News

Guadalajara Wraps and a New Fest Begins

Ficg (pronounced FeeSeeg and standing for the Festival International de Cine in Guadalajara), displayed a new vibrancy. Besides some great films, great attendance and great organization, several Latin American countries are entering the international film business for the first time (Peru and Ecuador) with subsidies from their government pointing to an optimism for film production as an economic factor in their country's growth. I blogged about the Dominican Republic but not about the new Law 226 in Mexico which encourages businesses to invest up to 20 million pesos (U.S.$2 million) or 10% of the taxes they owed the previous year (whichever is higher) into Mexican film production, or Brazilian access to subsidies.

In addition, Guadalajara is becoming known as the Silicon Valley of Mexico as its economy is based especially on information technology with a large number of international firms having facilities there. It is also considered to be the home of Mariachi music. The city is named after the Spanish city of Guadalajara with the name originating from the Arabic word meaning "Valley of Stones". It is the highest ranking major Mexican city and has the second strongest economic potential of any major North American city. Only Chicago scores more highly for sheer economic potential (Per a 2007 report in fDi magazine, an English-language news and foreign direct investment publication owned by The Financial Times Ltd and edited in London). The same research calls Guadalajara the "city of the future" due to its youthful population, low unemployment and large number of recent foreign investment deals. It was also ranked the third most business friendly city in North America.

A new digital film studio is going up. The University is an important center of culture and learning.

And sadly, violence over drugs is not far away. This past Friday, Narco gangs appropriated 25 vehicles in 16 separate incidents – 11 of them in the Guadalajara metropolitan zone where they set fire to them in retaliation for action taken against them in a military action to capture two Mexican drug cartel members. At the Centro Magno festival venue, festival transport staff stopped filmgoers leaving a screening of Andres Wood's Violeta Went to Heaven as they sought to return to the festival's central Expo Center venue, acknowledging concerns for safety. A truck was set on fire not far (but not too close either: at Calzada Lázaro Cárdenas and Mezquite, at la Colonia de El Fresno) from the Expo where the festival was still being held, but there was no disruption of the festival.

Our friend, Hebe Tabachnik, Iberoamerican programmer for the Palm Springs Film Festival is on the jury and writes from there:

Dear friends, in spite of the disruptive and unfortunately deadly incidents in Guadalajara today, all the attendees to the Ficg Guadalajara are Ok. We are sorry this beautiful city and specially its amazing people have to experience this kind of criminal acts. The festival is going ahead with its schedule events, as it should be. Celebrating the arts and show no fear is the best way to manifest against the non sense violence. Viva Guadalajara. Viva Mexico!!!!

The activities of the industry, with meetings about Iberoamerican coproductions with its well presented professional projects, the film market itself with films available to watch up to 2 weeks after the closing, the Cannes Marche Producers Network, Works in Progress, Berlinale's Talent Campus and Doculab, and of course, the festival itself with galas every night, a Focus on U.K. and Mike Leigh, Homages, Mexican and Iberoamerican Competition, Sounds of Cinema, Children's Cinema, Lgbt prizes, Open Air Screenings - all defy easy decision making on how best to spend one's time there.

The prize winners:

PalmarÉS FICG27

Premio Maguey

Mención Especial

“Todo el mundo tiene alguien menos yo” (México) Dir. Raúl Fuentes

Premio Maguey

“Mía“ (Argentina) Dir. Javier van de Couter

Premio del Público Milenio

“Espacio Interior“ (México) Dir. Kai Parlange

Premio Mezcal

“Un mundo secreto“ (México) Dir. Gabriel Mariño

Premio Cinecolor

“Un mundo secreto“ (México) Dir. Gabriel Mariño

Mejor Cortometraje de Animación - Premio Rigo Mora

“Un ojo” (México) Dir. Lorenza Manrique

Mejor Cortometraje Iberoamericano

“Minuto 200” (Colombia) Dir. Frank Benítez

Mejor Cortometraje Mexicano

“Lucy vs. los límites de la voz” (México) Dir. Mónica Herrera

Largometraje Iberoamericano Documental

Mención Especial

“El salvavidas“ (Chile) Dir. Maite Alberdi

Mejor Documental Iberoamericano

“ ¡Vivan las antípodas! “(Argentina - Chile - Alemania - Holanda) Dir. Víctor Kossakovsky

