NOSOTROS LOS NOBLES Becomes the Top Grossing Mexican Film in History

After only four weeks in theatrical release, Gaz Alazraki's Nosotros los Nobles (pictured) made history in Mexican box office this weekend, becoming the top grossing Mexican film in the local box office ever. The film has grossed an estimate $165.3 million pesos, the equivalent of $13.5 million US dollars approximately, and has been watched by over 3,350,000 spectators.

The film has dethroned El crimen del Padre Amaro / The Crime of Father Amaro by Carlos Carrera and starring Gael García Bernal, which had been Mexico's reigning box office champion since it was released in 2002.

Produced by Alazraki Films and former Warner Bros. production head Leonardo Zimbrón, the hit comedy (which loosely translates as We are the Nobles) tells the story of a millionaire man who decides to test his spoiled children by pretending he's lost all of his fortune and forcing them to do the unthinkable -get a job.

Alazraky's debut feature the story, stars Gonzalo Vega, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Juan Pablo Gil and Karla Souza, and was locally released by Warner Bros.

Check out the List of Top Grossing Mexican Films Ever.

BAFICI Announces Winners of its 15th Edition

BAFICI, the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival, announced this morning the winners for its 15th edition. The film La Paz (pictured) by Santiago Loza was awarded the prized for Best Film in the Argentinean cinema competition, while Raúl Perrone won the prize for Best Director for his film P3ND3J05. El loro y el cisne / The Parrot and the Swan by Alejo Moguillansky, received a Special Jury Mention.

Loza's La Paz tells the story of Liso, a young man from the upper middle class, who has been released from a psychiatric clinic. He lives with his parents, who treat him like a child. His attempts to revive old relationships fail. The only solace he finds is that which emerges from his friendship with Sonia, their Bolivian maid, and his visits to his grandmother. Loza's film also received the Argentine Film Critics Association Award.

In the official competition, two Argentinean films received awards: Jazmín López's Leones was awarded with the Special Jury Prize, while the leading actresses of Matías Piñeiro's Viola (pictured), María Villar, Agustina Muñoz, Elisa Carricajo and Romina Paula, were awarded the Best Actress prize. The British film Berberian Sound Studio by Peter Strickland was the top winner of the competition.

Chilean film Joven y alocada / Young and Wild by Marialy Rivas won the prize for Best Film in the Avant-Garde and Genre section of the festival. The winners in the local short film competition were the Argentine films 9 vacunas / 9 Vaccines by Iair Said and Yo y Maru 2012 / Me and Maru 2012 by Juan Renau. The Audience Award went to the Argentinean film Ramón Ayala by Marcos López.

BAFICI, which took place April 10-21 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is one of the leading film festivals in Latin America. 

Key Figure of Cuban Cinema Alfredo Guevara Passes Away

The president and founder of the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana, Alfredo Guevara (pictured) passed away this morning at the age of 87 in Cuba. A prolific figure in the arts and a strong supporter of Cuban and Latin American cinema, Guevara was also the founder and president of the influential Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), which was created two months after Castro's revolution began and produced an impressive body of artistic and political work, and fueled the career of many key filmmakers such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Humberto Solás and Santiago Álvarez.

Born on December 31, 1925 in Havana, Guevara studied for a doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Havana, where he first met Fidel Castro. Often participating in student protests against the Batista dictatorship, he endured persecution and multiple arrests. Guevara's life was consistently intertwined with the Cuban revolution, eventually becoming a close friend of Castro's during their college years.

In the first months of 1959, right after the Cuban Revolution, the new government created ICAIC under the leadership of Guevara. ICAIC was founded as a government agency to control film production, distribution, and exhibition in the country.  The Cuban government gave cinema a pivotal role as result of the first culture law and Cuban cinema flourished under the banner of anti-imperialism and revolution. Some key films of this era are Memorias del subdesarrollo / Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and Lucía (1969) by Humberto Solás.

