Alejandro G. Iñárritu Wins Golden Globe Award

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu was awarded with the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay for his feature film Birdman this evening. The film, which was the top contender of the evening with seven nominations, was awarded with two Golden Globes. Leading actor Michael Keaton was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy.

González Iñárritu shared the screenplay award with the Argentinean screenwriters Nicolás Giacobone and Armando Bo and American screenwriter Alexander Dinelaris (pictured). In his acceptance speech, the Mexican filmmaker thanked his cast and crew including Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and musician Antonio Sánchez.

Tonight's was second Golden Globe win for Alejandro González Iñárritu after he won the award in 2007 for his feature film Babel. He becomes the only Mexican to ever win the Golden Globe twice. Last year Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón was awarded with the Golden Globe for Best Director for his film Gravity. Other Mexican Golden Globe winners include Gabriel Figueroa (1949), Katy Jurado (1953), Mario Moreno 'Cantinflas' won the prize for Best Actor (1956) and Anthony Quinn (1987).

Latina actress Gina Rodriguez (pictured) was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Comedy for her performance on Jane the Virgin. It was Rodriguez's firs Golden Globe nomination.

The 72nd edition of the Golden Globes, handed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and generally considered as a key Oscar indicator, were presented this evening at Los Angeles, California.

Szifron's WILD TALES Nabs an Impressive Nine Goya Award Nominations

The Argentinean film Wild Tales / relatos salvajes (pictured) -a Spanish co-production with Pedro Almodóvar's El Deseo production company- by Damián Szifron nabbed an impressive number of nine nominations to the 29th Goya Awards given by the Spanish Film Academy, including for Best Film, Best Director and Best Ibero-American Film.

Argentinean actor Ricardo Darín was nominated for Best Actor, and musician Gustavo Santaolalla was nominated for Best Score. The other nominations for Szifron's film include for Best Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Art Direction, and Best Make-Up. The humorous dark comedy is composed of six shorts united with violence and vengeance as the connecting themes.

Recently, Wild Tales went home with 10 awards from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences of Argentina. Out of the 21 nominations it received. It also won the Audience Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and it was recently named Best Foreign Language Film by the National Board of Review. Wild Tales was also included in the short list for Best Foreign Language Film for the 87th Academy Awards.

In the Ibero-American film competition, Wild Tales is joined by the Uruguayan film Mr. Kaplan (pictured right) from Álvaro Brechner, Cuba's Conducta / Behavior by Ernesto Daranas, and Venezuela's La distancia más larga from Claudia Pinto.

Additionally, two other Latin American filmmakers have been nominated as well. Mexican director Esteban Roel is competing in the Best New Director for his film Musarañas (co-directed with Juan Fernando Andrés). The documentary film The Salt of the Earth about Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, co-directed by his son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (with Wim Wenders) was nominated as Best European Film.

The winners of the Goya Awards will be announced on February 7, 2015 at a ceremony in Madrid, Spain.

Four Latin American Films to Compete at Rotterdam

Four Latin American films will have their world premiere in the official competition for the Tiger Awards at the 2015 edition of the Rotterdam Film Festival, it was announced today. Two films from Argentina, one from Cuba and one from Peru will be representing Latin American in the Dutch festival, which competition has been dedicated to discovering, celebrating and awarding emerging international film talent.

First and second time feature filmmakers from across the world compete for three prizes of €15,000 each, awarded by the festival’s five Tiger jury members. The winners, selected by the jury, will be announced at the Hivos Tiger Award Ceremony on Friday, January 30.

The Latin American films in competition are:

La mujer de los perros (pictured above left) by Laura Citarella & Verónica Llinás (Argentina). The protagonist of Dog Lady is a woman (Llinás) who lives in a poor area with a pack of dogs, in a house like so many other humble shacks in the urban sprawl of Greater Buenos Aires.

La obra del siglo (pictured right) by Carlos Quintela (Cuba/ Argentina/ Germany/ Switzerland). Three Cuban men, obliged by circumstance to live together under the same roof, pass their days in the ElectroNuclear City.

