The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI) announced yesterday the winners of its 16th edition in Argentina. In the official international competition, the Peruvian film El mudo / The Mute by the brother directors Daniel and Diego Vega was awarded the prize for Best Director and for Best Actor. The Argentinean film Mauro by Hernán Rosselli was awarded the Jury Special Prize.
In the official Argentinean competition the winner of the top prize for Best Film was Alejo Moguillansky and Fia-Stina Sandlund's El escarabajo de oro / The Gold Bug. Gustavo Fontán was named Best Director for his film El rostro / The Face, and Edgardo Cozarinsky received a Special Mention for Carta a un padre. Julián Montero Ciancio's Mientras estoy cantando / While I'm Singing was the most popular, wining the Audience Award.
Other winners include the Mexican documentary El cuarto desnudo / The Naked Room by Nuria Ibáñez which was awarded the Best Film prize in the Human Rights competition.
The 16th edition of BAFICI took place April 2-13.
Alfredo Alcón (pictured), considered one of Argentina's finest actors, died yesterday in his home in Buenos Aires at the age of 84. Born Alfredo Félix Alcón Riesco on March 3, 1930, Alcón worked extensively in film, theater and television in a professional career that spanned over 50 years.
He also worked with filmmaker Leonardo Favio in the 1975 classic film Nazareno Cruz y el lobo / Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf, and with Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bardem in Los inocentes / The Innocent in 1964. His last participation in film was in 2002 in En la ciudad sin límites / The City of No Limits by Antonio Hernández with Leonardo Sbaraglia, Fernando Fernán Gómez and Geraldine Chaplin.
Mariana Rondón's acclaimed Venezuelan film Pelo Malo (pictured), will have it's U.S. Premier as part of the 2014 lineup of the Tribeca Film Festival, running April 16-27 in New York City. Acclaimed by indieWIRE as a "a bold and intelligently perceptive film," Rondón’s feature film was the winner of Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival, becoming the first Venezuelan film to ever win the top honors at the Spanish Festival. The filmmaker will travel to New York to participate in her film’s U.S. Premiere. 
In Pelo Malo, Junior is a nine-year-old boy who has stubbornly curly hair, or “bad hair.” He wants to have it straightened for his yearbook picture, like a fashionable pop singer with long, ironed hair. This puts him at odds with his mother Marta, a young, unemployed widow.
Feature films Heli (pictured left) by Amat Escalante and La jaula de oro / The Golden Dream (pictured below right) by Diego Quemada-Diez became the most nominated films for the 56th edition of the Ariel Awards, Mexico's national film award presented by the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Quemada-Diez, Sainte-Luce and Beristain's films are also competing for Best First Film along with Roberto Fiesco's Quebranto and Sebastián Hoffmann's Halley. 
In the March 2014 edition of TropicalFRONT on Intelatin Cloudcast, Sergio Muñoz and Carlos A. Gutiérrez hips us some films playing at recent film festivals including: SXSW: Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, El Topo, Santa Sangre, and The Dance of Reality; Miami International Film Festival: A Wolf at the Door (Brazil); Guadalajara Film Festival: Natural Sciences (Argentina); Cartagena Film Festival: Dust on the Tongue (Colombia); Riviera Maya Film Festival: Café (México) and Navajazo (México); Tribeca Film Festival: Bad Hair (Venezuela), Güeros (México), Manos Sucias (Colombia) and Mala Mala (Puerto Rico).
