Derbez Hits Bullseye at the U.S. Box Office

Mexican comedy Instructions Not Included / No se aceptan devoluciones (pictured), the directorial debut of comedian Eugenio Derbez scored big at the U.S. weekend box office landing in number five by earning an impressive $7.5 million from 347 theaters with a whopping $21,614 average per screen. The film marks the biggest opening ever for a Spanish-language film in the United States. 

The Mexican comedy was released by Pantelion, a joint venture between Lionsgate and Televisa, it marked the company's largest theatrical release to date and it's highest-grossing (it grossed six times the entire release of their previous release, Girl in Progress). Boosted by an A+ grade at CinemaScore, the film is expected to hit the $9.3 million mark in the four-day holiday weekend.

Instructions Not Included follows Valentin (played by Derbez), who is Acapulco's resident playboy-until a former fling leaves a baby on his doorstep and takes off without a trace. Valentín leaves Mexico for L.A. to find the baby's mother, but only ends up finding a new home for himself and his newfound daughter, Maggie. An unlikely father figure, Valentin raises Maggie for six years, while also establishing himself as one of Hollywood's top stuntmen to pay the bills, with Maggie acting as his on-set coach. As Valentin raises Maggie, she forces him to grow up too. But their unique and offbeat family is threatened when Maggie's birth mom shows up out of the blue, and Valentin realizes he's in danger of losing his daughter- and his best friend.

Winners Announced at Santiago and Monterrey

SANFIC, the Santiago Film Festival in Chile and FIC Monterrey, both in their 9th annual editions, have announced their 2013 winners respectively. At SANFIC, Los analfabetas / The Illiterate (pictured), the directorial debut by Moisés Sepúlveda, was the winner of the top prize for Best Chilean film, while José Luis Torres Leiva was awarded the prize for Best Director in the Chilean competition for his most recent film Ver y escuchar.

Los analfabetas is based on a theater play by Pablo Paredes, which tells the story of Ximena, an illiterate 50-year-old woman. A young unemployed school teacher offers her to read the newspapers and to teach her to read, but a letter from her father that Ximena has been keeping since he abandoned her while she was a kid, might invert the roles of the teacher and the student. 

In Monterrey, Salvadorean-born Mexican director José Luis Valle's Las búsquedas / The Searches was awarded with the top prize as Best Mexican Feature Film, while Alfredo Marrón's Celso Piña: El rebelde del acordeón was awarded with the prize for Best Mexican Documentary. Las búsquedas is a story of revenge, redemption and fate. A man runs his errands: cleans the house, picks up the dry cleaning, pays his debts and buys groceries. Then, inexplicably commits suicide. His death smites his wife, Elvira, who is unaware of the reasons for suicide. At another point, Ulises is assaulted and stripped of the portfolio that held the only photo he kept of her deceased daughter. He sets out to find the thief and kill him. The lives of Elvira and Ulises intersect unexpectedly.

The 9th edition of SANFIC took place August 23 - 31 in Chile, while the also 9th edition of FICMonterrey took place August 22 through September 1 in the northern Mexican city.

LACMA to Fête Gabriel Figueroa

LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has announced its upcoming presentation of film programs that further explore the 50-year career of revered Mexican cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa. His trajectory is on detail through the exhibition, Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa through film clips, paintings, photographs, posters and documents, many from Figueroa's archive.

The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema is a complimentary series which focuses on Figueroa's hand in shaping what he referred to as una imágen méxican, or a Mexican image and what is largely considered an essential part of Mexican visual identity and culture.

Described as a master of light and contrast and influences based on friendships with muralists such as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, an apprenticeship with cinematographer Gregg Toland, are all vividly stylized and encompassed through each film in this series. Co-presented with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, many of the films included are from key collaborations with director Emilio Fernández and which often cemented the careers of Mexican icons.

The program will show the 1944 film María Candelaria (pictured right),which introduced the Golden Age of Mexican cinema to the world and won two prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. It will also present Enamorada, also directed once again by Emilio Fernández, stars María Félix as Peñafiel who is pursued by charmer General Reyes, played by Pedro Armendáriz. Further collaborations with Fernández include La perla / The Pearl adapted with author John Steinbeck's blessing an participation, Sálon México, their first collaborationamong others.

Upcoming film series will focus on Figueroa's work with surrealist Luis Buñuel, working in Hollywood with directors such as John Ford and John Huston, and contemporary filmmakers who have been influenced by his work.

The film series takes place at LACMA from September 20th through October 11th. The exhibition will be held from September 22 through February 2nd, 2014.

Derbez Aims to Conquer U.S. Box Office

Popular Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez is making his directorial debut with the feature film Instructions Not Included / No se aceptan devoluciones (pictured), which opens tomorrow, Friday, August 30, nationwide. The film, also written and produced by Derbez is being released in the U.S. by Pantelion Films -a joint venture between Lionsgate and Televisa. Instructions Not Included will be released in over 350 theaters across the country, making it the Latino studio's largest release.

