Tribeca to Screen Shorts from Bolivia, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela

The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival announced today the 72 works that comprise this year’s short film competition and that include works from Bolivia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, all participating in the competition for Best Narrative Short,  Best Documentary Short, and the Student Visionary Award.

This year’s selection includes the Bolivian-American co-production Catch a Monster / Coger un monstruo, directed and written by Michael Y. Lei, in which a lonely boy finds himself trapped in a dark fantasy come alive in the streets of La Paz, Bolivia.

From Mexico, Winds of Furnace / Aire quemado (pictured left), directed and written by Yamil Quintana will have its world premiere. In a half-urbanized community in the Mexican tropics, Santiago and his friends, Antonio and Miguel, are having a fun afternoon sharing jokes, pranks, and dreams as they straddle the boundary between childhood and adult life.

Shooting an Elephant, directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Juan Pablo Rothie is an adaptation from George Orwell's autobiography in which a young British imperial policeman in Burma is given the no-win mission of handling a rogue work elephant, only to find that the role he is destined to play is that of public executioner.

Puerto Rican short film The Boxer / El púgil (pictured right) directed and written by Ángel Manuel Soto narrates the rags to riches story of the super feather underdog Angel 'Tito' Acosta, 'El Púgil,' a young Puerto Rican boxer from the slums of Barrio Obrero, Puerto Rico, and his ordeal to becoming World Champion.

And We All We Got, directed and written by Carlos Javier Ortiz, also from Puerto Rico is an elegy of urban America, and an intimate portrait of the people affected by violence in Chicago, contextualized in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the country’s recent focus on youth violence, police brutality, and marginalized communities.

The 15th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival will take place April 13-24 in New York City.

Peruvian Doc FOLLOWING KINA Awarded at Big Sky Film Fest

The Peruvian documentary feature Siguiendo a Kina / Following Kina (pictured) by Sonia Goldenberg was the winner of the Artistic Vision Award in the feature category at the 13th edition of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

When Kina Malpartida won her title as the first Peruvian World Boxing Champion, the country was struck by a female boxing fever. Goldenberg's film follows two young women, who inspired by Kina, fight against all odds to sustain a dream and become the next champion. Without any official support, they are driven by passion and perseverance to succeed in a totally male-dominated sport.

The jury complimented the movie's "insightful depiction of the rural and urban backdrops to two women" vying for the title, as well as its entree into the world of women's boxing in Peru.

The Big Sky Film Festival celebrates and promotes the art of non-fiction filmmaking, and it takes place in Missoula, Montana. The 13th edition took place February 19-28.

Havana Film Fest in NY Announces 2016 Lineup

The Havana Film Festival NY has announced the lineup for it’s 17th edition, which will include films from 12 Latin American countries, all of the them having their New York or U.S. premiere. Participating in the fiction competition are Magallanes by Salvador del Solar from Peru, La patota / Paulina (pictured left) by Santiago Mitre from Argentina, and Mi amiga del parque / My Friend from the Park by Ana Katz, also from Argentina.

The rest of the lineup competing for the Havana Star Prize for Best Fiction Film are El acompañante / The Companion by Pavel Giroud from Cuba, La Gunguna / The Gunguna by Ernesto Alemany from the Dominican Republic, El Bosque de Karadima by Matías Lira from Chile, Bailando con Margot / Dancing With Margot by Arturo Santana from Cuba, Eva no duerme / Eva Doesn't Sleep by Pablo Agüero from Argentina, Zoom by Pedro Morelli from Brazil, Cuba Libre by Jorge Luis Sánchez from Cuba, and Presos / Imprisoned by Esteban Ramírez from Costa Rica.

Ten films will participate in the documentary competition including Allende, Mi Abuelo Allende / Beyond My Grandfather Allende by Marcia Tambutti from Chile, Paciente / Patient by Jorge Caballero from Colombia, and El cuarto de los huesos / The Room of Bones by Marcela Zamora from El Salvador.