Largometraje Mexicano Documental

Mención Especial

“Carrière, 250 metros” Dir. Juan Carlos Rulfo y Natalia Gil

Mención Especial

“El paciente interno” Dir. Alejandro Solar

Mejor Documental Mexicano

“Cuates de Australia” Everardo González

Largometraje de Ficción Iberoamericana

Mejor Guion

Jaime Osorio por “El páramo” (Colombia)

Mejor Fotografía

Mauro Pinheiro Jr. por “Sudoeste” (Brasil)

Mejor Actriz

Francisca Gavilán por “Violeta se fue a los cielos” (Chile)

Mejor Actor

Andrés Crespo por “Pescador” (Ecuador)

Premio Especial del Jurado

“Los pasos dobles” (España - Suiza) Dir. Isaki Lacuesta

Mejor Opera Prima

“Transeunte” (Brasil) Dir. Eryk Rocha

Mejor Director

Sebastián Cordero por “Pescador” (Ecuador)

Mejor Película Iberoamericana

"Abrir puertas y ventanas" (Argentina) "Dir. Milagros Mumenthaler

Largometraje de Ficción Mexicana

Mención Especial

Música Original de "Días de gracia"

Mejor Guion

Miguel Bonilla por “Diente por diente”

Mejor Fotografía

Jerónimo Rodríguez por “Todo el mundo tiene a alguien menos yo”

Mejor Actriz

Martha Higareda por “Mariachi Gringo”

Mejor Actor

Kuno Becker por “Espacio Interior”

Mejor Opera Prima

"El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol" Dir. Sebastián del Amo

Mejor Director

Everardo Gout por “Días de gracia”.

Mejor Película

“Mariachi Gringo” Dir. Tom Gustafson

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Premio de los Niños

“El secreto del medallón de jade” (México) Dir. Rodolfo Guzmán y Leopoldo Aguilar

Premio Feisal

Mención Especial

“No hay lugar lejano” (México) Dir. Michelle Ibaven

Mención Especial

“Oro Colombiano: 400 años de música del alma” (Colombia) Dir. Sanjay Agarwal e Iván Higa

Premio Feisal

“75 habitantes, 20 casas, 300 vacas” (Argentina) Dir. Fernando Domínguez

Premio Fipresci

“Violeta se fue a los cielos” (Chile) Dir. Andrés Wood

Guerrero de la Prensa

Mejor largometraje de ficción “Días de gracia” (México) Dir. Everardo Gout Mejor largometraje documental “El paciente interno” (México) Dir. Alejandro Solar

Academia Jalisciense de Cinematografía

Mejor cortometraje jalisciense “La noria” Dir. Karla Castañeda Mejor largometraje jalisciense “Fecha de caducidad” Dir. Kenya Márquez

No sooner does this festival and market wrap when a new Mexican festival, the Riviera Maya Film Festival, begins March 20 - 25 which will play in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, Cozumel and Holbox. The industry component Rivieralab, a coproduction event will take place in Quintana Roo March 22-25 and will host 158 projects from Latin America and Europe. 10 projects will be showcased to financiers, fund representatives, producers and sales agents, 3 will receive 200,000 pesos or approximately Us$15,500. 8 international works in progress at post-production stage from a pool of 40 will be selected to receive support.

It's been a long while since last there was anything to report concerning Jaime Osorio's ghostly tale, The Squad, but lo and behold a new trailer has arrived and as always we have the goods for you right here! Dig it!

Once known as El Paramo and retitled to The Squad, check out the goods on the flick below.

