News

Mexico’s Martfilms, Brazil’s Casa Na Árvore, and France’s Lilith Films have boarded Uruguayan producer Passaparola’s fantasy drama The Healers (Las Despenadoras), one of 20 co-productions to benefit from a Uruguay-Brazil bilateral co-production fund signed in Ventana Sur.

Emiliano Mazza De Luca directs the story of 11-year-old Leontina, who lives in a region engulfed in civil war and sees her innocence fade away as her grandmother strives to impart ancestral healing knowledge.

Executive producer Adriana González, who participated in the Production Network in Cannes, was instrumental in bringing on France’s Lilith Films, who previously produced Dénes Nagy...

Bordeaux-based Dublin Films has taken a co-production stake in writer-director Mariana Gil Ríos’ family drama “A Different Garden” (“Otro Jardín”), produced by Medellín’s Movimiento Cine.

At February’s Berlinale, Gil Ríos earned a special mention at Generation Kplus sidebar with shortfilm “Uli.”

“A Different Garden” features among the 14 projects being brought to market at this year’s Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, one of San Sebastian Film Festival’s key industry events.

The Colombia-France co-production is led by producer Daniela Echeverri Idárraga at Movimiento Cine alongside David Hurst on behalf of Dublin Films.

The project is at development stage, tentatively scheduled to roll in early 2026.

The story focuses on 8-year-old Amanda. While her parents work, she spends holidays at her enigmatic grandfather’s home, where she meets Miguel, a wild boy living in the garden, with whom Amanda will discover hidden truths about her family.

“’A Different Garden’ is a film about family,...

Argentinian director Manuel Abramovich juxtaposes the spicier elements of porn star Lalo’s life with his loneliness

Lalo (Lalo Santos) is a sex influencer and porn star, and his job is to present his life as one long, hard, sweaty state of permanent arousal. To follow his various accounts online is to imagine a world simmering with constant sexual potential, always ready to boil over into hardcore scenarios, perhaps even involving you, his loyal follower. But even if the title of the film hasn’t clued you into the fact that Argentinian director Manuel Abramovich’s docudrama is not an enthusiastic commercial for this lifestyle, the first scene in the film will get you up to speed pretty quickly: Lalo stands alone in a busy street, people passing him by. He breaks down and begins to weep, an image of isolation in the hustle of modern living.

This isn’t...

San Sebastian’s pix-in-post showcases have often launched standout movies, such as Sebastian Lelio’s “Gloria,” winner of the Films in Progress Award at the 2012 edition, plus notable directors, such as Jayro Bustamante, whose praised debut “Ixcanul” played at the festival in rough cut in 2015 before winning the Alfred Bauer prize for innovation at 2016’s Berlinale, breaking out handsome sales.

San Sebastian’s 2023 Co-Production Forum registers two trends: Films that are genre pics or enrol genre tropes or genre blend; an exploration of identity.

Thus year’s San Sebastian Wip Latam skews in another direction. “The films and stories are very grounded in reality, either by there hybrid formal move between fiction and non-fiction, their singular take on daily matters or the very social issues they address,” Javier Martín, San Sebastian Latin American delegate, told LatAmCinema.com.

Yet genre surfaces in disparate ways: the mix of coming of age, apocalypse...

The festival runs June 23 - July 1.

Films by Jessica Hausner, Elegance Bratton and Sebastian Silva are among 36 titles selected for the Filmfest München’s three international competition strands, CineMasters, CineVision and CineRebels. The festival runs June 23-July 1.

CineMasters

Hausner’s Club Zero will be joined by another four Cannes competition titles - Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, Marco Bellocchio’s Kidnapped, Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster - to screen in Munich’s CineMasters competition for the €50,000 Arri Award which is presented to the producers of the best international film.

The 12-title line-up also includes...

New York-based The Cinema Guild has acquired the Venice title “Trenque Lauquen” for distribution in the U.S., it was announced on Friday.

Luxbox, the Paris-based sales agency and production company, has also scored deals for Laura Citarella’s adventure mystery for France (Capricci) and Spain (Vitrine and Filmes). The deals were closed by Jennyfer Gautier, head of international sales at Luxbox.