The other Latin American documentaries competing For the Havana Star Prize In Documentary Are: El tren de la línea norte / The Train on the Northern Railway by Marcelo Martín from Cuba, Made In Bangkok by Flavio Florencio from Mexico, La prenda / The Pawn by Jean-Cosme Delaloye, Guatemala, Tiempo suspendido / Time Suspended by Natalia Bruschtein from Mexico.

The 17th edition of the Havana Film Festival NY will take place April 7-15.

NEON BULL Tops Cartagena

The Cartagena Film Festival -the oldest running film festival in Latin America- has announced the winners of its 56th edition. The top prize for Best Film, with a cash prize of $15,000 USD, was presented to the Brazilian film Neon Bull / Boi Neon by Gabriel Mascaro.

The Chilean film El viento sabe que vuelvo a casa / The Winds Know that I’m Coming Back Home by José Luis Torres Leiva was the winner of the award for Best Documentary, while Colombian filmmaker Jorge Caballero was awarded for Best Director in the documentary competition for his film Paciente / Patient. Jerónimo Rodríguez’s documentary debut El rastreador de estatuas / The Monument Hunter, also from Chile, was presented with a Special Jury Prize.

In the Colombian competition, the winner for Best Film was Noche herida / Wounded Night by Nicolás Rincón, while Luis Ospina was presented with the Best Director Award for his documentary film Todo comenzó por el fin / It All Started at the End, which was also recipient of the Audience Award. Angela Osorio and Santiago Lozano were presented with a Special Jury Award for their film Siembra.

The Mexican film Chronic by Michel Franco was the winner in the Gemas competition, and Chilean film Aquí no ha pasado nada by Alejandro Fernández Almendras was the winner of the FIPRESCI Award. La impresión de una guerra / Impression of a War by Camilo Restrepo from Colombia was presented as Best Short Film.

The 56th edition of the Cartagena Film Festival took place March 2-7 in Colombia.

Latin American Films at Lincoln Center's Art of the Real

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the lineup for its third edition of Art of the Real, a showcase for boundary-pushing nonfiction film, which features several Latin American works. Founded on the most expansive possible view of documentary film and organized by Dennis Lim and Rachael Rakes, Art of the Real features an eclectic, globe-spanning host of discoveries by artists who are reenvisioning the relationship between cinema and reality, with one World Premiere, eight North American Premieres, and seven U.S. premieres, and many of the filmmakers in person.

Art of the Real will screen On Football / O Futebol (pictured left) by Brazilian filmmaker Sergio Oksman. An unassuming and bitterly poignant portrayal of a father-son relationship that speaks volumes between the lines. After reconnecting in 2013 (breaking 20 years of silence), director Sergio Oksman decided to see every game of the 2014 World Cup with his father, Simão. Without falling into the realm of the therapeutic, the film shows their interactions while driving to and watching the games, bearing witness to their silences and unconscious symmetries. In addition to the odd male bonding engendered by watching sports, the film’s exquisite cinematography also offers a key to a city under soccer’s spell.

Spain-based Venezuelan filmmaker Andrés Duque will have the North American premiere of his most recent film Oleg and the Rare Arts / Oleg y las raras artes (pictured right) Defying musical classification, pianist Oleg Nikolaevitch Karavaychuk is an icon in his native Russia but relatively unknown elsewhere. Largely banned from performing in public during the Soviet era, Karavaychuk instead made a career composing music for filmmakers like Sergei Parajanov, Vasily Shukshin, and Kira Muratova, and has recently expanded into multimedia performance.

A hit at the recent Rotterdam Film Festival and the top prizewinner at Punto de Vista’s documentary festival, Andrés Duque’s affectionate, free-form portrait features the androgynous virtuoso wandering through the halls of the Hermitage while speaking about how he arrived at the museum that day, the art on the walls, and eventually his own life. In the spaces between, he performs his music with electric intensity.

The Monument Hunter / Rastreador de estatuas (pictured left) by Chilean filmmaker Jerónimo Rodríguez, is a droll yet profound exploration of memory, history, forgetting, and, of course, Raúl Ruiz.