Parabellum by Lukas Valenta Rinner (Argentina/Austria/Uruguay). In the company of housewives, professionals and a retired tennis instructor, Hernán is part of a middle-class community that is preparing for the eventual arrival of the end of the world at a holiday resort in the marshy Tigre delta.

Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) by Juan Daniel Fernández Molero (Peru). Internet cafés and slackers, not-so-innocent schoolgirls and amateur porn using Google Glass: things in Lima, the Peruvian capital, are pretty similar to contemporary reality, virtual or otherwise, in the rest of the world. Cinema meets digital psychedelia.

The 44th edition of the Rotterdam Film Festival will take place January 21 - February 1 in the Netherlands.

2014: Latin American Cinema in Review

¡Ay Güey!

Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón made history on March 2, 2014 becoming the first Latino ever to win the Oscar for Best Director for his acclaimed film Gravity. Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, the 3-D space adventure film tells the story of two astronauts who get stranded in space and try to return to Earth. Cuarón started new year with the right foot winning the Golden Globe for Best Director. In his acceptance speech, he slipped the very-Mexican expression of “¡Ay güey! (that can be translated as something like “Oh man!”).

By the time he won the Directors Guild Award it was almost a sure bet that he would take home the Academy Award, which he did -even though the film lost the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of the Year to 12 Years a Slave by Steve McQueen. Later in the year, Cuarón was feted by The Museum of Modern Art in New York City in its annual film benefit.

G. Iñárritu

Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (the artist formerly known as González), also had a solid year in 2014, with his most recent film Birdman. The ambitious black comedy, which stars Michael Keaton as a faded Hollywood actor famous for his superhero role struggling to mount a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver story, was hailed as one of the best films of 2014.

"A funny, frenetic, buoyant and rambunctiously showboating entertainment in which Mr. Iñárritu himself rises high and then higher still wrote the New York Times’ film critic Manohla Dargis about Birdman. The film received seven Golden Globes nominations including the second nomination for Iñárritu for Best Director (after Babel in 2007, for which he won). Will Iñárritu repeat Cuarón’s achievement at the Oscars and become the second Latino director to get the Academy Award for Best Director?

Lubezki

Yet the talent behind the two of the “Three Amigos” undoubtedly was Emmanuel “El Chivo" Lubezki, the Mexican cinematographer that made possible the technical feats of Gravity and Birdman. If Cuarón and Iñárritu were able to make their groundbreaking films was largely due to the extraordinary work of their D.P., one of greatest cinematographers alive.

In Gravity, Lubezki masterfully and very realistically recreated the experience of outer space, and in Birdman he ingeniously created the illusion that the film was shot on a single take.  After six Oscar nominations, Lubezki finally won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 2014 for his work in Gravity, and the buzz is that he will get his seventh Oscar nomination -and probably his second win, in 2015 for Birdman. Fingers crossed.

Wild for Szifron

Argentinean director Damián Szifron made big waves this past year with his bold feature film Relatos salvajes / Wild Tales. The film had its world premiere as the only Latin American film in competition at Cannes’ official slate and went to become a huge box office success in Argentina, becoming one of the most popular films in the history of the South American country with an estimated audience of 3.4 million spectators.

Szifron was included in Variety’s list of ten filmmakers to watch in 2015 and he signed with the Hollywood agency powerhouse William Morris Endeavor. Wild Tales has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards in the Foreign Language competition, with the possibility of giving Argentina it’s seventh Oscar nomination (and its third win). The film, starring some of Argentina’s most acclaimed actors such Ricardo Darín, Darío Grandinetti and Leonardo Sbaraglia, will be released in the United States this February by the hand of Sony Pictures Classic.

The Year of Argentinean cinema

Szifron was not the only Argentinean director getting international attention this past year. The South American country had a successful and plentiful representation at the international film festival circuit. Director Lisandro Alonso score a hit with his most recent film Jauja (pictured left). The atypical film, which was produced and starred Viggo Mortensen, received great film reviews following its world premiere at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.

