Tengo sueños eléctricos by Valentina Maurel
The San Sebastian Film Festival has announced the twelve productions from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, and Mexico, that will complete the Horizontes Latinos section vying for the Best Latin American Film Award. The selection includes the latest films by a mixed of renowned filmmakers such as Patricio Guzmán, Carlos Lechuga, and Natalia Beristain, with the work of new filmmakers including Manuela Martelli, Valentina Maurel, and Carolina Markowicz.
The opening night film of the Horizontes Latinos section will the My Imaginary Country / Mi país imaginario by the Chilean master documentarian Patricio Guzmán. The film is an urgent and inspiring chronicle of how a popular uprising that started in October 2019 has sparked deep political change in Chile. Featuring harrowing front-line protest footage and interviews with dynamic activists—of a movement largely led by women and feminist leaders—My Imaginary Country powerfully, yet elegantly connects Chile's complex, bloody history to the country’s contemporary social movements, and leading to the recent election of a new president.
Octopus Skin / La piel pulpo, the second film by Ecuadorean director Ana Cristina Barragán (Alba), tells the story of seventeen-year-old twin brothers Iris and Ariel, who live with their mother and elder sister Lía on a beach full of molluscs, birds and reptiles. The teenagers have grown up isolated from the continent, in an unconventional relationship between siblings and with a transcendental connection to nature. Curious to discover what lies beyond the ocean, Iris decides to leave the island and head for the city. The shopping centers, the noise, the search for his absent father, the separation from his twin and his mother's absence define the importance of the love for his siblings and of his identity in nature.
Manuela Martelli’s debut feature 1976, follows Carmen, who goes to the beach to supervise the renovation work on her house. Her husband, children and grandchildren come and go during the winter holidays. When the family priest asks her to look after a young boy who is secretly staying with him, Carmen enters uncharted territory, far removed from the peaceful life to which she is accustomed.
1976 by Manuel Martelli
Set In a remote area in São Paulo's countryside, Carolina Markowicz’s debut feature Charcoal / Carvão tells the story of a rural family who lives beside a charcoal factory accepts a proposal to host a mysterious foreigner. The home soon becomes a hideout as the so-called guest happens to be a highly wanted drug lord. The mother, her husband and child will have to learn how to share the same roof with this stranger, while keeping up appearances of an unchanged peasant routine.
In the Mexican drama Dos Estaciones, the debut fiction film by Juan Pablo González, María García is a heiress to a tequila factory in Jalisco who tries to keep her business afloat in a market dominated by foreign corporations. As her situation deteriorates, she grows closer and closer to Rafa, her new manager. When a persistent plague and an unexpected flood cause irreversible damage, María is forced to do everything she can to save her community's main source of economy and pride.
Set in Havana, Cuba in the spring of 1971, The Padilla Case / El caso padilla is the latest film by director Pavel Giroud (The Companion) which tells the story of poet Heberto Padilla, The writer has just been set free and appears before the Cuban Writers' Union where he pronounces a statement of "heartfelt self-criticism", declaring himself to be a counterrevolutionary agent and throws accusations of complicity at many of his colleagues present at the event, among them, his wife. A month previously, his arrest under the accusation of endangering the security of the Cuban state had mobilized prominent intellectuals all over the world, who wrote a letter to Fidel Castro calling for the release of the poet, whose only sin had been to dissent through his poetic work. The writer's mea culpa, the recording of which is shown for the first time to the public, marks the narrative line of a story including the testimonies of Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jorge Edwards and Fidel Castro.
La jauría, the debut film by Colombian director Andrés Ramírez Pulido which had its world premiere in Cannes Critics’ Week last May, follows Eliu, a country boy who is incarcerated in an experimental young offenders institution, deep in the heart of the Colombian tropical forest, for a crime he committed with his friend El Mono. Every day, the teenagers perform hard manual labour and endure intense group therapy, under the menacing gaze of the camp guard Godoy. One day, El Mono is transferred to the same centre, and with him comes the past that Eliu is trying to escape.
La Jauría by Andrés Ramírez Pulido
The latest film by Mexican filmmaker Natalia Beristain (She Doesn’t Want to Sleep Alone) starring her mother actress Julieta Egurrola and Teresa Ruiz is the story of Julia, a mother, or rather, one of many mothers, sisters, daughters, colleagues, who have had their lives torn apart by the widespread violence in a country waging a war against its women. Julia is searching for Ger, her daughter. And in her search, she will weave through the stories and struggles of the different women she will meet.
Sublime, the debut feature by Argentine filmmaker Mariano Biasin which premiered at the Berlinale, follows 16-year-old Manuel lives in a small coastal town. He plays bass in a band with his best friends. One of them is Felipe, with whom he shares a strong friendship from a very young age. Manuel is dating Azul, a relationship that they are intensely exploring. But when the moment comes to have their first time together, Manuel feels something completely new that makes him see Felipe with different eyes. Routine situations of that friendship change tenor. Manuel tries to figure out if the impulse is mutual. The challenge is not to put the friendship at risk, something that inevitably ends up being tested.
The Costa Rican film I Have Electric Dreams / Tengo sueños eléctricos, the debut feature by Valentina Maurel recently premiered at Locarno, tells the story of Eva, who can't stand the fact that her mother wants to renovate the house and get rid of the cat, which, disoriented since the divorce, pees everywhere. Eva wants to go and live with her father, who, disoriented like the cat, is experiencing a second adolescence. And Eva follows him while he tries to reconnect with his desire to become an artist and find love again. But like someone who crosses an ocean of adults without knowing how to swim, Eva will also discover the rage that gnaws at him, and that without knowing it, she has inherited from him.
A favorite at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the debut feature by Colombian director Fabián Hernández centers on Carlos lives in a youth shelter in the center of Bogotá. It's Christmas and he longs to spend the day with his family. As he leaves the shelter for the holidays, Carlos is confronted with the brutality of his neighbourhood, ruled by the law of the strongest, the alpha male. He must prove he can be one of them, while deep inside, these expressions of masculinity clash with the decisions he must make in order to survive.
And lastly, the most recent film by Cuban director Carlos Lechuga (Santa & Andrés), Vicenta B. is the story of Vicenta Bravo, a woman with a special gift for reading cards and fortelling people's future. Every day folk flock to her home looking for solutions to their problems. Vicenta lives happily with her son, until he decides to leave Cuba and everything starts to fall apart. Thrown into a crisis that prevents her from seeing what's happening around her, Vicenta will embark on a journey taking her inland to a country where everyone seems to have lost their faith.
The 70th edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival will take place September 16-24.