“We are thrilled to accompany ‘Trenque Lauquen’ in its theatrical debut with such partners. This blend of romance and mystery benefited from a strong festival launch in Venice, San Sebastian and New York, and we are now eager to see it continue its journey around the world,” said Gautier.

The film had its world premiere on Sept. 8 in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival. One of the main character is a female detective first seen in Citarella’s debut feature “Ostende.” In the first part of the film,...

Strand Releasing has acquired U.S. distribution rights to San Sebastián competition title “Pornomelancolia,” sales agent Luxbox announced during this week’s Ventana Sur film-tv market in Buenos Aires.

Strand plans a late Spring, early Summer U.S. theatrical release.

As previously announced, Filmin will handle distribution in Spain. The film has also been picked up by Epicentre Films Distribution for France.

Directed by Argentina’s, Manuel Abramovich who won the 2019 Silver Bear at Berlin with his short “Blue Boy,” the Spanish-language picture follows a sex influencer who posts naked photos and homemade porn videos for his social media following.

Despite his success, he feels melancholic when alone. Questions the film raises is how we reacts to others’ gaze, and what happens when intimacy becomes so public as to be almost pornographic.

“We’re looking forward to introducing this very bold, inventive, character study of a young man navigating the...

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the IDFA Bertha Fund, which was originally created to support documentary filmmaking in developing countries, has seen a series of pivotal changes in both its budget and scope of financing in the last couple of years.

Speaking to Variety, Bertha Fund managing director and IDFA deputy director Isabel Arrate Fernandez commented on the fund’s recent changes: “One of the big changes this year is that we were able to raise the contributions and the number of projects we select in a year. We started the year with the aim to support 25 projects through the Ibf Classic and we ended up supporting 35 because we added an entire Ukrainian leg.”

Isabel Arrate Fernandez

By the Ukrainian leg, Fernandez means the IDFA Bertha Fund Classic – Ukrainian Support special call, funded by the Open Society Foundation. “It came about very quickly as a hands-on reaction to what was going on.

Manuel Abramovich: 'With the main protagonist it was like an invitation to reflect together on all these political ideas that we were discussing - like sex work, masculinity, loneliness, depression, HIV, social media - to transform them together into film' Manuel Abramovich’s hybrid docufiction Pornomelancholia puts the emphasis on the second portion of its portmanteau title, even though on the face of it, it is scrutinising the first. Lalo (Lalo Santos playing a version of himself), once a factory worker, now has more than 218k followers for, be warned, his explicit content on Twitter and a healthy JustFans account after he discovered he could make his body work for him to become a “sex influencer”. Abramovich’s film follows Lalo in his life and on the set of a genuine porn film about Mexican revolutionary Zapata, capturing the cut and thrust of the off-camera moments, which see the...

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Laura Mora’s Columbian drama The Kings of the World has won the Golden Shell for best film at the 2022 San Sebastián film festival, Spain’s premiere film fest. Mora’s sophomore feature follows five young men growing up on the streets of Medellín who set off on a journey in search of the promised land.

Best director went to Japanese filmmaker Genki Kawamura for dementia-focused drama Hyakka, his feature debut. Kawamura is best known as the producer of such hit Japanese animated features as Your Name (2016) and Weathering With You (2019).

Marian Mathias’ drama Runner, the story of an 18-year-old girl who decides to fulfill her dead father’s last wish to be buried in his hometown along the Mississippi, won the festival’s special jury prize.

The Silver Shell for best performance went, jointly, to Paul Kircher for his performance in Christophe Honoré...

Other winners include Genki Kawamura’s ‘A Hundred Flowers’ and China’s ‘A Woman’.

Colombian director Laura Mora’s second film The Kings Of The World has won the Golden Shell award for best film at the 70th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff).

Scroll down for full list of winners

A Colombian co-production with Luxembourg, France, Mexico and Norway, the film follows five street kids from Medellin who venture into the countryside in search of the land that one of them inherited. Film Factory Entertainment handles international sales. Mora’s debut was 2017 Toronto and San Sebastian selection Killing Jesus.

