Sprawling Latin American Selection at Toronto

The Toronto Film Festival announced yesterday the last batch for this year's lineup which includes films from Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Dominican Republic to its Contemporary World Cinema section. The Latino selections feature work by experienced filmmakers such as Fernando Eimbcke, Mariana Rondón, and Diego and Daniel Vega, along with newcomers such as Brazilian directors Fernando Coimbra and René Sampaio, and the sophomore production by Dominican filmmaker Leticia Tonos.

From Venezuela, Maria Rondon's Bad Hair / Pelo malo, (pictured below right) which was recently announced as part of the San Sebastian Film Festival, deals with a nine-year-old's obsession with straightening his hair, elicits a wave of homophobic panic in his widowed mother. The Brazilian film A Wolf at the Door / O lobo atrás da porta, the debut feature film by Fernando Coimbra deals is a nerve-rattling tale of a kidnapped child and the distraught parents left behind. El mudo / The Mute a Peruvian production directed by Diego and Daniel Vega and which just had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, is an offbeat black comedy in which someone is out to get Constantino Zegarra, a judge with an impressive conviction rate.

A rarity, the festival will also feature a film from the Dominican Republic, Cristo Rey, directed by Leticia Tonos Paniagua which chronicles the love between a kind-hearted teenager ostracized for his mixed Haitian-Dominican descent, and the beautiful sister of a local drug kingpin he's hired to protect. Club Sándwich (pictured top left) which will also be presented at the San Sebastian Film Festival, is Fernando Eimbecke's story of a mother's separation anxiety as her teenage son experiences his first encounters with love and sexuality.

The Brazilian film, Brazilian Western / Faroesete Cabocio, is director René Sampaio's debut following a young man from the provinces who decides to try his luck in the capital, and falls for a senator's daughter. The section will also be featuring shorts including the Puerto Rican film, Old Moon / Luna vieja, directed by Raisa Bonnet, an almost wordless tale of the relationship ebtweeen a young girl and her grandmother.

The Toronto International Film Festival will be held from September 5-15, 2013 in Canada.

Alejandro Fernández Almendras Wins Locarno's Carte Blanche

Chilean director Alejandro Fernández Almendras won the Carte Blance industry competition of the Locarno Film Festival with the project for his third feature film Matar a un hombre / To Kill a Man (pictured). The jury, comprised of Frédéric Boyer of the Tribeca Film Festival, Gerwin Tamsma of the Rotterdam International Film Festival and Uruguayan producer awarded Fernández Almendras's project with top prize consisting of 10,000 CHF ($10,000 USD approximately) to contribute to its completion.

The film, produced by Eduardo Villalobos, tells the story of Jorge, a hard working family man who earns just enough to cover basic expenses. One afternoon, he is mugged by Kalule, a local delinquent. Jorge’s son decides to confront Kalule and recover what was stolen. Kalule shoots Jorge`s son, who nearly dies. The police get there and arrest Kalule. When Kalule gets out, he begins to terrorize the family. They go to the police for help, but the authorities don´t listen. When Kalule moves one step closer to fulfill his desire for revenge, Jorge decides to take justice into his own hands.

Fernández Almendras had previously directed the family saga Huacho (2009) and the countryside drama Sentados frente al fuego / By the Fire (2011). He developed To Kill a Man as part of Cannes' Cinefondation-Atelier, the film should be ready early next year.

The Locarno Film Festival’s Carte Blanche initiative offers a look at films in post-production from a different country every year, turns the spotlight on Chile for its third edition. The selected works in progress, unseen at any other festival and not yet sold to international sales agents, were shown to industry professionals during Locarno’s Industry Days event.

The other competing Chilean projects were Raul by Matias Venables Brito, R. Lorena by Isidora Marras, Surire by Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff, The Prodigal Son by Carlos Araya Diaz, The Waltz by Edison Cajas, and Volantin Cortao by Anibal Jofré And Diego Ayala.