In 1975 Guevara appointed Deputy Minister of Culture of Cuba, served as the island's ambassador to UNESCO in the 1980's, and he was the author of numerous books and essays. Guevara was also the founder of the Havana Film Festival in 1979, and remained its president until his death. For years, Guevara also directed the annual film festival, one of the most emblematic presentations of film in the country and whose mission was to honor cinematographic achievements, from their significance to artistic values in enriching and reaffirming the Latin American and Caribbean cultural identity.

Brazil's RAT FEVER and Chile's SIBILA Top Havana Film Fest in New York

The Brazilian film Rat Fever / Febre do rato (pictured) by Cláudio Assis, and the Chilean-Spanish film Sibila by Teresa Arredondo were the top winners of the 14th edition of the Havana Film Festival in New York, winning the Havana Star Prize for Best Fiction Film and Best Documentary Film, respectively.

The winner of this year's Havana Star Prize for Best Film Rat Fever is a story of an unrequited love. The poet Zizo, a pure-bred anarchist, is lost as soon as he meets the sober Eneida. She doesn’t mind being his muse, but she won’t go any further than that – whereas in Zizo’s circle of promiscuous friends, made up of social losers, bohemians and other proud outsiders, everyone goes to bed with everyone else.

Meanwhile, Zizo is busy with his dubious battle against ‘the system’, using his self-published newsletter ‘Febre do rato’ and a series of subversive street performances that primarily seem to reach his own friends.

Winner of the third Havana Star Prize for Best Documentary, Sibila (pictured right) builds the present through tracing the past. Filmmaker Teresa Arredondo begins rebuilding a relationship with her elusive aunt Sibila years after she was sent to prison, accused of participating in the guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) when Arredondo was only 7 years old.

Chilean director Fernando Lavanderos received the prize for Best Director for his sophomore production Las cosas como son / Things The Way They Are, a film about Jerónimo, 30, an antisocial guy who rents rooms to foreigners. A beautiful Nordic girl, Sanna, 23, arrives at his house bringing meaning into his life. While he’s attempting to win her over, suspicions arise when he finds out she’s hiding something in his house, awakening his biggest fears.

The prize for Best Screenplay went to Eliseo Subiela's Argentinean film Paisajes devorados / Vanishing Landscapes (pictured left) in which three young people plan to make a film about an alleged film director (played by iconic filmmaker Fernando Birri), residing in an insane asylum in Buenos Aires. The man disappeared from the film circuit after a young actress was murdered in the 1960’s.

Additionally, the jury gave a Special Mention to the Argentinean documentary film El etnógrafo / The Ethnographer by Ulises Rosell. The 14th edition of the festival took place April 12-19, and featured a tribute to the work of Birri, and the local premieres of Latin American film including Paraguayan hit 7 cajas / 7 Boxes by Tana Schembori and Juan Carlos Maneglia.

Mexican Directors Who Have Participated in Cannes' Official Competition

With today's announcement of the inclusion of Amat Escalante's Heli in the Official Selection of the 66th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the director joins a distinctive group of Mexican filmmakers that have competed for the prestigious Palm d'Or.

Spanish-born director Luis Buñuel (pictured left) is the Mexican director with the most participation at Cannes' Official Selection. He rapidly became a regular after he premiered his film Los Olvidados at the festival in 1951, wining the Best Director Award. He returned the following two years to present Subida al cielo / Mexican Bus Ride in 1952, and Él in 1953. Few years later, in 1959, he won the International Prize for his film Nazarín.

After that, Buñuel returned three more times in a row: in 1960 with La joven / The Young One; in 1961 with the Mexican-Spanish co-production Viridiana, for which he won the Palm d'Or (ex-aequo with Henri Colpi's The Long Absence) making it the first -and last time, a Mexican film has ever won the coveted award since it was introduced at the festival in 1955.

Buñuel returned once again -and for the last time in the Official Selection, with El angel exterminador / The Exterminating Angel in 1962. His film Tristana had a special out-of-competition screening at the 1970 edition of the festival.

Roberto Gavaldón (pictured right) is the second Mexican filmmaker with the most films selected for competition at Cannes, with four titles: Las tres alegres casadas (1953), El niño y la niebla / The Boy and the Fog (1954), La escondida / The Hidden One (1956), and Macario (1960).

