The 27th Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF), which ran from January 26 to February 5, honored two Latin American films, as it was announced on the last day of this year’s festival. The Nueva Vision Award for the best Spanish/Latin American film went to Júlia Murat’s Historias que so existem quando lembradas / Found Memories (pictured).
The Brazilian director’s first fiction feature is about a young photographer who comes across a lonesome ghost town with only a few elderly residents. Murat’s film contemplates the divisions and the bonds between the young and the old. US distributor Film Movement acquired the film at the Toronto Film Festival last September, for release in the second quarter of this year.
The jury awarded an honorable mention to Alejandro Bellame Palacios’s film El rumor de las piedras / The Rumble of the Stones. The film depicts a mother’s love for her children and her concern for their future. It is a family’s quest to overcome tragedy amidst the social problems of modern Venezuela. The film was also Venezuela’s official submission for the Academy Awards Best Foreign Film category.
