PORFIRIO, EL ESTUDIANTE and THE TINIEST PLACE Top Cartagena

The Colombian film Porfirio (pictured) by Alejandro Landes won three main prizes at the Cartagena Film Festival (Festival Internacional de Cartagena de Indias - FICCI) that came to a close today in Colombia. The film, which tells the story of Porfirio Ramírez, won the India Catalina Awards for Best Film and Best Colombian Director in the Colombia al 100% competition, as well as Best Director in the official competition. The jury composed by filmmakers Claire Denis, Hector Babenco and film critic Dennis Lim, gave the top prize in the official competition to the Argentine film El Estudiante / The Student by Santiago Mitre, and gave a special mention to the Mexican film Machete Language / El lenguaje de los machetes by Kyzza Terrazas.

The Mexican film The Tiniest Place / El lugar más pequeño by Tatiana Huezo was awarded the prizes for Best Film and Best Director in the documentary section by the jury composed by Debbie Zimmerman from New York's Women Make Movies, Ricardo Giraldo, director of the Ambulante Film Festival and Ricardo Restrepo from the Colombian Association of Documentary Filmmakers. The Mexican film Cuates de Australia / Draught by Everardo González also received a special mention in the same category.

On its 52nd edition, the Cartagena Film Festival is the longest running film festival in Latin America and Monika Wagenberg, co-founder of Cinema Tropical, has been its director for the second consecutive year.

Four Latin American Films at New Directors/New Films

New Directors/New Films, the festival organized conjunctly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art announced yesterday that Brazilian film Neighboring Sounds / O som ao redor by Kleber Mendonça Filho was also selected for this year's edition. This Brazilian film adds to the other three Latin American films participating at the 41st edition of the festival that were previously announced: Alejandro Landes' Porfirio (Colombia); Pablo Giorgelli's Las Acacias (Argentina) and Júlia Murat's Found Memories (Brazil). The festival runs March 16 - April 1 in New York City. 

UN CUENTO CHINO Wins Goya Award

Tonight the Spanish Academy of Film Arts and Sciences presented the Goya Awards to the best of Spanish cinema and the Argentinean film Un cuento chino / A Chinese Tale by Sebastián Borensztein won the prize for Best Hispanic-American Film. Actors Angie Cepeda and Ricardo Darín, the protagonists of the winning film, were the ones that presented the award at a ceremony in Madrid.

Un cuento chino, which was the highest grossing local film in Argentina in 2011, tells the story revolving the encounter between Roberto (played by Darín) and a young Chinese boy. The other films nominated in the same category were Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala (Mexico); Andrés Wood's Violeta Went to Heaven / Violeta se fue a los cielos by Andrés Wood (Chile) and Gerardo Chijona's Boleto al paraíso / Ticket to Paradise (Cuba).

 

With 14 Goya Awards, Argentina is the Latin American country that has won the most times in this category (out of 24 times), since it was created in 1987.

Few Awards for Latin American Cinema at the Berlinale

Even though Latin American cinema has a solid performance at the Berlin Film Festival in recent years, José Padilha's Tropa de elite / Elite Squad (Brazil) and Claudia Llosa's La teta asustada / The Milk of Sorrow (Peru) have won the top prize back to back in 2008 and 2009, the 62nd edition of the Berlinale (running from February 9 - 19) wasn't as generous, with few Latin American films winning some minor prizes. 

Llosa participated again at this year's festival with the film Loxoro which was awarded the Teddy Award for Best Short Film, an international prize for films with LGBT topics presented by an independent jury. Brazilian short film L by Thais Fujinaga received a Special Mention for the Deutsche Kinderhilfswerk for Best Short Film, whilst his fellow countryman Cao Hamburger was the third place in the Panorama Section Audience Award for fiction film for his feature film Xingu. 

Additionally the Uruguayan-Mexican co-production La demora / The Delay by Rodrigo Plá received the Ecumenical Jury Prize and the Tagesspiegel Readers’ Jury of the Forum Section. In that same section Celina Murga's documentary film Escuela normal / Normal School (Argentina) received a Special Mention for the Caligari Award, prize sponsored by the Federal Association of Communal Film Work and the Filmdienst  magazine. 

José Álvarez's CANICULA Selected for True/False Film Fest

The True/False Film Festival announced today the lineup for its 2012 edition which includes the Mexican documentary film Canícula by director José Álvarez. The film takes places in the Totonac village of Zapotal, Santa Cruz, where the tension between tradition and the creeping forces of modernity plays a dynamic role for the entire film.

Other selected films with Latin American content include Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man, about Mexican-American singer songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez whose music was highly popular in South Africa; Victor Kossakovsk's ¡Vivan las Antipodas! about Earth’s antipodal pairs including Rios, Argentina, and Patagonia in Chile; and Wojciech Staron's Argentinian Lesson about a small Polish kid trying to adapt to a new life in Buenos Aires; and Nadav Kurtz's Paraíso, a short film about three Mexican immigrants who clean the windows of Chicago's tallest skyscrapers.

On its ninth edition, the True/False Film Festival, focusing on documentary film, will take place March 1-4 in Columbia, Missouri. 

Santa Barbara Film Fest Honors Two Latin American Films

The 27^th 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.