Alicia Scherson and Lucrecia Martel Awarded at Rotterdam

Chilean director Alicia Scherson and Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel were the two only Latin American filmmakers awarded at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival which, in its 42nd edition runs from January 23 through February 3rd.

Alicia Scherson received the KNF Award for her newest film Il Futuro (pictured). The KNF Award is given to the best feature film in The Big Screen Award Competition that is yet to find distribution within the Netherlands. The winner is selected by a jury of the Kring van Nederlandse Filmjournalisten (KNF), the 'Circle of Dutch Film Journalists.'

Il Futuro, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival few days ago and is based on a novella by Roberto Bolaño, starring Rutger Hauer and Manuela Martelli tells the story of teenager Bianca and her younger brother who lose their parents and they have to make their own way to the future.

Lucrecia Martel received the WorldView New Genres Fund Development Award in the CineMart section of the festival for her new film project Zama, a co-production of Lita Stantic Producciones (Argentina) and El Deseo (Spain). "A visually stunning and uniquely approached period project by one of South America’s most influential director", said the jury. The award come with a €5,000 cash prize.

WorldView is a project of CBA (Commonwealth Broadcasting Association) that aims to improve UK public understanding and awareness of the developing world via the mainstream broadcast and digital media. WorldView supports filmmakers who aim to bring the richness and diversity of the wider world to UK and international audiences. 2013 was the first time the award was presented.

SXSW Announces Line-up including Latino Films

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival has announced its lineup for this year, celebrating the the vitality, innovation and opportunity of new and established filmmakers around the world in Austin, Texas.

Of many numerous categories, Latino films have been selected for the festival's different sections. In the category of Visions is Brazilian film Elena (pictured) by Petra Costa, which tells the tale of Petra, a young Brazilian actress who travels to New York in search of her sister Elena who moved to New York two decades before to pursue her own dream of an acting career. Gradually, the stories and features of the two sisters are confused and we no longer know one from another. When Petra eventually finds Elena in an unexpected place, she has to learn to let her go.

SWGlobal presents the Mexican film Diario a tres voces / Three Voices by Otilia Portillo Padua, which weaves the intimate love stories of three women from different generations: a teenager, a middle-aged divorcee, and a ninety-year-old great grandmother. Through a careful exploration of space and color, the film traces their experiences, extracting their voices and loves from a rich texture of archival material.

Also included in this category is Fernando Guzzoni's Carne de perro / Dog Flesh from Chile, which deals with a complex period in the life of 55-year-old Alejandro, a solitary, fragile, and unpredictable man crushed by the hostility of his mysterious past as a torturer during the Pinochet dictatorship. The film tells the story of a man searching for a new identity to escape from losing himself among his ghosts and obsessions.

Other Latino titles include the world premiere of Snap by Youssef Delara and Victor Teran; the horror film Evil Dead by Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez; and Los Wild Ones by Elise Salomon. The SXSW Film Festival opens March 8-16, 2013. For more information, visit, SXSW

Sebastián Silva Gets Second Sundance Award

Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva (pictured) won the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award for his film Crystal Fairy (pictured below) at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It is the second time he wins at the festival, after 2009 when he got the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic competition for his film La nana / The Maid.

The film, starring Michael Cera and Gaby Hoffmann, tells the story of Jamie, a boorish, insensitive American twenty-something traveling in Chile, who somehow manages to create chaos at every turn. He and his friends are planning on taking a road trip north to experience a legendary shamanistic hallucinogen called the San Pedro cactus. In a fit of drunkenness at a wild party, Jamie invites an eccentric woman—a radical spirit named Crystal Fairy—to come along. 

Other Latino winners at this year's edition of Sundance include the British-Mexican documentary film Who is Dayani Cristal? by Marc Silver which was recipient of the World Cinema Documentary Cinematography Award; and Brazilian filmmaker Aly Muritiba who won the Sundance Institute Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award.

In the past few years, Chile has had a good representation and performance at Sundance. In addition to Silva's couple of awards, last year Andres Wood's Violeta se fue a los cielos / Violeta Went to Heaven won the World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize and Marialy Rivas Joven y alocada / Young and Wild was presented with the World Cinema Screenwriting Award.