Synopsis:

All contact with a military base high in the desolate wastelands of Colombia has been lost. The authorities - believing the base to have fallen to a terrorist attack - send a nine-man squad to investigate. When they arrive, the men discover a shocking scene of carnage and only one survivor - a mute woman in chains.

Gradually the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside world, and the impossibility of escape begin to undermine the sanity of the soldiers. They start to question the identity of their...

The 2011 Sitges Film Festival has concluded its competition portion and announced awards in more categories than we've seen at any other fest. The biggest winners are Kevin Smith's Red State and Joe Cornish's Attack the Block, but several other films we've been closely watching here on Dread scored victories as well, including Kill List, Livid, The Divide, The Woman, Bellflower, Hell, and Detention.

Here's the full breakdown from the fest, held 6-16 October on the Catalan coast of Spain. Congratulations to all the winners!

Oficial FANTÀSTIC In-competition – Sitges 44

J. A. Bayona, Quim Casas, Lisa Marie, Ryoo Seung-Wan, Richard Stanley (judges)

Best Short Film (tie)

Dirty Silverwear by Steve Daniels

The Unliving by Hugo Lilja

Best Production Design

Marc Thiébault for Livide (Alexandre Bustillo & Julian Maury)

Best Makeup FX

Steven Kostanski for The Divide (Xavier Gens)

Best Special Effects

Lluís Castells and Javier García for Eva (Kike Maíllo)

Best...

We're at T-minus two days to the magic, mystery, and movies of Fantastic Fest, the film's world's premiere celebration of weird, wild, and wonderful cinema. It's also a really good place for alliteration, apparently.

With the opening night world premiere of "The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence" bearing down on us, it's time to game plan. It's not an easy task. There are so many good movies at Fantastic Fest and they're all playing opposite one another. What to pick?

To make things a little easier on you (or maybe harder on you if you'd already penciled in something else), here are my selections for the five most intriguing looking movies on this year's schedule. I didn't pick anything I've already seen (like Jeff Nichols' "Take Shelter" -- which is absolutely outstanding, by the way), and I didn't pick anything with big-name directors or talent. I did that for two reasons.

29 more days to go until Fantastic Fest 2011 takes over Austin Texas! I cannot wait. 17 more films were announced late last week. Only one of those 17 films was on our “Film Guestimation” list for Fantastic Fest 2011. They still have yet to announce Opening & Closing films along with other Gala screenings so hopefully we won’t look like total fools. All we need is maybe half of our films that we listed to show up. Anyway, beyond the break, you can check out what is playing.

Apparently, more films will be announced this week. We will try to get those out as soon as we hear about it.

Events & Contests

100 Best Kills

One of the greatest long-running traditions of Fantastic Fest is the 100 Best Kills Party, where we sit in a theater together and turn the spotlight on the Grim Reaper of movieland as he disembowels, detonates and decapitates again and again and again.

Fresh off a successful opening salvo of films, Fantastic Fest is proud to announce the second wave of pictures for the week of September 22-29 in Austin, Texas. As always, it looks like an impressive line-up.

And seeing how this is the film festival that has launched such films as Zombieland, Trollhunter and The Human Centipede, you'll just have to trust them. They've proven time and again they know what's good.

In addition to the line-up of 17 new films making their world, North American or Us premieres, Fantastic Fest has some great contests and one hottie of a new director in Kristen Bell.

So, without further ado, here's the info for Fantastic Fest, Second Sequence.

From the Press Release

Fantastic Fest is proud to announce the second wave of programming for the seventh edition of Fantastic Fest, happening September 22-29 in Austin, Texas. The second wave includes 17 new World, North American and Us premiere films,...

Earlier we shared the first group of films slated to be at Fantastic Fest this year in Austin, TX. Today we have the second group that includes: Nacho Vigalondo‘s Extraterrestrial, Ti West‘s The Innkeepers, Lars Von Trier‘s Melancholia and Adam Wingard‘s You’re Next.

