Y El Ganador Es... This Year's Latino Oscar Nominees

For the 85th annual Academy Awards, taking place tonight in Los Angeles, three nominees in three different categories will be representing Latino talent: two from Chile and one from Mexico.

In the Foreign Language Film category, Latin America is represented by the Chilean film No by director Pablo Larraín, starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal. It is the first time ever that Chile receives an Oscar nomination. Chilean filmmaker Miguel Littín had received two nominations in the Best Foreign Language Film category but for movies entered under other countries: Actas de Marusia / Letters from Marusia (Mexico) in 1975, and Alsino y el cóndor / Alsino and the Condor (Nicaragua) in 1982. 

No premiered at Cannes' Directors Fortnight last May where it received the Art Cinema Award, the section's top prize for Best Film. The film opened last week in U.S. theaters to great critical and pipular acclaim. Larraín's film faces the serious challenge from the French production Amour by Austrian director Michael Haneke, a longtime arthouse favorite, which also received nominations in three other categories.

Also from Chile, Director of Photography Claudio Miranda (pictured) is nominated for Best Cinematography for his work on Ang Lee's Life of Pi (also a Best Picture Nominee this year). It is the second time Miranda receives a nomination in this category, he was nominated in 2008 for his work on The Curious Life of Benjamin Button by David Fincher.

Miranda joins a group of six Latin American DPs that have nominated in this category including Mexican Gabriel Figueroa (The Night of the Iguana, 1964); Mexican Emmanuel Lubezki (A Little Princess, 1995, Sleepy Hollow, 1999, The New World, 2005, Children of Men, 2006, and The Tree of Life, 2011); Mexican Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain, 2005); Mexican Guillermo Navarro (Pan's Labyrinth, 2006); Uruguayan-Brazilian César Charlone (City of God, 2003); and Spanish-Cuban Néstor Almendros (Days of Heaven, 1978, Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979, The Blue Lagoon, 1980, and Sophie's Choice, 1982). Miranda is the favorite to win this year.

And lastly, José Antonio García from Mexico is part of the three-men group nominated for Best Sound Mixing for his work on Argo. Born in Mexico City, he got started in the film industry as an assistant sound mixer for the film Gaby, a True Story in the late 80s. Since then, he's worked with numerous filmmakers such as Clint Eastwood, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Alexander Payne and Terrence Malick. This is his first nomination to the Academy Awards.

New Directors / New Films to Present Films from Brazil and Argentina

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art have announced the full 2013 lineup for its 42nd edition of the New Directors / New Films festival. Twenty-five features will screen over 12 days. Latin American will be represented with two Brazilian and two Argentinean films. There will also be three shorts programs with works from Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.

Director Eryk Rocha makes his North American Premiere with the Brazilian film Jards, a portrait of the remarkably sensitive and intimately attuned Jards Macalé as he heads to a recording studio in Rio de Janeiro to begin a new record. The Argentine film Leones, directed by Jasmín López, is a metaphysical trance of an experience, with five protagonists that allow themselves to be consumed by their verdant environment.

They'll Come Back / Eles Voltam directed by Marcelo Lordello, from Brazil, shares the experience of an upper-middle-class 12-year-old and her brother who learn how the other half lives when she and her sullen older brother are left behind by their parents in a rural backwater. Cinema Tropical AWARDS juror, Matías Piñeiro returns with a new perspective on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in Viola (pictured), a seductive roundelay among young actors and lovers in present-day Buenos Aires.

In the first Shorts Program are the New York premiere of Liliana Sulzbach's The Village / A Cidade from Brazil, in which a small village's inhabitants are all elderly no one new moves in and from Mexico, To Put a Helicopter / Para armar un helicóptero directed by Izabel Acevedo about 17-year-old Oliverio who comes up with an ingenious solution after summer rains bring power outages to his neighborhood.

Shorts Program 2 brings the Colombian film Everything Near Becomes Far, directed by Mauricio Arango, illustrating the peaceful daily rhythm of a farmer interrupted by the scenic Andean mountains.

New Directors / New Films will take place from March 20-31. For more information, visit New Directors / New Films.

Cuban Film JUAN OF THE DEAD Wins Spain's Goya Award

Cuban zombie film Juan of the Dead / Juan de los muertos by Alejandro Brugués was the winner of the prize for Best Ibero-American film in the 27th edition of the Goya Awards, Spain's national film prizes. The Cuban film was competing against the Argentinean film Clandestine Childhood / Infancia clandestina by Benjamín Ávila, the Mexican film After Lucía / Después de Lucía by Michel Franco, and the Paraguayan film 7 Boxes / 7 cajas by Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori.