Film Comment Selects Films from Mexico and Uruguay

The Film Society of Lincoln center has announced the lineup for the upcoming 13th edition of Film Comment Selects, Film Comment Magazine's electric festival. Among those included in the dynamic and unpredictable films chosen by the magazine's editors and contributors are Mexico's Here Comes the Devil / Ahí va el diablo directed by Argentine filmmaker Adrián García Bogliano and Uruguay's 3 (pictured) directed by Pablo Stoll.

3 Is the return of the low-key and unexpected "melancomedy" from the co-director of Whisky. 3 tells the story of a middle-aged dentist with a quietly unraveling life making repeated and poignant ineffectual efforts to renew his relationship with his ex-wife and adolescent daughter. Oblivious to his approaches, the two are caught up in their own burgeoning romantic and sexual entanglements. An eccentric tempo with an episodic construction, slight and unassuming, 3 highlights wry observations and little heartbreaks.

In Adrián Garcia Bogliano's chiller, a Mexican family outing goes disastrous when two children disappear overnight and return strangely altered by their adventure. The Argentine director's sixth film is a tale of possessions, revenge, and steadily encroaching supernatural benevolence underpinned by a sense of sexual unrest.

The Festival runs from February 18th through the 28th in New York City. For more information, visit Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Cinema Guild Releases Raúl Ruiz's Last Film NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET

Cinema Guild has announced the U.S. theatrical release of Night Across the Street (La noche de enfrente, pictured), the final film in the sprawling filmography of over 100 films by the late celebrated Chilean director Raúl Ruiz, an iconoclastic director who became one of the world's most distinctive filmmakers.

Lauded by critics for his surrealism and highly imaginative approach to narrative and visual style (defined by unconventional angles, close-ups and innovative use of color), the great Raúl Ruiz died of a lung infection in Paris on the 19th of August 2011.

On the verge of force retirement, Don Celso, an elderly office worker begins to relive both real and imagined memories from his life- a trip to the movies as a young boy with Beethoven, listening to tall tales from long John Silver, a brief stay in a haunted hotel, conversations with a fictional doppelganger of a real writer. Stories hide within stories and the thin line between imagination and reality steadily erodes, opening up a marvelous new world of personal remembrance and fantastic melodrama. In this playfully elegiac film loosely adapted from the fantastical short stories of Chilean writer Hernán del Solar, Ruiz has crafted a final masterwork on his favorite subjects: fiction, history and life itself.

Shot between March and April 2011 in Santiago de Chile, Night Across the Street is a mysterious testament, the true meaning of which was not understood even by those who worked with him on the shoot. Ruiz conceived this film to be seen only after his death, a death which he knew was not far off.

The film, which premiered posthumously at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight last May and has been an official selection at the Toronto, New York and Chicago Film Festivals, among others, opens for an exclusive theatrical engagement on Friday, February 8 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.  

LOS QUE SE QUEDAN

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THOSE WHO REMAIN | LOS QUE SE QUEDAN
A film by Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman
Mexico, 2007, 96 min. In English with Spanish subtitles.

Subjects: Latin American Studies, Latino Studies, Cultural Studies, Mexico, Migration, Political Studies.

"Those Who Remain shines a light on the families left behind by loved ones who have traveled North for work, while also illuminating the rich glow of the Mexican spirit. With great balance and sensitivity, this intimate documentary follows a number of families who each share their stories, ranging from the American Dream to heartbreakingly tragedy.

Examining the emotional cost of long-term estrangement, directors Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman find rich cinematic metaphors in the deserted, newly constructed homes on the highway, their empty rooms a powerful reminder of the absence of loved ones at otherwise joyous occasions like communions and graduations. Despite this void in their communities, many of those profiled emerge as colorful characters with boundless vitality and wonderful senses of humor.” - LA Film Festival

AWARDS & FESTIVALS:
- Winner, Best Documentary Film, Los Angeles  Film Festival 2009 est Iberoamerican Documentary Winner -
- Best Mexican Documentary, Guadalajara Film Festival 2009
- Best Ibero-American Documentary Film, DOCSDF 2009
- Official Selection, Hot Docs 2009
- First Prize of the Jury for Original Full-Length Film, Documenta Madrid 2009
 
REVIEWS
“Those Who Remain is about absence, broken families and unworked fields, about survival, identity, love and relationships. The film won’t just speak to Mexican migrants living in the United States, but to any family, from anywhere in the world,  split by migration" —The Los Angeles Times.

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