Here are the descriptions of the films from the press release:

Movies On Fire: Hong Kong Action Classics- presented by Agfa

The amazing Grady Hendrix of the famous New York Asian Film Festival will join us and introduce four surprise 35mm screenings of classic Hong Kong grindhouse gems (most not available on DVD) from Hong Kong’s exploitation heyday of the late 80’s and early 90’s, these movies are cinematic crystal meth: cheap n’crazy, they’ll spoil you for everything else. Designed to play to rowdy audiences who threatened mayhem if they weren’t delivered a dose of gonzo delirium every five minutes,...

If you're a fan of genre film, you've had September 22-29 circled on your calendar for months. That's when one of the most fun, depraved and intimate film festivals in the country once again invades Austin, Texas. It's called Fantastic Fest and it features a huge blend of action, horror and sci-fi movies that most people haven't heard of at the time, but we all hear about after. This year is no different. They announced the first wave of films [1] in July and today we've got the second wave. Most of them are new to many of us, but then there are a few that we've covered in the past: Nacho Vigalondo's Extraterrestrial, Ti West's The Innkeepers, Lars Von Trier's Melancholia and Adam Wingard's You're Next just to name a few. After the jump, read the full breakdown of the second wave of films. Slashfilm will...

VOD must be quite a profitable avenue for Magnet, as they will debut Lars von Trier‘s highly-anticipated Cannes hit Melancholia on the digital platform over a month before its theatrical release in November. Vulture has the official Us poster premiere (using the same key art as the rest) as well as the news of an October 7th, 2011 VOD release date for the drama starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Alexander Skarsgard, Stellan Skarsgard and Udo Kier.

It will then debut in theaters on November 11th, but it has also just been announced as part of the Fantastic Fest line-up. Check out their second wave of titles after the poster for the fest that runs from September 22nd to the 29th.

Aardvark (2010)

Texas Premiere

Director Kitao Sakurai live in person

Director: Kitao Sakurai, Japan, 80 minutes

Larry (Aardvark’s blind-since-birth protagonist) has an innate curiosity that...

Fantastic Fest is an annual film festival in Austin, Texas, founded in 2005 by Tim League of Alamo Drafthouse, Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, and Tim McCanlies, writer of The Iron Giant and Secondhand Lions. The festival which focuses on genre films such as horror, science fiction, fantasy, action, Asian, and cult takes place in September at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, filling three screens for eight days and hosting many writers, directors and actors, both well established and unknown. We’ve already posted the first wave of films which was pretty impressive. Now the fest has announced the second wave which includes Ahn Sang-hoon’s Blind, Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia and aume Balaguero’s Sleep Tight. See the press release below.

Austin, TX–Thursday, August 18th, 2011– Fantastic Fest is proud to announce the second wave of programming for the seventh edition of Fantastic Fest,...

The military horror movie is a hard nut to crack. They're not as popular as some of the other genre tropes but there's something particularly chilling about individuals who are highly trained and skilled in killing being afraid that adds an interesting dimension to a movie.

The premise of Jaime Osorio Márquez's The Squad (El Paramo) isn't exactly new. The military loses contact with a secluded military base in the mountains and convinced that it's under guerilla attack, a force of nine highly specialized soldiers is sent to investigate.

Upon arrival, the only person found inside the base is a peasant woman who is heavily chained. Gradually, the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside world and the impossibility to escape, undermine the integrity and sanity of the soldiers, causing them to lose the certainties about the identity of the enemy and creating them doubts about the true nature...

We've finally got our hands on the official teaser for Jaime Osorio's supernatural war film The Squad (El Paramo), a film we've been clamoring to see for quite some time now. "The film that begins when all contact with a military base high in the desolate wastelands of Colombia has been lost. The authorities - believing the base to have fallen to a terrorist attack - send a nine-man squad to investigate. When they arrive, the men discover a shocking scene of carnage, and only one survivor - a mute woman in chains. Gradually the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside world and the impossibility of escape begin to undermine the sanity of the soldiers.They start to question the identity of their enemy, and the true nature of the strange, silent woman. Is she a terrorist? A victim? Or something more sinister?"...

