The Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences has announced the nominees for the 55th edition of the Ariel Awards, Mexico's national film prize, which will take place on Tuesday, May 28 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
Luis Mandoki's La vida precoz y breve de Sabina Rivas / The Precocious & Brief Life of Sabina Rivas (pictured, left) leads this year's nominations with 11 total including for Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. The film, which failed to receive a nomination as Best Picture, tells the story of Sabina and Jovany, two young lovers from Honduras, who are reunited by chance in the Mexico-Guatemala border. It is a love story set through situations both real and ordinary in which loyalty is put to the test, within the context of immigration.
With 10 nominations including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay, and Best First Feature, El Premio / The Prize, (pictured), directed by Paula Markovitch tells the story of a young mother and her daughter who flee Buenos Aires for the seclusion of a ramshackle cottage along the windy dunes of an Argentine beach under the cloud of a military dictatorship. Although the reconstruction of their lives begins as idyllic, seven-year-old Cecilia's new school becomes contaminated by he general political crisis as her teacher recruits the class for a patriotic essay contest sponsored by the very people who may have already disappeared her father.
Matías Meyer's Los últimos cristeros / The Last Christeros (pictured, right) who was also a winner of Best Director of a Feature Film at the 3rd Annual Cinema Tropical Awards this past January is up for 8 Ariel awards. Nominated for Best Film and best director to name a few, the film takes place at the end of the nineteen-thirties, in the arid mountains of Mexico, as a christero colonel and his last men resist to surrender. This men are peasants, poor and proud people. They are followed by the government and are in need of ammunition in order to fight. The support does not arrive and life in the sierra turns more difficult every day; the war is almost over.
Other nominees include Cinema Tropical Award nominee, Cuates de Australia / Drought (pictured, left) directed by Everardo González for Best Documentary, El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol, directed by Sebastián del Amo for Best First Feature and La Demora, directed by Rodrigo Plá for Best Film. In the Best Ibero-American film the three nominated films are the Chilean film No by Pablo Larraín, the Ecuadorean film Pescador by Sebastián Cordero, and the Spanish film Blancanieves by Pablo Berger.
Additionally, the Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences will honor director Rafael Corkidi, and the late actors Mario Almada and Columba Domínguez, with the Golden Ariel.
The Ariel Awards, which have been seen as "Mexico's Oscars," recognize excellence in motion picture making and has been awarded annually since 1947. Its is considered the most prestigious award in the Mexican movie industry.