2014 saw the fiction feature comeback of the great Martín Rejtman with his quirky comedy film Dos disparos / Two Shots Fired, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. Also having its world premiere at the Swiss festival was Matías Piñeiro’s 's third entry in his series of Shakespeare-inspired films, La princesa de Francia / The Princess of France (pictured below right).

Other Argentinean films that premiered at international film festivals include Natalia Smirnoff’s El cerrajero / The Lock Charmer, and Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s Living Stars at Sundance; Rodrigo Moreno’s Reimon at Rotterdam; Celina Murga’s La tercera orilla / The Third Side of the River, Benjamín Naishtat’s Historia del miedo / History of Fear, and Matías Lucchesi’s Ciencias naturales / Natural Sciences at Berlin; Diego Lerman’s Refugiado at Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes; and Anahí Berneri’s Open Air / Aire libre at San Sebastian.

Argentina had a record-breaking participation at Cannes, and for the first time ever, the Berlinale had two Argentinean films in its main competition (The Third Side of the River and History of Fear) and the New York Film Festival featured three films from Argentina in its main slate (Jauja, Two Shots Fired and The Princess of France). If 2012 was the year of Chilean cinema, 2013 of Mexico cinema, 2014 was the year of Argentinean cinema for sure. Oh, and did we mention that Argentina won the second place at the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil?

The Best of the Rest

Chilean director Alejandro Fernández Almendras won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic competition at Sundance for his feature film Matar a un hombre  / To Kill a Man. He become the third Chilean director to win this award after Sebastián Silva's La Nana / The Maid in 2009, and Andrés Wood's Violeta se fue a los cielos / Went to Heaven in 2012. Güeros (pictured left), the debut feature film by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios won several prizes at numerous international film festivals including Best First Film at the Berlinale and Morelia, Best Latin American Film and Young Jury Award at San Sebastian, and Best Film at Los Cabos.

2014 was the year of Costa Rican director Miguel Gómez, his films Italia 90 and Maikol Yordan broke box office records in the Central American country, the latter becoming the top grossing Costa Rican film in history only one week into its theatrical run. Leidi by Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto (pictured right) was the winner of the Palme d'Or for Best Short film at the 67th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, setting a benchmark for Colombia cinema.

President Dilma Rousself of Brazil announced an unprecedented financial support to the local audiovisual industry totaling the equivalent of $450 million USD. The Venezuelan film Azul y no tan rosa / Blue and Not So Pink by Miguel Ferrari became the first Venezuelan to win the Goya Award for Best Latin American Film given by the Spanish Film Academy.

2014 saw the emergence of two new awards to celebrate Ibero-American cinema: the Platino Awards held in Panama and the Fenix Awards hosted by Mexico. Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria and Diego Quemada Diez's La jaula de oro / The Golden Dream were the winners for Best Film respectively. Mexican film Navajazo by Ricardo Silva won the Golden Leopard for Best Film in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at Locarno. The Cuban film Conducta / Behavior (pictured left) by Ernesto Daranas pushed the envelope in the island by addressing in a direct way some of the issues of the contemporary Cuba society. The film won the top prize at the Havana Film Festival.

In 2014 the Latin American film community lost Brazilian documentary master Eduardo Coutinho, Argentinean director Jorge Polaco, Brazilian actor José Wilker, Colombian Nobel Prize winner screenwriter Gabriel García Márquez, Argentinean actor Alfredo Alcón, Mexican actress Columba Domínguez, Uruguayan actress China Zorrilla, Mexican screenwriters José Emilio Pacheco and Vicente Leñero, and Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños “Chespirito."

Year in Review: The 2014 Top Grossing Latino Films in the U.S.

In 2014 two animated films -and both released by 20th Century Fox- were the top grossing Latino films of the year in the United States: Rio 2 by Brazilian director Carlos Saldanha and The Book of Life by Mexican director Jorge R. Gutiérrez and produced by Guillermo del Toro.