Colombian director Laura Mora’s coming-of-age drama “Kings of the World” has taken the Golden Shell for Best Film at the San Sebastian Film Festival, marking the third consecutive year that a female filmmaker has taken the top prize at the Spanish fest.

The film, Mora’s second feature, is a raw, unusual coming-of-age drama, supplanting the sentimentality that tends to dominate that genre with delirious, even surreal energy in its story of five Medellin street kids who venture from the city into the jungle, in pursuit of ancestral land. Premiering in the latter days of the fest, it proved popular with critics, but nonetheless represents an underdog victor in a competition that included such established names as Sebastian Lelio, Hong Sangsoo and Christophe Honoré.

Instead, youth dominated the slate of winners, with freshman American filmmaker Marian Mathias taking the runner-up Special Jury Prize for her debut feature “Runner,” while...

Spanish fest has more Latin American films and projects than ever before.

This year’s San Sebastian InternationaI Film Festival has the highest number of Latin American films across its official selection and marketplaces than ever before, according to festival director José Luis Rebordinos.

The line-up includes three titles in official selection: two from Argentinian directors - Manuel Abramovich’s Pornomelancolia and Diego Lerman’s The Substitute – and The Wonder from Chilean director Sebastian Lelio.

“It’s a very good moment for Latin America cinema for both quantity and the high quality of the proposals,” says Rebordinos.

Argentina in focus...

Selected for main competition, “Pornomelancolía” premiered at San Sebastián over the festival’s first weekend. A Latin American buzz title at the festival last year when it played in pix-in-post section Wip Latam, “Pornomelancolía” opens a window onto the behind-the-scenes life of a porn influencer, Lalo. But, Argentine director Manuel Abramovich – who won the 2019 Silver Bear at Berlin with his short film “Blue Boy” – told Variety, “Pornomelancolía is not a film about pornography, it is a film about how we face the gaze of others.”

“Pornomelancolía” was formed as part of 2018’s Ikusmira Berriak, a residency program in San Sebastian which is one of Spain’s foremost development labs. The film is lead produced by Gema Films in Argentina, with Brazil’s Desvia Filmes, Bordeaux-based Dublin Films and Mexico’s Marthfilms. Luxbox handles international sales; Filmin will handle distribution in Spain.

Variety spoke with Abramovich.

The film is about the...

Paris-based sales agency and production company Luxbox has snagged the rights to “Trenque Lauquen,” the fourth feature by Argentine director-producer Laura Citarella, ahead of its Sept. 8 world premiere in the Venice Horizons sidebar.

The pick-up continues Luxbox’s strong line in Latin American titles, seen this year in Sundance entry “Dos Estaciones” and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title “1976” as well as “Pornomelancholia,” the latest documentary feature from award-winning director Manuel Abramovich, which competes in San Sebastián.

Filmed in two parts, “Trenque Lauquen” begins with a couple of men, Rafael and Ezequiel, who are on the road, both searching for a woman, Laura, who has vanished.

Rafael claims to be her boyfriend while Ezequiel drove her around as she investigated the mystery behind multiple love letters that she discovered hidden in library books. Flashbacks of the time Ezequiel spends with her reveals that he has fallen in love with Laura as he...

The projects come from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

Argentinian director Martín Benchimol’s first solo documentary The Castle is among the six titles selected for San Sebastian’s Wip Latam which supports Latin American films in their post-production stages.

The Castle follows a mother and daughter in their final months living together in an inherited, but rundown, mansion. Benchimol, with co-director Pablo Aparo, won best mid-length documentary at IDFA in 2017 with The Dread.

The line-up also includes Davi Pretto’s Brazilian project Casa No Campo about a daughter returning to her family’s remote ranch with her new French husband.

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The 70th San Sebastián Film Festival unveiled its competition line-up Tuesday, with new works from award-winning directors Sebastián Lelio, Hong Sang-soo and Ulrich Seidl in the running for the 2022 Golden Shell.

Chilean filmmaker Lelio, who won an Oscar for best international feature with A Fantastic Woman (2017), will premiere his latest, The Wonder, in San Sebastián. The period drama, based on the Emma Donoghue novel, is set in mid-19th century Ireland and stars Florence Pugh, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Burke and Toby Jones.

