Brazilian Epic XINGU To Open in NYC in March

Breaking Glass Pictures has announced the North American theatrical release of the Brazilian epic Xingu by Cao Hamburger. The film, produced by filmmaker Fernando Meirelles and the producing team behind the 2002 Oscar-nominated hit City of God, is based on the true story of the Vilas-Bôas brothers’ journey through Xingu and their time among the indigenous people.

Hamburger’s follow up to his acclaimed 2007 film The Year My Parents Went on Vacation premiered to critical acclaim at the Berlin International Film Festival and participated in numerous film festivals including Tribeca, Chicago, San Sebastian, and Stockholm.

Xingu will be released at Cinema Village in New York City and at the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 14, 2014, and is also available on local cable VOD across the country.

During their exploration of central Brazil in 1943, Orlando, Claudio and Leonardo Villas-Bôas encounter the Xingu Indians. Passionately interested by what they discover about the customs and social systems of the cultures they discover, the brothers make a home among them. When half of a village dies of an influenza epidemic, the brothers devote their lives to protecting the Xingu peoples, preserving Xingu culture and to the creation of a Xingu National Park.

By retelling the brothers’ saga, Xingu reveals the struggle to create the Indian park and consequent preservation of an array of different Indian tribes, transforming the Villas-Boas into Brazilian heroes and giving rise to dialogues revolving around chronic problems in Brazil’s history.

Watch the trailer:

TO KILL A MAN and HISTORY OF FEAR to New Directors

The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center have just announced the complete lineup for their 43rd annual New Directors/New Films Festival. The 2014 lineup includes the New York premiere of the Chilean film To Kill a Man / Matar a un hombre (pictured below right) by Alejandro Fernández Almendras, and the North American premiere of the Argentinean film History of Film / Historia del miedo by Benjamín Naishtat (pictured left).

New Directors/New Films will also feature three Latin American short films: The Island /La isla by Dominga Sotomayor and Katarzyna Klimkiewicz from Chile, Landscape / Paisaje by Matias Umpierrez from Argentina, and The Reaper / La Parka by Gabriel Serra from Mexico.

Bullying is a phenomenon that doesn’t just take place in the schoolyard. In Fernández Almendras’s raw, unnerving psychological thriller, bullies and their victims live side by side in a working-class neighborhood. Passive Jorge tries to ignore the cruel taunting of some local thugs who would be considered juvenile delinquents if they weren’t full-grown adults. But when the worst of the bunch steals Jorge’s insulin syringe, and his son winds up in the hospital with a gunshot wound after attempting to get it back, Jorge and his wife seek redress legally—to no avail. The family is humiliated again and again, and when his teenage daughter is sexually threatened, Jorge, pushed over the edge, decides to take matters into his own hands.

How strong does a fence need to be, or how loud must an alarm blare, or how brightly should an open field be lit for us to feel safe? The impossibility of a definitive answer to these kinds of questions lies at the heart of Benjamín Naishtat’s unsettling feature debut. Set in an economically destabilized Argentina, the film weaves stories of characters from multiple social strata into an interlocking narrative of paranoia and fear. The isolation of wealth and detachment from neighbors causes insecurities to fester, feeding a “security consumption” culture and all its incumbent paraphernalia. As we begin to recognize and sympathize with the situations depicted, the most troubling realization of all arrives: we are doing it to ourselves.

The 43rd edition of New Directors/New Films, an annual rite of early spring in New York City, bringing exciting discoveries from around the world to adventurous moviegoers, will run March 19 – 30 screening 27 international feature films and 13 short films.

Cuarón and Lubezki Win BAFTA Awards

Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and Mexican DP Emmanuel Lubezki were amongst the winners at the 2014 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards which were announced at a ceremony in London tonight. Cuarón was awarded the prize for Best Director and Lubezki the award for Best Cinematography, both for Gravity, which was the top winning film of the evening taking six awards in total also including the ones for Best British Film and Best Visual Effects.

"I consider myself a part of the British film industry," he said as he noted that he's been living in London over the past 13 years: "I guess I make a good case for curbing immigration." He saluted his son, Jonás, to whom he referred as "my teacher in film, my master in life", and his star Sandra Bullock "who is Gravity."

Gravity was nominated in 11 categories, the top award for Best Film was presented to 12 Years a Slave.

Mexican Film GÜEROS Wins First Film Award at the Berlinale

Güeros (pictured) the directorial debut by Alonso Ruizpalacios, was awarded the prize for Best First Fim at the 64th edition of the Berlin Film Festival. The jury composed by Italian actress/director Valeria Golino, Full Frame Documentary Festival's Nancy Buirski, and Argentine producer Hernán Mussaluppi.

Starring Tenoch Huerta, Sebastián Aguirre, and Leonardo Ortizgris, Güeros is a road movie in which the travelers barely manage to leave town. A coming of age comedy which pays homage to the French new wave, it was filmed in black-and-white and in 4:3 ratio. Being a somewhat unusual film, Güeros begins with a rather different kind of explosion: a water bomb bursts in a baby stroller. It is thrown by teenager Tomás from a block of flats. Since the lad is clearly too much of a handful for his mother, she packs him off to stay with his big brother who is studying in Mexico City.