After last year’s success of Eugenio Derbez’s Instructions Not Included which earned an impressive $44.4 million, Pantelion Films released Sebastián del Amo’s Cantinflas and Diego Luna’s Cesar Chavez to lukewarm box office numbers, but enough to land them in the third and fourth place of the chart.

Acclaimed Paris-based Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky made it to the list with two different titles: The Dance of Reality, his long anticipated return to cinema, and the documentary film Jodorowsky’s Dune, which narrates his doomed film adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel for the big screen.

Complete list of top grossing Latino films of 2014:

1. Rio 2 (Carlos Saldanha, Fox), $131,538,435

2. The Book of Life (Jorge R. Gutierrez, Fox), $49,289,238

3. Cantinflas (Sebastián del Amo, Pantelion Films), $6,382,924

4. Cesar Chavez (Diego Luna, Pantelion Films), $5,571,497

5. The Fluffy Movie (Manny Rodriguez and Jay Lavender, Open Road Films), $2,827,393

6. Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, Roadside Attractions), $2,107,925

7. Más Negro que la Noche (Henry Bedwell, Pantelion Films), $870,063

8. Jodorowsky's Dune (Frank Pavich, Sony Pictures Classics), $647,280

9. The German Doctor (Lucía Puenzo, Samuel Goldwyn), $418,392

10. The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky, ABKCO Films), $293,680

Source: Boxofficemojo.com. For practical and informative reasons, films made in the U.S. and abroad were also considered for this list.

Theatrical figures for Panic 5 Bravo were not reported.

Year in Review: The Top Grossing Latin American Films of 2014

Cinema Tropical presents its popular annual review of the year in three parts, the first part being the list of top grossing Latin American films. For the large part, 2014 continued with the recent growth of the Latin American box office. Costa Rica broke all-time records with a the comedy Maikol Yordan de viaje perdido directed by Miguel Gómez and Wild Tales became a big phenomenon at the Argentinean box office.

Comedies remained the most popular genre in Latin America, and many of the top grossing films of the region were comedic such as in Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Peru. In Brazil and Mexico, political satires were the most popular with the O candidato honesto and La dictadura perfecta. In three countries the top grossing films were documentaries: El canto de Bosawas in Nicaragua, Invasión in Panama, and Maracaná in Uruguay.

Check out the list of top grossing Latin American films in 17 countries:

Argentina

Damian Szifron’s Relatos salvajes / Wild Tales was the biggest story of the year as it became one of the top grossing films of all time in the South American country. The film, which had its world premiere as the only Latin American film at Cannes’ main competition and it has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards, was seen over 3.4 million people in Argentina. It will open in U.S. theaters in February by the hand of Sony Pictures Classics.

Bolivia

The political thriller Olvidados / Forgotten directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Bolado was the favorite of Bolivian people as it was seen by 19,500 people in its local theatrical release. Set in the repressive military dictatorship in the 70’s, the film tells the story of José, a general who has a heart attack and looks for redemption by telling the dark secrets of his past to his only son.

Brazil

O Candidato Honesto / The Honest Candidate by Roberto Santucci was the most popular Brazilian film of 2014, earning around $2 million USD at the box office and an audience of 2.1 million people. The comedy film, which follows the campaign corrupt politician John Ernesto Praxedes running for president, was released in the same year of the presidential elections in Brazil.

Chile

The comedy Fuerzas especiales by José Miguel Zúñiga was the top grossing Chilean film of the year with an estimated audience of 314,500 people. The film narrates the adventures and misadventures of privates Salinas and Freire, who will have to settle for their lives to be respected by their superiors. Based on the success of the film, a sequel  has been announced.

Colombia

Uno al año no hace daño by Dago García arrived late in the year to exorcise an otherwise slow year for Colombian films at the local box office. The comedy has earned an impressive 4,000 million pesos and has been seen by over half a million people just in its first week of release, easily surpassing the 299,500 spectators of Ciudad Delirio, the second Colombian film most popular of the year.