The prolific Hong Sang-Soo, who just won the Jury Prize in Berlin in February for The Novelist’s Film, brings his latest minimalist drama, Walk Up, to the Spanish festival. The plot involves a middle-aged film director and his estranged daughter who are being shown around a building owned by an interior designer.

Seidl, the Austrian director who has made a career...

Lelio makes his San Sebastian competition debut with The Wonder starring Florence Pugh.

Films from Sebastián Lelio and Hong Sang-soo are among the new titles to be selected in competition at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival (September 16-24).

Lelio, whose A Fantastic Woman won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 2017, makes his San Sebastian competition debut with The Wonder. Adapted from Emma Donoghue’s novel set in a 19th-century Irish town, it stars Florence Pugh, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Burke, Toby Jones and Niamh Algar.

Cannes and Berlin prize winner Hong San-soo will make his second appearance...

Sebastian Lelio’s “Wonder,” starring “Black Widow’s” Florence Pugh, “Winter Boy” with Juliette Binoche and directors Hong Sang-soo and Ulrich Seidl will compete in main competition at September’s San Sebastian Film Festival, the biggest film event in the Spanish-speaking world.

In “Wonder,” the latest from Academy Award winning director Lelio (“A Fantastic Woman”),Pugh plays an English nurse brought in to the Irish Midlands in 1862 to observe the alleged miracle of girls going months without food.

Binoche co-stars in “Winter Boy,” from resilient French auteur Christophe Honoré who won at Cannes Un Certain Regard with 2019’s “On a Magical Night.” Hong Sang-soo, the prolific South Korean director, will present “Walk Up,” a film which is billed as taking a gently delightful new perspective on themes dear to his poetics.

Seidl’s “Sparta” forms part of a diptych with 2022 Berlin competition contender “Rimini,” both movies turning on men who cannot escape their past.

The San Sebastián Film Festival has revealed the line-up for its latest edition, which is due to unfold from September 16-24.

The festival, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary, will be the European premiere of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio’s highly-anticipated latest feature The Wonder based on Emma Donoghue’s novel starring Florence Pugh alongside an ensemble cast including Ciarán Hinds, Tom Burke, Toby Jones, Elaine Cassidy, and Niamh Algar.

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo will also debut his latest offering Top / Walk Up in competition. The film follows the interactions of a middle-aged moviemaker. This will be the South Korean filmmaker’s second participation in the Official Selection.

Other titles due to debut at the festival include French director Christophe Honoré’s new flick Winter Boy, Portuguese director Marco Martins’s Great Yarmouth-Provisional Figures, and veteran Japanese producer Genki Kawamura’s directorial debut A Hundred Flowers.

The latest movie...

International projects already have at least 70 of funding in place.

The Venice Film Festival’s Gap-Financing Market has selected 33 international feature and documentary projects for its ninth edition this year, which runs from September 2-4.

The international projects nearing completion will have the chance to close their financing through one-to-one meetings at the Market, which is part of the Venice Production Bridge.

Each of the feature and documentary projects has at least 70 of its funding in place.

The countries in focus at this year’s event are France and Taiwan, with a number of projects from each country receiving a special invite to the Market.

Top industry awards at the 53rd edition of the international documentary film festival Visions du Réel have gone to “La Bonga,” “Anatomy of the Night,” “The Other Profile,” “Noor” and “Becoming Roosi.”

A total of 27 projects were invited to participate in three key forums – VdR-Pitching, VdR-Work in Progress and VdR-Rough Cut Lab – that ran as part of the festival’s industry activities in Nyon from April 10-14.

Seventeen awards were handed out to 16 docs-in-the-making, two of which won a double award: “La Bonga,” by Sebastián Pinzón Silva and Canela Reyes, took the Visions Sud Est and Raggioverde Subtitling trophies, and “Mailin” by Maria Silvia Esteve won both the TËNK Post-Production and Party Film Sales awards.