It’s 1999. Fede, also known to his friends as Sombra, lives with Santos in a concrete pre-fab. They are currently striking against the strike which their fellow-students are organizing at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Tomás has brought a cassette along with him; the tape is part of his father’s legacy and contains the music of Epigmenio Cruz. They say his songs moved Bob Dylan to tears, and that he could have saved Mexico’s rock music scene from ruin. When the trio learns that their idol is in hospital fading fast and alone, they set off in their rusty heap of a car to pay their last respects to this one-time rock star.

The film premiered at the Panorama section of the festival, which ran February 6-16 in Germany. The Best First Feature award was first presented at the 2006 festival, only one other Latin American production has been awarded the prize: Uruguayan film Gigante by Adrián Biniez in 2009. The award comes with a cash prize of 50,000 euros provided by Gesellschaft zur Wahrnehmung von Film- und Fernsehrechten (GWFF).

The other Latin American film awarded at the 64th edition of the Berlinale was the Argentinean film Ciencias Naturales / Natural Sciences (pictured left) by Matías Lucchesi which won the Grand Prix for Best Film in the Generation Kplus sidebar for children's films of the festival. The award with a cash prize of 7,500 euros. "This film shows us a pure, distilled and unsentimental journey towards identity. It is a captivating tale with wonderful acting and a clear vision. Strong in its simplicity, the film touched our hearts," said the jury members in a statement.

Brazilian Film Wins Teddy Award at Berlinale

The Brazilian film The Way He Looks / Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (pictured), the directorial feature by Daniel Ribeiro won the Teddy Award as best LGTB film at the Berlin Film Festival. The coming-of-age film stars Ghilherme Lobo, Fabio Audi and Tess Amorim and is based on Ribeiro's 2010 short film I Don't Want to Go Back Alone / Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho. 

The film, which premiered in the Panorama section of the festival also winning the FIPRESCI award, tells the story of Giovana who is Leo’s best friend. They spend their afternoons at the pool, awarding points for the level of their boredom and just hanging out. But there are limits to their intimacy. Leo is rather self-contained; even his schoolmates’ barbs can’t dent his sense of his own independence.

Tired of his parents’ over-protective attitude, this blind fifteen-year-old wants to take control of his own life and apply for a school exchange. The arrival of a new pupil at school prompts Leo to reassess his daily routine. Having made friends with Gabriel he must now find a way to deal with Giovana’s jealousy. And yet, as naturally as Leo becomes aware of his feelings for Gabriel, the more he allows himself to feel unsettled by his friend’s tentative advances.

The Teddy Award is an international queer prize which is presented by an independent jury and as an official award of the Berlin Film Festival. The award, a socially engaged, political honour presented to films and people who communicate queer themes on a broad social platform, thereby contributing to tolerance, acceptance, solidarity and equality in society, comes with a cash prize of 3,000 euros. The award was first given in 1987, and since then several Latin American filmmakers have won it including Mexican director Julián Hernández who's won the prize twice for A Thousand Clouds of Peace in 2003, and Raging Sun, Raging Sky in 2009.

Venezuela Wins First Goya Award

The Venezuelan film Azul y no tan rosa / Blue and Not So Pink (pictured) by Miguel Ferrari made history today by becoming the first time a film from the South American country won Spain's Goya Award for Best Ibero-American film. It was the sixth Venezuelan film to be nominated in the category, the last time was in 2001 for Mariana Rondón and Marité Ugás' A la medianoche y media / At Midnight and a Half.

Director Ferrari, who also has an extensive career as an actor, gave a lengthy acceptance speech in which we thanked Venezuela and its people. "Ever since the nominations were announced in January, the people in Venezuela have been following the Goya Awards as it was the final match of the World Cup," he said.

Ferrari's debut feature film tells the story of Diego, a young and successful photographer, lives in the glamorous but shallow and excessive world of fashion. A tragic accident turns his world upside down; his partner Fabrizio is now in a coma. Unexpectedly, and right at this inopportune time, Diego's estranged son Armando shows up. Now, both of them have to adapt to each other; Armando to the unknown, homosexual world of his father, and Diego to the closed attitude of his teenage son.

The Venezuelan film was competing against the Argentine film Wakolda / The German Doctor by Lucía Puenzo, the Mexican film La Jaula de Oro by Diego Quemada-Diez, and the Chilean film Gloria by Sebastián Lelio.

The feature film Pelo Malo by Rondón also made history in Spain last September by becoming the first Venezuelan film to ever win the Golden Shell as Best Film at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Another production also directed by a Venezuelan filmmaker was awarded today, God's Slave / El esclavo de dios by Joel Novoa was the winner of the Nueva Visión award for Best Spanish/Latin American Film at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

The other Latin American winner at the 28th edition of the Goya Award was the Argentinean-Spanish co-production film Foosball / Metegol by Juan José Campanella which won the award for Best Animated Film.

The winners of the Goya Awards, Spain's national film prize, were announced tonight at a ceremony in Madrid.