The LA Film Festival announced today the competition lineup for its 2016 edition, which will feature three films by Latin American directors, all of them having their world premiere at the festival.
Participating in the World Fiction Competition is the Mexican-American co-production Lupe Under the Sun (pictured left) directed and written by Rodrigo Reyes. In Reyes’ follow up to his acclaimed documentary feature Purgatorio, after a lifetime working in the California fields, Lupe learns that he is about to die and desperately struggles to return home to his family in Mexico to make amends—before it is too late.
Premiering in the documentary competition is the Brazil-Nicaragua film Looking at the Stars / Olhando pras Estrelas (pictured right) by Alexandre Peralta. Set in the world’s only ballet school for the blind, located in São Paulo, Brazil, the film follows a prima ballerina and her teen protégé, who boldly take on the unique challenges of their visual impairments to develop new forms of self-expression through dance.
Having it’s world premiere in the LA Muse section, comprised of films made by talented emerging filmmakers that are set, shot or inspired by Los Angeles, is the documentary film Actors of Sound by Lalo Molina. Will Hollywood’s low-tech sound artists survive as digital technology consumes modern moviemaking? That’s the key issue in Molina’s documentary feature in which foley artists, the unsung heroes of movie sound effects, recreate the sounds—from footsteps to bone crack—at the heart of film magic.
The 2016 edition of the LA Film Festival will take place June 1-9 at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood and Culver City.