After seeing a documentary about Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz while low on sleep, Jorge, a Chilean filmmaker living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, suddenly remembers visiting a statue of Moniz in a park somewhere in Santiago with his father—who also happens to be a neurosurgeon. Jorge goes on a lengthy exploration of the city of his birth and all the way to Patagonia looking for the statue, all the while pondering memories of his dad and the imaginary territories between his homeland and New York.

Tales of Two Who Dreamt (pictured  right) by Andrea Bussmann & Mexican director Nicolás Pereda will have its U.S. Premiere at the series. Photographed in austere black and white, Bussmann and Pereda’s film spins mythic tales around an actual Roma family living inside a Toronto housing block for asylum seekers.

As the family awaits their day in court, the kids try to stave off boredom by goofing around (often playing solo games of soccer in the halls) while the adults repeat and refine stories about their past, some real and some fictional. Observational but never cold, this hybrid work offers a look into how a marginalized people construct fiction and their own identities.

Reminiscent of the Dziga Vertov Group’s essay films, Impression of a War / La impresion de una guerra by Camilo Restrepo, is a poetic and painful meditation on Colombia’s 70-year civil war. The short film employs a variety of techniques—found footage, stop-motion animation, commercial design, paintings, and original 16mm recordings of present-day cities—to confront the violence that has shaped the everyday lives of Colombians.

All Still Orbit (pictured left) by filmmakers Dane Komljen & James Lattimer is a philosophical-historical investigation of Brasília, the planned city capital of Brazil that was built over 41 months in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and the small, impoverished town just outside its limits that (literally) sank after its founding. Tracing its origins from Saint Don Bosco’s (possibly apocryphal) dream in 1883, the filmmakers use a lyrical voiceover and hyper-tinted digital images of the city and its environs to question the idealism of the city’s international style.

Also from Brazil, Toré by João Vieira Torres is an ethnographic film that doesn’t place the lives of “the other” into a vacuum. Firmly committed to capturing a sense of place, this verité film documents a Xucuru-Kariri tribe ritual that’s permitted to be witnessed by outsiders. João Vieira Torres juxtaposes the surrounding jungle and the transformative nature of the ceremony with a young native boy watching Disney’s Fantasia.

This year’s festival also features a retrospective of the legendary Bruce Baillie, whose lyrical films defy traditional form and genre, and shot the short film Valentín de las Sierras in Chapala, Mexico, in 1967.

The 3rd annual Art of the Real runs April 8-21 in New York City.

H. by Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia Opens April 1 in NYC

H., written and directed by Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia, will receive its much anticipated U.S. theatrical release starting Friday, April 1st at the Made in New York Media Center in New York City, followed by a VOD release later this year. The U.S./Argentina co-production had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and has successfully played in several international film festivals including the Berlinale’s Forum and Sundance’s NEXT.

In their film, Attieh and Garcia fuse drama, the conventions of tragedy and science fiction to create a mysterious and thought-provoking feature on responsibility and fate. The directors were awarded the “Someone to Watch” Independent Spirit Award for their film, and have been pegged as talent to watch by various media outlets including Filmmaker Magazine. Actress Robin Bartlett was recently nominated for Best Supporting Female at the most recent Independent Spirit Awards for her performance in H.

The film follows two women, each named Helen, who live mirrored lives in the town of Troy, New York. The first Helen–played by Bartlett–is in her 60s, lives with her husband, and takes care of an eerily lifelike baby doll called a “Reborn Doll,” which she cares for as though it were alive. The second Helen is in her 30s, has a successful art career and is four months pregnant.

One night, something unexplainable falls out of the sky and explodes over the town. In the aftermath of this event, bizarre things begin to happen. As people in the town go missing en masse and unnatural cloud formations begin appearing in the sky, the two women find themselves and their lives spinning out of control. H. explores change and being changed. Helen and Helen are changed by forces outside of their own control.

H. marks Attieh and Garcia’s third collaboration, their previous films Recommended by Enrique (2014) won the Jury Prize for Best Cast at the Los Angeles Film Festival and Ok, Enough, Goodbye (2011) won various awards including, the Jury Prize at the Torino Film Festival, and Honorable Mention at the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival. H. received production support and funding from the Venice Biennale College, Cinema Program.