Good Pitch Debuts in Latin America

By Richard Shpuntoff

Good Pitch held its first Latin American edition this past Saturday, August 10, within the framework of the Argentina’s International Human Rights Film Festival, DerHumALC XV in Buenos Aires.

Good Pitch was founded by Britdoc in 2008 with the aim of building support for social issue documentaries that have the potential to make concrete social impact. Think Josh Fox’s Gasland that has pushed the media to give greater coverage to the dangers of fracking, or Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War which directly led to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta changing the U.S. military’s procedures for handling sexual assault cases, and has been credited with encouraging more women in the military to come forward and report cases of abuse.

Partnering with the Sundance Documentary Institute the program expanded around Europe and into North America, and over the course of 2013-14 is working with films in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and, of course, Latin America.

For this first Latin American edition, four projects were selected that focused on a range of issues.  The visually stunning and emotionally powerful El vals de los inútiles (pictured right) by Edison Cajas tells the story of a high school student and an ex-political prisoner under the Pinochet regime who are united in the struggle for free public education in Chile, a nation that has some of the most expensive costs for education in large part due to privatization policies that were implemented during the military dictatorship. Julian Perini Pazos’ Territorios portrays three territorial conflicts in the north of Argentina where indigenous people and poor farmers are regularly evicted from their lands by industrial agricultural and mining companies, often with government support or government turning a blind eye.

Also from Argentina, Gabriel Balanovsky and Ginger Gentile’s film Mujeres con Pelotas (pictured left) takes on the controversy of young women playing the world’s most popular sport – soccer –, focusing on a group of girls from a shanty town who must struggle on a daily basis not only with society’s indifference but with the sexism and prejudice that they face from their own families and community.

Rounding out the selection was 9.70 (pictured right below) by Victoria Solano, which tells the story of Campoalegre, a small farming town in the south of Colombia that was crushed when the government sent in the military to destroy 70 tons of rice – the crop that sustains their community – because their seeds were in violation of Resolution 9.70 a law that was passed in support of the “Free Trade Act” between Colombia and the United States, but is proving detrimental to small farmers.

Unlike traditional pitching forums, this was not a case of winners and losers; the objective of Good Pitch is to build support for the films in their various stages of production, post-production and distribution. The Good Pitch team, headed by Bruni Burres of Sundance and Patricia Finneran of Britdoc, managed to pull together an impressive range of representatives from NGOs, academia, government and the film world to discuss and pledge support for these films.

The presentations were held at the Memory and Human Rights Space (el Espacio Memoria y Derechos Humanos, ex-ESMA) - housed in the former detention and torture center that was the Argentine Navy School of Mechanics – a wise and propitious choice by the organizers for stressing the need to support film projects that aim at playing a role in social change.

New Films by Rowe, Chenillo, Franco, and Eimbcke to Morelia

The Morelia International Film Festival has announced its official roster for this year's 11th edition which promises to be exciting as it includes new films by filmmakers Mariana Chenillo, Michael Rowe, Michel Franco, and Fernando Eimbcke, among others.

Competing for Best Mexican Feature Film are Paraíso / Paradise, Mariana Chenillo's sophomore production after Nora's Will; Manto Acuífero / The Well by Cannes' Camera d'Or Winner Michael Rowe (Leap Year);  A los ojos / To the Eyes co-directed by Cannes' Un Certain Regard winner Michel Franco (After Lucía) and his sister Victoria; and Fernando Eimbcke's (Duck Season, Lake Tahoe) third feature film untitled Club Sándwich.

The Feature Film competition will also include the and the directorial debuts Workers directed by José Luis Valle,  La vida después / The Life After by David Pablos, Samuel Kishi Leopo's Somos Mari Pepa (pictured right), Los insólitos peces gato / The Amazing Catfish (pictured top left) from Claudia Sainte-Luce.

