EL ESTUDIANTE
A film by Santiago Mitre
Argentina, 2011, 110 min. In English with Spanish subtitles.
Subjects: Latin American Studies, Political Studies, Cinema Studies, Argentina.
"Winner of Special Jury Prizes at BAFICI (Buenos Aires) and Locarno, and a highlight of the New York 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 (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 Museum of Modern Art
AWARDS
– Best Film, Best Actor, Cartagena Film Festival
– Best Film, Gijón Film Festival
– Special Jury Prize, Locarno Film Festival
– Special Jury Prize, Best Cinematography and FEISAL Award, Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI)
– Best First Film, Cinema Tropical Awards
– Best First Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Emerging Actor, Argentina’s Silver Condors
– Best First Film, Best Screenplay, Best Emerging Actor, Best Emerging Actress, Argentina Academy of Film’s Sur
– FIPRESCI Award, Valdivia Film Festival
– Best Director, Amazonas Film Festival, Brazil– Official Selection, Cineasti del Presente, Locarno Film Festival
FESTIVALS
– Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival
– Official Selection, New York Film Festival
– Official Selection, Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival (BAFICI)
– Official Selection, Cartagena Film Festival
– Official Selection, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
– Official Selection, Gijón Film Festival
– Official Selection, Valdivia Film Festival
– Official Selection, Amazonas Film Festival
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"A taut, incisive look at university wheeling and dealing."
– Robert Koehler, Variety
"A speedy depiction of university politics and the spirited radicalism associated with them, El Estudiante announces 31-year-old Argentinean filmmaker Santiago Mitre as a South American Aaron Sorkin. It might be the first serious political narrative about undergraduate matriculation."
– Eric Kohn, indieWIRE
"A dynamic piece of filmmaking that promises a bright future for Santiago Mitre."
– Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter
TRAILER:
Melissa Anderson is a regular contributor to Artforum and Artforum.com; she also writes for the Village Voice. She was the film editor and a film critic for Time Out New York, and a member of the New York Film Festival selection committee between 2009 and 2012. 
Mike Maggiore programs the premieres for New York's Film Forum alongside Director Karen Cooper. He is also responsible for promoting many of the premieres during their runs at Film Forum. He has served on the committees of Film Independent's Truer Than Fiction Award and the Sundance Documentary Fund; and was the Assistant Director of the Film and Video Department of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Julia Solomonoff is an award-winning Argentinean writer, director and producer. She is the writer and director of The Last Summer of la Boyita (2009), which was co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar’s El Deseo SA and won over 20 international awards. Her directorial debut, Hermanas (2005), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. As a producer, her credits include Julia Murat’s Historias que existem quando lembradas and Ana Piterbarg's Everybody’s Got a Plan. A Fulbright Scholar, Solomonoff teaches Film Directing at Columbia University School of the Arts. 
Chris Allen is the Founder and Director of UnionDocs, a Center for Documentary Art based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After graduating from Columbia University and studying at Trinity College Dublin, Allen worked as a social entrepreneur, documentary director, and new media artist. His individual works and collaborative projects have been exhibited at the MoMA, Harvard’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, the Volksbühne Theatre, DirektorenHaus in Berlin, Independent Film Week, Sonár, DIVA, and Conflux Festivals, among many other venues. 
Paco de Onís most recently released Granito (Sundance 2011), a documentary detective story focused on the role of filmic and archival documentation in the prosecution of a genocide case against Guatemalan generals. He previously produced The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court (Sundance 2009), and State of Fear, a film about Peru’s 20-year “war on terror” based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Paco is a partner at Skylight Pictures, and previously produced documentaries for PBS, National Geographic, and a range of other programs. 
Anita Reher is the Executive Director of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. She is an international consultant with twenty years of experience connecting filmmakers to the documentary community and was a co-founder of the European Documentary Network (EDN). She began her career with the MEDIA Program of the European Union working for the creative DOCUMENTARY project.
Beth Janson is the Executive Director of the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI). She joined TFI in 2004 to launch its Tribeca All Access program, which quickly grew to become an important forum for US-based filmmakers from diverse backgrounds to promote their projects. She held a variety of positions prior to TFI including Programming Director for the 2003 Newport International Film Festival and working as a part of the HBO Documentary Films/Cinemax Reel Life programming team. At HBO, she worked on American Standoff, The Young and the Dead, Journeys with George and Shelter Dogs.
Daniel Loría is the Overseas Editor at BoxOffice. His writing has also appeared on Indiewire, The L Magazine, Remezcla, Not Coming to a Theater Near You, and the official blogs of Cinema Tropical and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. 
Maria-Christina Villaseñor is an independent curator, writer, media maker and consultant on nonprofit arts administration and fundraising. From 1996 to 2007, she curated film and media arts exhibitions for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as the Guggenheim Museums in Berlin and Bilbao. She has also guest-curated media programs for numerous organizations internationally such as Creative Time, Exit Art, the Havana International Film Festival, and the Museo de Bellas Artes Buenos Aires.
Cinelatino, the nation’s leading Spanish-language movie channel, announced it will release Nosotros Los Nobles (We are the Nobles, pictured), one of Mexico’s highest-grossing films of all time, in select AMC theaters across the United States on Friday, November 1, 2013. This deal marks the first time the cable network will release a film theatrically. 
The class-disparity issue also touched a chord with Mexican audiences, not just among the working class but across both ends of the audience spectrum. "Nosotros Los Nobles is both a feel-good family comedy and a social satire that mocks the class differences in Mexico, which is one of our defining characteristics as a nation. The poor can laugh at the rich, and the rich can laugh at themselves," added Alazraki.
The IDA Documentary Awards announced today the nominees for its annual 29th edition dedicated to the art of documentary film. Among the nominees, there are two Latino projects: Viewfinder: Latin America (pictured) produced by Al Jazeera English nominated for Best Limited Series Award, and OME: Tales from a Vanishing Homeland by director Raul O. Paz Pastrana from the School of Visual Arts in New York City nominated for the David L. Woper Student Documentary Award. 
Feature films Workers (pictured) by José Luis Valle and La Jaula de Oro by Diego Quemada-Diez were the winners at the 11th edition of the Morelia Film Festival. Workers received he prize for Best Film at the festival, while La Jaula de Oro received the prizes for Best First/Second Film, the Audience Award and the Press Award. 
In the documentary category the big winner of the festival was Nuria Ibañez's El cuarto desnudo / The Naked Room (pictured right) which was awarded the prize for Best Documentary, and Best Documentary by a Woman Filmmaker. The film portraits a whole world without leaving a single space: the doctor’s office at a children’s hospital in Mexico City. Listening to the children, their parents and the doctors allows us to have a deeper and more complex insight into both social reality and human frailty.
With this week's announcement of the expansion of the Ambulante Film Festival in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, there are now three annual film series focused on Mexican cinema in Los Angeles, which boasts the largest Mexican population in the country. 
