TODOS TUS MUERTOS Tops Macondo Awards

The film Todos tus muertos / All Your Dead Ones (pictured) by Carlos Moreno was the big winner at the second annual edition of the Macondo Awards that were given by the Colombian Academy of Film Arts and Sciences at a ceremony last night in Bogotá, Colombia.

Moreno's sophomore film took home five awards, out of seven nominations, for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor, beating Andi Baiz's La cara oculta / The Hidden Face by which had been nominated in nine categories. Baiz's film won the prizes for Best Supporting Actress and Best Sound.

Todos tus muertos, which had its World Premiere at the 2011 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, follows when simple farmer Salvador sets off for work one morning, only to be shocked by the discovery of a huge pile of bodies dumped in the middle of his cornfield. Grabbing his bicycle, he dashes into town to alert the authorities. Easier said than done since it’s Election Day, and the powers that be have other things on their minds. Issuing denials and shrugging the matter off, the mayor and chief of the militia attempt to go about the business at hand, but a mountain of corpses doesn’t just vanish, even in Colombia. Gradually the news leaks out and a national scandal soon looms.

Other awarded films include Jairo Carrillo and Óscar Andrade's Pequeñas Voces / Little Voices winner of the prize for Best Feature Film, José Luis Rugele's García for Best Actress and Best Costume Design, and Jaime Osorio's El Páramo / The Squad.

Complete List of Winners

Best Film: Todos tus muertos / All Your Dead Ones
Best Director: Carlos Moreno, Todos tus muertos / All Your Dead Ones
Best Screenplay: Carlos Moreno and Alonso Torres, Todos tus muertos / All Your Dead Ones
Best Actor: Álvaro Rodríguez, Todos tus muertos / All Your Dead Ones
Best Actress: Margarita Rosa de Francisco, García
Best Supporting Actor: Jorge Herrera, Todos tus muertos / All Your Dead Ones
Best Supporting Actress: Clara Lago, La cara oculta / The Hidden Face
Best Cinematography: Mauricio Vidal, Apaporis
Best Edition: Sebastián Hernández and Felipe Guerrero, El Páramo / The Squad
Best Art Direction: Sara Millán, Saluda al diablo de mi parte / Greetings to the Devil
Best Music: Alejandro Ramírez Rojas, Apaporis
Best Sound: Eduardo Castro and César Salazar, La cara oculta / The Hidden Face
Best Makeup: Andrés Ramírez, El Páramo / The Squad
Best Costume Design: Angélica Perea, García
Best Short Film: Los retratos / The Portraits
Best Animated Film: Jairo Carrillo and Óscar Andrade, Pequeñas Voces / Little Voices

AQUÍ ESTOY, AQUÍ NO and POLVO Awarded at Antofagasta

The Chilean film Aquí estoy, aquí no / Here I Am, Here I'm Not (pictured) by Elisa Eliash was awarded the prizes for Best Film, Best Director and the Audience Award at the sixth edition of the Antofagasta Film Festival which ran November 13-18 in the northern Chilean city.

Eliash's sophomore film follows Ramiro, a journalist that after being on a car accident, develops phobia to speed. Suspended from his job, a mysterious publisher commissioned him to write the unauthorized biography of Ana Patricia Jones Ahumada, a Chilean rock legend. The investigation leads them to start a relationship, until one day she dies in a car accident. Devastated, Ramiro meets a woman of identical features and try to reconstruct it the image of his beloved.

The Guatemalan film Polvo / Dust (pictured right) by Julio Hernández Cordón was awarded the prize for Best International Film. The film explores the weight of the past, including the desire for vengeance, in the wake of the Guatemalan Civil War.

In the Chilean Documentary competition, the prize for Best Documentary went to El otro día / The Other Day by Ignacio Agüero, while Pachi Bustos received the prize for Best Director for her film Cuentos sobre el futuro / Tales about the Future. All of the awarded films receive a cash prize of $2,000 USD.

Baja Announces Winners of its First Edition

The Chilean production No by Pablo Larraín starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal was awarded the prize for Best International Film at the first edition of the Baja International Film Festival which ran November 14-17 at Los Cabos in Mexico. Revolving around Chile's 1988 referendum on the Pinochet regime, Larraín's behind-the-scenes drama tracks with engaging detail the unfolding of a political marketing campaign that succeeded against all odds.

The prize for Best Mexican film was awarded to Nicolás Pereda's Los mejores temas / The Greatest Hits (pictured left). Drifting from fiction to documentary, Los mejores temas tells the story of Emilio, a man in his fifties, who shows up at his family home after fifteen years of absence. The prize for Best Mexican Documentary was shared by two films: Carlos Rossini's El alcalde / The Mayor (pictured below, right) and Luciana Kaplan's La revolución de los alcatraces / Eufrosina's Revolution.

El alcalde tells the story of Mauricio Férnandez, the polemic mayor of the wealthiest municipality in Latin America, located in the North of Mexico, while Kaplan's documentary is about Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, a native of Santa Maria Quiegolani, an indigenous community located in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca.