Rounding up the competition are Cannes' Un Certain Regard favorite La Jaula de Oro by Diego Quemada-Diez; Las horas muertas, the sophomore film by Aarón Fernández (Used Parts); and Eduardo Villanueva's Penumbra / Darkness which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

This year's films competing for Best Feature Documentary film include Los años de Fierro by Santiago Esteinou, Atempa, sueños a orillas del río by Edson Caballero Trujillo, Nuria Ibáñez's El cuarto desnudo / The Naked Room, Elevador / Elevator directed by Adrián Ortiz Maciel, El hombre detrás de la máscara / The Man behind the Mask by Gabriela Obregón, Pablo Tamez Sierra's Lejanía, Oasis by Alejandro Cárdenas, Quebranto / Disrupted directed by Roberto Fiesco, Rosario by Shula Erenberg and Tochi by director Misael Alva Alva.

The festival, which is a forum to promote the new talents of Mexican as well as contribute to the cultural and tourist activities of the state of Michoacán. There are four competitive sections the Mexican Short Film, Mexican Documentary, Michoacán Section and Mexican Feature. As the Morelia Film Festival is officially recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the winning short films of Fiction, Animation and Documentary are eligible to be considered for an Oscar nomination.

The Morelia International Film Festival will take place on October 18th through the 27th in Mexico.

MoMA Will Host One-Week Release of Santiago Mitre's EL ESTUDIANTE

The Museum of the Modern Art will present the long-awaited theatrical run of the Argentinean film El Estudiante (pictured) the critically acclaimed directorial debut by Santiago Mitre. The film will play August 22-28 at MoMA in New York City.

Winner of the award for Best Film at the Cartagena and the Gijón Film Festivals, Special Jury Prizes at BAFICI (Buenos Aires) and Locarno, Best First Film at the Cinema Tropical Awards, and a highlight of the New York and Toronto, Film Festival, El Estudiante charts the political awakening of a student at the University of Buenos Aires.

In this tense and shrewdly observed bildungsroman, a brilliant successor to films like Jean-Luc Godard’s Tout va bien (1972) and Krzysztof Zanussi’s Camouflage (1977), the apathetic yet seductive Roque (played by Esteban Lamothe) is drawn into the campus intrigue of warring student political parties, and finds himself torn between two competing impulses: the radical idealism of his girlfriend, a teacher assistant, and the realpolitik cunning of his mentor, a retired politician turned professor.

Screenwriter-director Mitre, who has written award-winning scripts for Pablo Trapero and Walter Salles, makes his feature film debut with a sophisticated and subtle meditation on the still-unhealed wounds of Argentina’s Dirty War, and on the clash between old-guard Peronists and a younger generation of leftist activists in Buenos Aires today.

The one-week run at MoMA is organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film. El Estudiante is released by Cinema Tropical and Alpha Violet. Click here to visit MoMA's website with more information.

San Sebastian to Premiere Fernando Eimbcke and Mariana Rondón's Films

The San Sebastián Film Festival has announced today the first six titles to compete for the Golden Shell in the official selection for its 61st edition. The lineup includes the newest films by Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke and Venezuelan director Mariana Rondón.

Club Sándwich (pictured), the third feature by Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season, Lake Tahoe), revolves around a mother, Paloma, and her teenage son, Hector, who have a strong and special relationship. While on holiday on the seaside, Hector meets a girl with whom he has his first experiences of love and sexuality. Paloma must begin the process of accepting her son is growing up and can longer be the best friend he has been to her for so many years.

Venezuelan film, Pelo Malo / Bad Hair, is also director Mariana Rondón's third feature (At Midnight and a Half, Postcards from Leningrad) and revolves around Junior, a nine year-old boy with "bad hair" who's efforts to smooth it down for the school picture incur the wrath of his mother Marta, a widow. His paternal grandfather and mother are also engaged in argument when he suggests the boy stay with him on a permanent basis.

More titles will continue to be announced in the coming weeks. The San Sebastián Film Festival will run from September 20th through the 28th in Spain.