Two Latin American films were announced as winners of two of the top prizes at the 50th edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR): the Argentine film The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet / El perro que no calla by Ana Katz, and the Cuban short film by Terranova by Alejandro Pérez Serrano and Alejandro Alonso Estrella.
Katz's film was the winner of the VPRO Big Screen Award, which secures distribution in the Netherlands with a cash prize of €30,000, half of which goes to the distributor who decides to buy the film. The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet tells the story of Sebastián, an ordinary man in his thirties devoted to his loyal dog and working in a slew of temporary jobs. As he moves fitfully through adulthood, he navigates love, loss and fatherhood—until the world is rocked by a sudden catastrophe, upending his already turbulent life. Photographed in stark black-and-white imagery, and awash in ruminative metaphor, writer-director Katz captures Sebastian’s midlife coming of age in slices of life both specific and universal as he struggles to adjust to a world that is perpetually changing—and might be nearing its end.
Terranova was one of the three winners of the Ammodo Tiger Short Award, with a cash prize of €5,000. The medium-length film is a portrait of Havana, made of reflections, memories of other cities, and visions of the future. It has a certain solemnity in its soundscape, without losing those strong sounds that make it unique. This particular universe that has been brought together contains many magical scenes that are filmed through a camera obscura.
The 50th edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival took place February 1-7, 2021.