In its launching edition, the festival showcased 80 films from 18 countries,and it bestowed tribute awards to two-time Academy Award-nominee Edward Norton for Outstanding Achievement in Acting; Academy Award-winner Melissa Leo for Excellence in Acting; celebrated actor Diego Luna for Excellence in Acting; Academy Award-nominee Virginia Madsen for Excellence in Acting; Academy Award-nominee Matt Dillon for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema; acclaimed director Nicolas Echeverría, for Excellence in Director and iconic filmmaker and Secretary-Treasurer of the Directors Guild of America Michael Apted for Outstanding Achievement in Directing.

THE LAST CANGACEIROS and MI AMIGA BETY Winners at DocsDF

The Brazilian film Os últimos cangaçeiros / The Last Cangaceiros by Wolney Oliveira received the top prize for Best Ibero-American Documentary Film at the 7th edition of DocsDF in Mexico City, which ran November 8-18. The awarded film tells the story of Durvinha and Moreno, a couple from the northeast of Brazil that have kept their true identities for over 50 years. They were part of the group of outlaws of Lampião: the most famous and controversial Brazilian bandit of his time.

The Ibero-American competition jury gave a Special Mention to the Ecuadorean documentary film Con mi corazón en Yambo / With My Heart in Yambo by Fernanda Restrepo.

Diana Garay's Mi amiga Bety / My Friend Bety won the prize for Best Mexican Documentary Film. The film tells the story of Bety, a childhood friend of the filmmaker who is in jail accused of having killed her mother. Mariela Zunino's Hasta ahí te mueves / You Move Till There received a Special Jury Mention in the same competiton.

Three Latin American Films Awarded at Rome

Three Latin American films were awarded at the Rome Film Festival which ran November 9-17 at the Italian capital. Spanish DP Arnau Valls Colomer received the Award for Best Cinematography in the official competition his work on the Mexican film Mai Morire (pictured) by Enrique Rivero.

The sophomore production by Rivero (Parque Vía) narrates the story of Chayo who returns to Xochimilco, her hometown, to care for her elderly mother who is on the verge of death. Surrounded by love and the sublime beauty of the natural environment, Chayo must give up something that to a woman and mother is inalienable. The experience of struggle and confrontation, submission and finally liberation from the ties of this world. That will be the price of her freedom. 

Brazilian production Avanti Popolo (pictured right) by Israeli-Uruguayan director Michael Wahrmann received the prize for Best Feature Film in the CinemaXXI competition. The film tells the story of Andrè, who returns to his childhood home in São Paulo, where his father, an old man living alone with no other company but his faithful dog, is waiting for the son who left thirty years earlier for the distant Soviet Union and never returned. Andrè thereby undertakes a touching and ironic journey into the memory of a country where the spectre of dictatorship, the lure of communism, the passion for good cinema and music, and the regret for the decline of ideologies, still linger.

The Argentinean-Spanish documentary film El ojo del tiburón / The Shark's Eye by Alejo Hoijman was the winner of the Social Cinema Award. The film is a sensorial journey through two teenagers’ searching eyes. Maicol and Bryan live in Greytown, in the middle of the Nicaraguan jungle. Here live shark fishermen, drug traffickers and military patrols. There is electricity only a few hours a day, yet Bryan and Maicol keep up to date like young people all over the world with mobile phones, the Internet and TV. Nevertheless, their days of hunting and playing together will soon be over: the summer will mark the end of their childhood and their abrupt journey into adulthood. Bryan is anxious as he embarks on his first fishing trip to the sea. Maicol feels tempted to follow the path into drug trafficking, which seems to be risk-free in a town visibly scarred by the civil war.

SOUTHWEST, JUAN OROL and LA VIDA ME MATA Selected for Global Lens

The Global Film Initiative has announced that three Latin American films will headline Global Lens 2013, the tenth edition of the Initiative’s film serie which will feature ten international award-winning narrative films. Brazilian director Eduardo Nunes will presents Sudoeste / Southwest, his debut which takes the audience to a magical village on Brazil’s coast in lush black-and-white Cinemascope. This film was previously awarded the Special Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize at the 2012 Rio International Film Festival.

The selection also includes El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol / The Fantastic World of Juan Orol (pictured left) from Mexico, Sebastián del Amo’s eclectic tribute to “the involuntary surrealist,” Juan Orol (played by Roberto Sosa), the king of B-movie films throughout the golden age of Mexican cinema. This film was awarded Best First Feature at the 2012 Guadalajara Film Festival.

Global Lens will also feature the 2007 debut feature film from acclaimed Chilean director Sebastián Silva. La vida me mata / Life Kills Me (pictured right) is the story of an unlikely friendship between a grieving cinematographer and a morbidly obsessed drifter. This quirky black comedy has been decorated with awards ranging from Best First Feature at the International Latino Film Festival and chosen at the Best Chilean from of 2007 by the Chilean Art Critics Circle.

The Global Film Initiative was founded in 202 to create global understanding, empathy and connectivity though film. Supporting hundreds of filmmakers with grants and networking opportunities, the tenth anniversary of Global Lens will premiere January 10-24 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, before embarking on a year long tour of more than fifty cities throughout the United States.