It has been a long time coming and now we have a look at the first official teaser for Jaime Osorio Márquez' El Paramo or The Squad. A little bit of color correction and a tighter edit. It all makes for a tense and taunt look at the film. Military horror doesn't come around too often and we cannot wait to get a look at this.A special high mountain command composed of nine experienced soldiers is sent to a military base in a desolate high-plains moor of Colombia with wich contact was lost several days ago and was believed to be the target of a guerrilla attack.Upon arrival, the only person found inside the base is a peasant woman who is heavily chained. Gradually, the isolation, the inability to communicate...

We're not exactly sure just what good bullets will do against evil spirits, but damn it, the men of The Squad are going to try! Dig on these two new stills from Jaime Osorio's ghostly tale that finds the military encountering some form of paranormal activity!

Once known as El Paramo and retitled to The Squad, check out the goods on the flick below.

Synopsis

All contact with a military base high in the desolate wastelands of Colombia has been lost. The authorities - believing the base to have fallen to a terrorist attack - send a nine-man squad to investigate. When they arrive, the men discover a shocking scene of carnage and only one survivor - a mute woman in chains.

Gradually the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside world, and the impossibility of escape begin to undermine the sanity of the soldiers. They start to...

After posting the first images from Jaime Osorio's supernatural war film The Squad (El Paramo), we were supplied with the first two Hi-res looks at the film that begins when all contact with a military base high in the desolate wastelands of Colombia has been lost. The authorities - believing the base to have fallen to a terrorist attack - send a nine-man squad to investigate. When they arrive, the men discover a shocking scene of carnage, and only onesurvivor - a mute woman in chains. Gradually the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside worldand the impossibility of escape begin to undermine the sanity of the soldiers.They start to question the identity of their enemy, and the true nature ofthe strange, silent woman. Is she a terrorist? A victim? Or something moresinister? Something supernatural... Paranoia takes root....

Jaime Osorio Márquez' El Paramo is a film we've been tracking here at Twitch for well over a year now. Military themed horror has a special place in our hearts and an early look at the script convinced that this could be a special one. Throw in a fantastic first trailer back in May and we were sold. Here's the official synopsis:

A special high mountain command composed of nine experienced soldiers is sent to a military base in a desolate high-plains moor of Colombia with wich contact was lost several days ago and was believed to be the target of a guerrilla attack.

Upon arrival, the only person found inside the base is a peasant woman who is heavily chained. Gradually, the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside world and the impossibility to escape, undermine the integrity and sanity of the soldiers, causing them to lose the...

Doing a little digging this morning we learned that Jaime Osorio's supernatural war film El Paramo has been retitled to The Squad, a film we first told you about yesterday morning. We made a few calls and were able to get our hands on the art and some images from the film, alongside the official synopsis. "All contact with a military base high in the desolate wastelands of Colombiahas been lost. The authorities - believing the base to have fallen to a terrorist attack - send a nine-man squad to investigate.When they arrive, the men discover a shocking scene of carnage, and only onesurvivor - a mute woman in chains. Gradually the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside worldand the impossibility of escape begin to undermine the sanity of the soldiers.They start to question the identity of their enemy, and the true nature ofthe strange,...

Nearly a year ago now I had the chance to read the script for Jaime Osorio Márquez' Colombian military horror El Paramo. It was a striking piece of work, moody and atmospheric and truly unsettling even on the printed page. It would go on to win the Ibermedia Award and it was obvious that if Márquez had the visual skills to match his written skills this would be something truly special. Here's the official synopsis:

A special high mountain command composed of nine experienced soldiers is sent to a military base in a desolate high-plains moor of Colombia with wich contact was lost several days ago and was believed to be the target of a guerrilla attack.

Upon arrival, the only person found inside the base is a peasant woman who is heavily chained. Gradually, the isolation, the inability to communicate with the outside world and the impossibility to escape,...