Ulises is assaulted and stripped of the portfolio that held the only photo he kept of her deceased daughter. He sets out to find the thief and kill him. The lives of Elvira and Ulises intersect unexpectedly.
The 9th edition of SANFIC took place August 23 - 31 in Chile, while the also 9th edition of FICMonterrey took place August 22 through September 1 in the northern Mexican city.
