Argentine feature Wild Tales / Relatos salvajes leads in nominations for the 2nd annual edition of the Platino Awards of Ibero-American Cinema, with a total of ten nominations, including, Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress.
Directed by Damián Szifron and produced by the Almodóvar Brothers, Wild Tales continues to make waves after it premiered this time last year at Cannes. It went on to be a huge box office success in Argentina and received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film earlier this year, amongst countless other prestigious awards and nominations. It was released theatrically in the United States in February and its immense popularity has kept it in theaters until now, as we are fast-approaching June.
Wild Tales is a black comedy including six shorts with characters that walk a thin line between civilization and brutality. It is a film about deadly revenge and losing control.
Other nominees include Venezuelan feature Bad Hair / Pelo Malo by Mariana Rondón, which received eight nominations. Nine-year-old Junior, who has a beautiful head of curls is obsessed with straightening his hair which elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother.
Mr. Kaplan, a comedy from Uruguay by Álvaro Brechner, received seven nominations. At seventy-six years old Mr. Kaplan faces a severe existential crisis and in the midst of his breakdown becomes convinced that a German running a nearby café is an escaped Nazi. As a Jew who fled from the Nazis as a child he teams up with an expelled cop to capture the Nazi and bring him to justice.
Szifron is joined in the Best Director category by Brechner from Uruguay, Ernesto Daranas (Conducta) from Cuba, and Rondón from Venezuela.
The Latin American films competing for Best First Film are Ciencias naturales / Natural Sciences by Matías Lucchesi from Argentina, La distancia más larga / Longest Distance by Claudia Pinto from Venezuela, Mateo by María Gamboa from Colombia, and Vestido de novia / Wedding Dress by Marilyn Solaya from Cuba.
The nominations were announced early this morning in Los Angeles. This year’s Festival received an outstanding seven hundred and sixty films for competition leaving thirty finalists and representing thirty-three different countries.
The 2015 Platino Awards of Spanish-American Cinema will take place in Marbella, Spain on on July 18, 2015.