Considered to be the festival’s top industry prize, the Vision Sud Est award comes with a 10,000 Chf cash prize handed out to the best project from the Southern or Eastern Europe, and is the...

Berlin Silver Bear winner Manuel Abramovich is presenting his new project “The Monsters” at Swiss doc festival Visions du Réel’s Industry event, VdR-Pitching.

The project, he tells Variety, “is about one of the first characters that we play in our lives which is gender, as a performative fiction with our bodies. From the moment we are born we have two scripts already written for us: either you are a man or a woman. This is about people who chose not to play this binary role.”

One of Argentina’s fastest rising auteurs, Abramovich explores what he calls the “theatricality in everyday life” in his films. A festival regular, he presented his debut feature-length doc “Solar” at the VdR-Work in Progress forum back in 2015.

“In my work, I see the world as a big mise-en-scène – like a theater play. So I invite real people to become characters and reflect about...

Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel has unveiled its VdR-Industry selection, which includes 27 projects in different stages of production.

The works will be invited to participate in three key forums – VdR-Pitching, VdR-Work in Progress and VdR-Rough Cut Lab – that run as part of the fest’s industry activities in Nyon from April 10-14.

Those who cannot make it to the festival will be able to participate online but organizers are focusing strongly on the in-person event.

“We can’t wait to finally welcome back project holders and industry representatives to the shores of Lake Geneva. We feel strengthened by the lessons we have learned from the digital and hybrid editions of the last two years. In fact, they have opened up new possibilities in terms of activities format and allowed us to widen the range of professionals participating in VdR–Industry,” said Madeline Robert, head of industry and artistic advisor of Visions du Réel,...

Paris-based sales agency and production company Luxbox has picked up the rights to “Pornomelancholia,” the latest documentary feature from award-winning director Manuel Abramovich.

“Pornomelancholia” follows Lalo, a sex influencer living in a mountainous region of Southern Mexico. On screen Lalo is charismatic, posting naked photos of himself and homemade porn videos which are seen by thousands of followers. When the camera is off though, Lalo drifts through life in a constant state of melancholy.

When a person’s sex life is commodified and sold off, what happens to desire? Using pornography as a starting point, the film examines the sex work industry, the consequences of broadcasting one’s private life publicly and how we create the characters we present to the world.

According to Abramovich the film is a reflection on “the limits of intimacy in an era where the day-to-day and subjectivity have become a show for the gaze of others.

Three days into Mexico’s 2021 Guadalajara Film Festival, the prizes for the works-in-progress in its Guadalajara Construye side bar were awarded on Sunday, making a number of Latin American filmmakers very happy.

Guadalajara Construye exemplifies the solidarity of the film industries of Latin America, with production companies across the region funding numerous prizes designed to get the works-in progress over the hump to completed films ready for distribution.

The biggest winner of the night was the Mexican film “Martínez” directed by Lorena Padilla, a Mexican director who also teaches directing and screenwriting at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Padilla has garnered various levels of funding from Mexico’s Imcine film agency over the years and continued that string of good fortune tonight, picking up five awards providing post-production services for the nearly completed “Martínez.”

It tells the story of an aging office worker who finds that his long habit...

Argentina’s Manuel Abramovich, Ecuador’s Ana Cristina Barragán and the Ukraine-born Oksana Bychkova, all big fest winners, will introduce their latest films to an industry audience at San Sebastian’s pix-in-post strands, Wip Latam and Wip Europa, over Sept. 20-22.

The sections promise discoveries. They also underscore a reality. As art film pre-sales have plunged, public-sector equity financing has escalated, with producers tapping film funds around the world via international co-production. Wip Latam’s six films average four production partners a piece. Sales, which the films now seek in San Sebastian, is increasingly icing on the cake.

A drill down on titles:

Wip Latam

“Daughter of Rage,” (“La Hija de Todas las Rabias,” Laura Baumeister, Nicaragua, Mexico, Nederland, Germany, France, Norway)

Nicaraguan Laura Baumeister’s stirring feature debut which swept three of the four prizes on offer at San Sebastian’s 2019 Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum. Since then it...

This year’s crop of young outstanding talent has been nurtured at the Tabakalera’s various areas, including the post-graduate film school Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (Eqze) and the Ikusmira Berriak Residency Program.

