Mexican filmmaker Bruno Santamaría has been announced as this year’s recipient of the Ashland Film Festival’s James Blue Award, named after the Oregon-born director and given to an emerging filmmaker whose work, like Blue’s, addresses complex issues of social justice and social/political change.
Santamaría is being honored as the third recipient of the James Blue Award for his second feature film Things We Dare Not Do / Cosas que no hacemos. Acclaimed at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival Film Festival, where it had its world premiere, Santamaría’s documentary offers a choral portrait of a small coast village of El Roblito on Mexico’s Pacific coast, featuring sixteen-year-old Ñoño, a teenager who dances, runs, and plays with the free spirit of the younger kids he hangs around. But when an incident disrupts the seemingly idyllic atmosphere, Ñoño bravely takes the bold step of coming out to his parents, telling them he wants to dress as a woman.
Things We Dare Not Do has also been awarded with the the Gold Hugo Award for Best Documentary and the Gold Q-Hugo in the Out-Look Competition at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Best Film New Directors Award at the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, and the Best Documentary Award at the Lima Film Festival.
Born in 1986 in Mexico, filmmaker Santamaría is a cinematographer and documentary director graduated from Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) in Mexico City. Margarita marked his directorial debut, which received a a Mezcal Prize special mention at the 2016 Guadalajara Festival. As a cinematographer he has worked in Vivos by Ai Wei Wei, The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life by Zita Erffa and Artemio by Sandra Luz López, among other films. His work has been shown at festivals such as Berlinale, Hot Docs, FIPA, Sheffield Doc Fest, Camerimage, FICG and FICM.
The 20th edition of the Ashland Independent Film Festival will take place online for two weeks from April 15-29 and outdoors in Ashland and Medford from June 24-28, 2021. For more information visit: www.ashlandfilm.org.