Three Mexican filmmakers have participated three times in Cannes' Official Selection: Emilio "El Indio" Fernández in the forties and early fifties, Arturo Ripstein in the seventies and the nineties, and more recently Carlos Reygadas in the last decade.

Emilio "El Indio" Fernández participated in the very first edition of the Cannes Film Festival in 1946 with María Candelaria starring Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz, the film won the Grand Prix (which was the highest prize at the festival between 1946 and 1954) shared with other films in competition. Fernández returned to the competition at Cannes in 1949 with his film Pueblerina, and one last time in 1953 with the film La red / The Net.

Arturo Ripstein participated at the festival for the first time in 1974 with his film El santo oficio / The Holy Office. Twenty years have had to pass for him to return to the Official Selection with La reina de la noche / The Queen of the Night in 1994. The last time he competed for the Palm d'Or was in 1999 for El coronel no tiene quien le escriba / No One Writes to the Colonel.

Carlos Reygadas (pictured left), has been actively participating at Cannes with his last three films: Batalla en el cielo / Battle in Heaven in 2005, Luz silenciosa / Silent Light in 2007, and more recently Post Tenebras Lux last year, for which he won the prize for Best Director.

The other Mexican filmmaker that has premiered his films in the official competition in the last decade is Alejandro González Iñárritu (pictured below right), whose film Babel gave him the prize for Best Director in 2006. He returned in 2010 with the film Biutiful, which he shot in Barcelona and stars Javier Bardem.

Nine other Mexican filmmakers have participated in the competition with one film each: (in chronological order) Miguel M. Delgado with Los tres mosqueteros (1946); Tito Davidson with Doña diabla / The Devil Is a Woman (1951); Julio Bracho with La ausente / The Absentee (1952); Miguel Morayta with El mártir del calvario / The Martyr of Calvary (1954); Benito Alazraki with Raíces (1955); Alfredo B. Crevenna with Talpa (1956); Ismael Rodríguez with La cucaracha (1959); Luis Alcoriza with Tarahumara (1965), and more recently, Guillermo del Toro with the Mexican-Spanish co-production El laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).

Only one Mexican woman director has participated in the Official Selection, that was Carmen Toscano de Moreno (pictured right) with the documentary film Memorias de un mexicano / Memories of a Mexican in 1954. It's important to note than in the 1950s Mexican filmmakers had easier access to the Cannes Film Festival. Both editions of 1953 and 1954, saw a record-breaking three films from Mexico in competition each year. For many years, the Mexican presence at Cannes was very limited.

Additionally there's a handful of foreign directors that have participated in the Palm d'Or competition with Mexican productions, that is the case of Argentinean director Tulio Demicheli who participated at Cannes with Un extraño en la escalera / A Stranger on the Stairs in 1955; Spanish director Carlos Velo with Pedro Páramo in 1967; Chilean director Miguel Littín with Actas de Marusia / Letters from Marusia in 1976, and with El recurso del método / The Recourse to the Method (in co-production with Cuba) in 1978; and Brazilian director Ruy Guerra with Eréndira in 1983.

Escalante to Represent Latin America at Cannes

The Cannes Film Festival has announced this morning the lineup for the Official Competition of its 66th edition which includes Mexican film Heli by Amat Escalante (pictured). He will be the only Latin American filmmaker representing Latin America in the Official Competition competing for the Palm d'Or.

Escalante's third feature film (Sangre, 2005; Los Bastardos, 2009) tells the story of Heli, who lives in a town where the people either work for an automobile assembly plant or the local drug cartel. He is confronted with police corruption, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, love, guilt and revenge in the search for his father who has mysteriously disappeared. The cast includes Armando Estrada, Linda González Hernández and Andrea Jazmín Vergara.

Latin America will also be represented with only one film in the A Certain Regard section of the festival with the Mexican film La Jaula de Oro by Spanish-born director Diego Quemada-Diez. The film follows a group of Central-American and Mexican children, documenting their harrowing journey toward California, their arrival, and experiences in the U.S.

The Cannes Film Festival will take place May 15-26 in the French Riviera.