Derbez stars as the Valentin, a playboy living the high life in Acapulco. After a one night stand with an American named Julie, she ends up pregnant. Not ready for motherhood, she leave the child, a blond, blue-eyed daughter named Maggie. After a period of adjustment, he learns how to be a good father, becoming a Hollywood stuntman and spoiling the little girl.

Watch the trailer:

Cuarón, Lelio, Maillé, and Fuguet to Telluride

Telluride Film Festival, known for its eclectic and often last minute announcements has scheduled its lineup for this year's 40th anniversary edition. In commemoration of 40 years, the usual four day festival has added an additional day. Once again, a mix of  emerging filmmakers and auteurs from around the world, the festival will feature some Latin American talent

Among 59 feature and shorts, Sebastián Lelio's acclaimed Chilean film Gloria, in which the title character learns to come to terms with aging, will be presented in the festival's main slate. The other Latin American representation in the festival's main section is Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts detached from their space shuttle by a missions disaster.

The Festival also invites six guest directors to return with new programs, including author B. Ruby Rich presenting De cierta manera / One Way of Another, directed by Cuban director Sara Gómez, which mixes documentary-style footage with a fictional story that looks at the poor neighborhoods of Havana shortly after the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

Backlot, Telluride's intimate screening room featuring behind-the-scenes movies and portraits of artists, musicians and filmmakers will be screening the Chilean film Locations: Looking for Rusty James directed by Alberto Fuguet, a personal documentary about the huge impact of the film “Rumble Fish” on a whole generation of filmmakers from the Southern Cone of Latin America.

Frank Pavich's Jodorowsky's Dune chronicles legendary Chilean director's attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune in the mid-1970s. The Mexican film, Miradas múltiples: La máquina loca / Multiple Visions, The Crazy Machine (pictured right) directed by Emilio Maille documents the work of one of the keenest eyes in film history, Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, who’s responsible for many of the lasting images from Mexico’s golden age of cinema.

The Telluride Film Festival will be held From August 29 through September 2nd in Telluride, Colorado.

Find the Five Similarities Between EL ESTUDIANTE and THE NEWSROOM

By Sergio C. Muñoz

Ever since the international debut of the Argentinean film El Estudiante / The Student at the Locarno Film Festival back in the summer of 2011, its director Santiago Mitre has been compared to American screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin, creator of hit shows and films such as The West Wing, The Social Network and The Newsroom. [Click here to read Eric Kohn's review indieWIRE: "The Student" Announces Santiago Mitre as a South American Aaron Sorkin].

Coinciding with the one-week run of the Argentinean film at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City (August 22 – 28), TropicalFRONT's collaborator Sergio Muñoz compares El Estudiante and The Newsroom here.

El Estudiante is set in Argentina and it features a cast of young students who are engaging in political protest to take back control of the University of Buenos Aires. The Newsroom is set in New York City and it features a cast of young "journalists" who are engaging in political protest to take back control of the newsroom in America.

Five similarities between El Estudiante and The Newsroom:

1. Sam Waterston plays the wise executive producer who has known and seen it all in The Newsroom. He attempts to control the egos of the old hands played by Jeff Daniels and Jane Fonda while at the same time nurturing the young ones like Emily Mortimer and Olivia Munn. Ricardo Felix plays the wise politician who has known and seen it all in El Estudiante. He attempts to control the maneuvers of the old guard off-camera while at the same time corralling the energy of the new guard on-camera.

2. Emily Mortimer as MacKenzie plays a strong female lead with the intellectual capacity to lead The Newsroom. Romina Paula as Paula plays a strong female lead with the intellectual capacity to lead both the student movement and the protagonist in El Estudiante.

3. Thomas Sadoski, in the role of Don Keefer in The Newsroom, manages to woo co-workers at an alarming rate using no charm whatsoever. Esteban Lamothe, in the role of Roque Espinoza in El Estudiante, manages to woo co-workers at an alarming rate using no charm whatsoever.

4. All of the characters in both the The Newsroom and El Estudiante speak like they are both attempting to race and kill each other with their intellectual arguments.

5. The subject matter: They both tie together an entertaining education in politics and civics that repel enormous portions of the voting population but attract tiny important populations of the established one percent and those striving to be in the one percent. This phenomenon is most clear in Washington, DC, where the one percent politicians are treated in the same celebrity way that the one percent Hollywood actors are treated in Los Angeles. The universe seems to revolve around these characters because capital seems to revolve around these characters and thus power revolves around these characters.

El Estudiante focuses on local power with the politics enveloping a university system. On The Newsroom, the focus goes wherever imperial America decides to go; Egypt; Syria; Uganda; etc... But the biggest difference between The Newsroom and El Estudiante is the most complicated: If Santiago Mitre had the resources available to Aaron Sorkin, the Argentinean film would both be more developed and in-turn capable of attracting a larger audience. But it seems the more these projects get developed, the more they lose their street credibility which is the strength of El Estudiante and the weakness of The Newsroom.   

Watch the trailer of El Estudiante:

Watch a clip of The Newsroom: