Following the success of its first edition last year, BBC Reel’s online film festival LongShots will return this summer with a strong lineup of thirteen films—four of them from Latin American—curated by an unprecedented alliance of thirteen prestigious film festivals and organizations from around the globe to showcase the most exciting current works in non-fiction that embody this year’s motto Age of Bloom.
This year Latin American lineup includes the Argentine film Soldier / Soldado by Manuel Abramovich, the Brazilian film Baronesa by Juliana Antunes, the Chilean film Los Reyes by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff, and the Mexican film Maricarmen by Sergio Morkin. The films will be streaming for free worldwide starting Wednesday, August 18.
Films competing in LongShots were drawn from a longlist of 110 films nominated by a network of thirteem prestigious festivals around the globe, representing countries from Argentina to India, China, and Kosovo. The participating Latin American festivals and organizations are Cinema Tropical, Argentina’s Mar del Plata Film Festival, and Mexico’s Docs Mx Film Festival.
Last year, over 10,000 people around the world voted for their favorite LongShots film, with the festival receiving more than 1.5 million page views on BBC Reel. The seven films garnered 400,000 video views, with the most successful film being viewed 100,000 times, catapulting emerging talent and hidden gems from the film industry into the homes of film fans around the world.
In the spirit of the roaring twenties, the films in the program will explore inspiring and exhilarating stories that remind us of the pleasures and joys of human existence, honoring new beginnings and the wonders of our diverse, colorful and flamboyant world. Films that make your heart jump, catch you by surprise, examine urgent themes through a new empowering lens, and above all celebrate our planet’s powerful beauty and diversity.
In addition to the signature audience award, voted on by the BBC’s global audience, an international jury of four personalities in the film industry will decide on the festival's main prize. Among the jurors are acclaimed actress and director Nandita Das from India, emerging talents like Oscar Nominated Polish director Anna Zamecka, this year's big winner at Visions du Réel, Mexican Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir, and award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker Bao Nguyen.
“It will be a festival of festivals,” said BBC Reel US Editor Anna Bressanin. “We want to offer our audience the chance to discover exciting movies that they wouldn’t be able to see otherwise, unless they could travel from Reykjavik to Tel Aviv, the kind of movies that are shown and acclaimed at great festivals for a week but then disappear until some of them reach streaming services. Personally, it was amazing to co-curate our selection with international institutions that are much loved and esteemed for their programming and their commitment. This year, LongShots is our way of celebrating togetherness and the unifying power of cinema”.
