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Chile’s Paulina Garcia, winner of the Berlinale Silver Bear for her performance in Sebastian Lelio’s “Gloria” and whose latest pic, Ana Endara’s “Beloved Tropic,” plays at the Costa Rica Film Festival, has boarded “Love is the Monster” by Neto Villalobos, best known for his comedies “Helmet Heads” and “All About the Feathers.”

For his third feature, Villalobos dives into the thriller genre for the first time with a story set against the backdrop of a tropical dystopia. “Love is the Monster” follows a seventy-year-old grandmother (Garcia) who is faced with the end of her life. Determined to make the most of the time she has left, she seeks to grow closer to her six-year-old granddaughter. But when an unforeseen threat puts everything she holds dear at risk, she must confront how far she’s truly willing to go.

“’Love is the Monster’ is born from a deeply...

Antonella Sudassasi’s Substance Films has signed a co-production agreement with Catalonian production company Playlab Films for Manrique Cortés Castro’s directorial debut “Monsters.”

The film, a drama about the complex traumas a man believed to have long buried in his past, marks another collaboration between Substance Films partners Sudassasi and Castro, with the latter having produced the former’s breakout film, “Memories of a Burning Body.” “Monsters” has also secured El Fauno and Ibermedia’s development funds as it gears up to go into production early 2027.

The film follows Pablo, a 35-year-old man with no memories of his childhood. One night while dancing at the dive bar he routinely goes to after work, the man bumps into a group of young women and recognizes one of them to be his teenage daughter, whom he hadn’t seen in over ten years. This chance encounter and the panic of facing...

Lebanese director Mounia Akl’s long-gestating first feature, “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” which screens in Venice Horizons, is about her relationship with Beirut and Lebanon “and the complexity of this love/hate relationship that is becoming more and more complicated as our country is falling apart,” she says.

The country’s complications came literally crashing into the pic’s production when Beirut, on Aug. 4, 2020, was devastated by one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded. It left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. It also took place during a “Costa Brava” pre-production meeting.

“Our cinematographer [Joe Saade] almost lost his eye, the office was completely destroyed and we walked out knowing that our whole city was destroyed,” she recounts.

Two months later, the “Costa Brava” team decided to go ahead and shoot despite the blast, and also despite the pandemic and Lebanon’s economic collapse, which had depreciated the value of their funding.

Costa Rica 3–5 September 2019The new meeting point of the Audiovisual Industry in Central America and the Caribbean is set for Costa Rica September 3–5, 2019http://www.maucc.netJose Castro of the Costa Rica Film CommissionWe have made an important alliance between the Film Commission of Costa Rica and the organizers of the Expo Andina Link Costa Rica (Latin American meeting of cable and television), to create this new space with the mission of facilitating business and exchange between suppliers in Central America and the Caribbean and buyers of international audiovisual content.This initiative seeks not only to create a market space, but also a space for co-production between the countries of our region.

Central America and the Caribbean are introducing film funds in their countries and awaiting government approval.

Producers of audiovisual content who want to offer their portfolio of contents and projects, must register at www.maucc.net before August 4th.

If Broken Lizard were Central American and deadpan, they might make something akin to Ernesto Villalobos’ Helmet Heads. Think an extremely droll Super Troopers meets Office Space starring a sextet of bike messengers desperately trying to break the monotony of their stagnant lives while also staying afloat once their employer closes shop without warning. At the center lies Mancha (Arturo Pardo), a listless sleepwalker of a man allergic to change in any form. Of all these men left unemployed, he’s the sole member lucky enough to be able to use it as an opportunity to follow his girlfriend Clara (Daniela Mora) as she embarks on a new career. But he loves his motorcycle too much. He loves a life at bare minimum and risks losing her too.

So while the rest move on, Mancha struggles for answers. Clara is ready to leave him, his bike is gone, and he...

The 4th Iff Panama’s Primera Mirada pix-in-post sidebar has selected five features – from Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama – and an omnibus film, “Dias de Luz” (Days of Light), produced by six Central American countries.

The number of films submitted to the Central America and Caribbean sidebar has risen by almost 50% this year – 32 films were submitted in 2015, 46 in 2016, 48 in 2017 and 67 this year.

Sales agents attending the work-in-progress creenings – which run April 9-10 – include FiGa Films, Habanero Film Sales, Weisner Distribution, the Havana Film Festival, Berlinale and OpenReel.

Projects will be screened in exclusive private sessions for sales agents, distributors, and film festival programmers. The jury members are Mexican producer, Laura Imperiale, Panamanian writer, Daniel Domínguez Z., and veteran Peruvian director, Francisco J. Lombardi.

The sidebar is particularly important for the region’s filmmakers who often desperately require post-production completion finance and mentoring advice. Three out of last year’s...

Producers were highly active on the Croisette as deals flowed in the wake of increased co-production opportunities with the South American country.

Dominga Sotomayor’s Tarde Para Morir Joven will benefit from the $100,000 Chile-Brazil bilateral fund announced in Cannes last week after Cinestación signed a co-production agreement with Brazil’s Rt Features.

Additionally Cinestación has signed two new co-productions in which Chile will serve as the minority country partner.

Alejandro Fadel’s Die Monster Die (Muere Monstro Muere) is set up with Argentina, France and Chile and will apply to Ibermedia and the new fund between Chile and Argentina.

Neto Villalobos’ El Hombre De La Mancha is a deal with Costa Rica.

Meanwhile production company Storyboard Media has signed a co-production deal with Les Film Figures Libres from France on Sergio Castro’s El Escondido.

Araucaria Cina has closed a deal with Portugal’s Terratreme Filmes for Roberto Collio and Rodrigo Robiedo’s Petit Frère.

Fernando Lavanderos...