Three Latin American films, from Brazil, Colombia, and Guatemala, won top prizes at the 55th edition of the Chicago Film Festival. In the international competition, Brazilian filmmaker Maya Da-Rin was the winner of the Silver Hugo for Best Director for her debut feature The Fever / A Febre. The film drifts between dream and reality, portraying with both tenderness and precision the world of an indigenous father and daughter in the north of Brazil. It takes us into the family and their hearts, but never forgets the importance of the political context.
In the New Directors competition, the Golden Hugo for Best Film was presented to the Colombian film Litigante by Franco Lolli. This second feature from the Colombian director is a searing portrait of family ties and multi-generational motherhood. The jury was moved by the film’s emotional complexity, nuance, and authenticity, as the movie pulled us all through the turbulent and tender push and pull of the family life, work life, and love life of the film’s central character. We award this film the top prize of the New Directors category also for its mastery of craft in writing, acting, camera, and editing, but ultimately for its eloquent balance of hope and loss, and for its unmistakable bravery.
Additionally, the Guatemalan film Our Mothers / Nuestras madres by César Díaz was the winner of the Silver Hugo (ex aequo) in the New Directors competition. The film’s quasi-documentary style maps a young man’s intense confrontation with Guatemala’s post-civil war national reckoning and its implications for his life, his livelihood, his family, and his very identity. The jury was moved by the stakes of the storytelling and the film’s sense of urgency, as well as by director Díaz’s delicate and empathetic engagement with the meanings and boundaries of personal agency, trauma, and family.
The 55th edition of the Chicago Film Festival took place October 16 - 27.