Costa Rica

2014 was the year of Miguel Gómez. He released two films the same years breaking box office records for the Central American country. His documentary film Italia 90 about the Costa Rican soccer team in the 1990 World Cup was hugely successful. Yet no one imagined that his following Maikol Yordan de viaje perfecto would become the highest grossing Costa Rican ever. The film has been seen by over 170,000 people since it opened on December 18.

Dominican Republic

The screwball comedy film Vamos de robo by Roberto Angel Salcedo was the favorite among Dominicans in 2014.  Michael, Pedro, Mateo, and Antonio work at a bank that has been robbed. Being the main suspects, they have to find out who the actual robbers were.

Ecuador

Ochentaysiete by Daniel Andrade and Anahí Hoeneisen was the top grossing film in Ecuador, with 13,500 spectators. Set in 1987, the film is a drama about friendship and forgiveness. Pablo, Andres and Juan, get into their biggest teenager adventure, when Juan decides to run away from home. He is not willing to go back because his father, an old fashioned policeman, wants to change him to a military school. After a car accident, Pablo flees, never to return. 15 years later, he comes back to Ecuador to face what he left in the past.

El Salvador

Billed as the ‘first romantic comedy of Central America’ La rebúsqueda by Álvaro Martínez had an audience of 21,600 people in its local theatrical release.

Honduras

Directed by Rony Alvarenga and Javier Mejia Suazo, Cuentos y leyendas de Honduras / Tales and Legends of Honduras was the favorite film in Honduras in 2014. Narrated in four episodes, the film illustrates some of the country’s most frightening legends and stories written by Jorge Montenegro.

Mexico

The political satire La dictadura perfecta / The Perfect Dictatorship by Luis Estrada was the top grossing Mexican film of the year earning an estimated $12.6 million USD and was seen by over 4 million people. In the film, Governor Carmelo Vargas tries to clean his public image after the country’s main television network discloses a scandalous story which involves him in serious crimes and illicit business. In a turbulent year for the Mexican government, local audiences cherished the poignant political satire.

Nicaragua

The documentary film El canto de Bosawas / Song of Bosawas by  Brad Allgood and Camilo de Castro follows the adventure of Matute, member of the popular Nicaraguan band "La Cuneta Son Machin" traveling with two musicians from San Francisco to deep Bosawas, with the firm intention of recording for the first time the music of the indigenous Mayangnas. The film was seen by 10,300 people in Nicaragua.

Panama

The documentary Invasión / Invasion written and directed by Abner Benaim was the most popular film in the Central American country in 2014 with an audience of 47,000 people. The film about the 1989 US invasion, was selected as the country’s entry for Academy Awards, marking the first time that Panama submitted a film for consideration.

Paraguay

The action thriller Luna de cigarras / Cicadas Moon by Jorge Bedoya reign at the Paraguayan box office with an audience of 26,000 people. The thriller follows a young American man comes to Paraguay to seal a deal and start a new business venture. The opportunity he represents creates a competition within a group that unexpectedly takes him on a journey into the bowels of the underworld.

Peru

Comedian Carlos Alcántara repeated its reign at the Peruvian box office with the film A los 40 / At 40 directed by Bruno Ascenzo. Seen by 1.1 million people, the film became the second grossing Peruvian film ever -after last year’s Asu Mare, which also starred Alcántara.

Uruguay

The documentary film Maracaná by Sebastián Bednarik y Andrés Varela was seen by 22,500 people, making it the most popular Uruguayan film of the year. Maracaná chronicles the epic win of the Uruguayan soccer team at the 1950 World Cup, against the Brazilian team playing as host in the Maracaná stadium.

Venezuela

Albero Arvelo’s epic biopic Libertador / The Liberator about about 19th century Latin American freedom fighter Simon Bolivar was the favorite Venezuelan film at the local box office. The film was seen by 697,000 spectators, and it has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards in the Foreign Language Film category.