Billed as Cuba's first zombie movie, the film tells the story of Juan, who along a group of slackers, face an army of zombies. The Cuban government and media claim the living dead are dissidents revolting against the government.

It is the third time that a Cuban film wins in this category after the films La bella del Alhambra / The Beauty of the Alhambra by Enrique Pineda Barnet in 1989; Strawberry and Chocolate / Fresa y chocolate by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío in 1994 and Life is to Whistle / La vida es silbar in 1999.

GLORIA's Paulina García Wins Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlinale

Chilean actress Paulina García (pictured) won the Silver Bear as Best Actress for her work in Sebastián Lelio's Gloria in the 63rd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival.

García becomes the first Chilean and fifth Latin American actress to be awarded with the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlinale, after Brazilian actresses Marcélia Cartaxo (Hour of the Star) in 1986, Ana Beatriz Nogueira (Vera) in 1987, Fernanda Montenegro (Central do Station) in 1998, and Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) in 2004.

Lelio's film, which was the only Latin American film in the official competition, had a wide critical acclaim after its world premiere at the German festival. Hollywood Reporter called it "Funny, melancholy and ultimately uplifting", "Richly funny, mordant comedy-drama" described it The Telegraph, while indieWIRE hailed it as "touching and a breakthrough for star Paulina García."

The Chilean film also won two independent prizes, the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury as well as the prize of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas. Lelio's fourth feature film has been acquired for U.S. distribution by Roadside Attractions for an anticipated release this fall.

Other Latin American winners at the Berlinale include Brazilian film Hélio Oiticica made by Cesar Oiticica Filho, which won the FIPRESCI and Caligari prizes, and Bruno Barreto's Reaching for the Moon, also from Brazil, which won the second place of the Panorama Audience Award.

Roberto Busó-García's Puerto Rican Thriller THE CONDEMNED Coming to US Screens in March

Strand Releasing has announced the U.S. theatrical run of the psychological thriller The Condemned / Los condenados (pictured), the debut feature film by Robert Busó-García. Produced and filmed in Puerto Rico and inundated with historical gravity, the suspenseful and atmospheric thriller is a story examining Puerto Rico's past and present through a haunted tale.

The film opens for an exclusive theatrical engagement on Friday, March 1st at the Quad Cinema in New York City, and on Friday, March 8 at Laemmle's NoHo 7 in Los Angeles.

Ana, the beautiful daughter of a once-famous doctor, travels to the remote town of Rosales, Puerto Rico- her late mother's hometown. It was there that her father met and married her mother and opened his first free clinic for cancer research more than forty years ago. She plans to commemorate her father's dying legacy by converting their family's abandoned mansion into a museum honoring his achievements.

With the help of the mansion's devoted caretaker, Ana begins the transformation only to be confronted by the secrets of the past. Her presence is unwelcome by the townspeople and the house itself. The sins and guilt of it all-long buried- have suddenly resurfaced. In stepping through the mansion's threshold, she awakens sinister forces within the house itself that will put them all in danger, and awakening dark forces that should have remained forever buried.

The Caribbean's current dark present is explored through the consequences of its colonial past using a cast ranging from prolific and beloved actors such as René Monclova (from the hit TV show El condominio) and Axel Anderson (Maruja; Bananas), to promising ingénues such as Cristina Rodlo. Puerto Rico's virtues as a lush tropic are transformed into staples of a true mystery; the heat, the isolation and the unknown. Basking in values of traditional simplicty and trusting its surroundings, The Condemned is a true ghost story.

For more information on Busó-García's debut film, visit Strand Releasing.

González Iñárritu Wins DGA Award

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu (pictured) was awarded with the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials at the 65th Annual Directors Guild Of America Awards which were handed out Saturday night in Los Angeles, celebrating both film and television in the past year.

González Iñárritu was awarded for his Procter & Gamble commercial Best Job which he directed for ad agency Wieden+Kennedy Portland. The campaign, which was made for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, pays tribute to the pivotal roles mothers play in the development of young athletes and was shot on four continents featuring local actors and athletes from each location--London, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, and Beijing. It focuses on one mother in each location raising a young athlete and all the work that goes with it.

González Iñárritu was previously nominated for a DGA Award in Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for Babel in 2006.