Marina Palacio (San Sebastian)

The San Sebastian native is a Fine Arts graduate whose short film “Ya no Duermo” was created at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and premiered in the Zabaltegi Tabakalera section of the Zinemaldia. It has competed in more than thirty international festivals, where it has clinched several awards including ‘Best Fiction Short’ at the Malaga Film Festival. She is currently filming her debut feature film: the docu-fiction hybrid drama, “Y así seguirán las cosas.”

Mikel Gurrea (San Sebastian)

Gurrea holds degrees from Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University and the London Film School. His latest short, “Heltzear,” world premiered at the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar, and later screens at San Sebastian’s Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section.

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France) follows a man and...

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe, US auteur Rick Alverson and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France...

Manuel Abramovich's Blue Boy, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing in Mubi's Brief Encounters series.Sometimes I feel like the world is a great theatre play, that we play our characters for the gaze of others. This is why I chose to work with reality and illuminate those moments in which everything becomes artificial like a fiction film.Ideas for my films can appear at any moment in my daily life: it’s like a sort of radar or alarm which goes off when I feel that certain level of “theatricality” in everyday life becoming particularly evident. When that alarm goes off, I always make a first approach to those people in which the most important thing is to gain their trust. I try to spend as much time as possible with the protagonists. I get to know them, I observe them, I ask them questions.

The news that Lucrecia Martel was working on a new feature film — less than three years after premiering 2017’s “Zama” — was excitedly received by world cinema buffs: nine long years had separated “Zama” and her previous feature, “The Headless Woman,” and admirers of the enigmatic Argentine auteur had no reason to expect a suddenly increased work rate.

“Zama,” after all, was a film that reflected its lengthy gestation and repeated delays in its hypnotic style. A scathing post-colonial portrait of a Spanish magistrate in a remote South American colony, spiraling into madness as he awaits a reassignment that never seems to come, the film’s feverish, intoxicated atmospherics bespoke a filmmaker fully immersed and entangled in her own creative process: the type of cinema Lucrecia Martel makes is not conceived, much less made, overnight.

Perhaps, then, Marcel will take the pandemic-induced limbo in which the film industry finds itself more in her stride than most.

Cimarrón, an ambitious pan-Latin American production shingle, is readying new high-profile features by Cannes-prized Agustín Toscano and Sundance best director winner Lucía Garibaldi as it gears up to shoot its first drama series in Mexico and Brazil, backed by two global platforms.

Cimarrón, headquartered in Uruguay’s Montevideo and with offices in Brazil and Argentina and service company operations in Mexico, is working on four international productions to be shot over the next few months.

Apart from Toscano and Garibaldi, the company has projects in development – movies or series – with Israel Adrián Caetano, Anahí Berneri, Marina Meliande, Gustavo Taretto and Manuel Abramovich – some of the most courted of South American directors.

Toscano’s “Perro Feroz,” scheduled to shoot in May 2021 and produced by Argentina’s Rizoma and Cimarrón in co-production with France’s Gloria Films, is set in rural Argentina in 1974 and turns on Sergio, an illiterate rural laborer who...

Pablo Stoll’s “Summer Hit,” Matías Lucchessi’s “Las rojas,” Joaquín Peñagaricano and Pablo Abdala’s “Mateína” are some of the Uruguayan projects at different stages participating in a spotlight at Cannes’ Producers Network on the Marché du Film’s digital platform on Tuesday 23.

Five Uruguayan companies, Tarkiofilm, Cimarrón, Montelona, Nadador and Salado, have been selected by the country’s national film body Icau to pitch their production slates at the new format French market.

Recently appointed general director at Icau, Uruguay’s film-tv agency, Roberto Blatt told Variety that Uruguay shows a “maturity in its cinema, backed by a great diversity of formats, genres and styles, and the high creative and technical levels of our professionals.” He went on to say, “That was made evident by the success of titles made free through Vera TV [Uruguayan broadcaster Antel’s digital platform] during the pandemic.”

Blatt pointed out that the Uruguayan public...

Filmmakers behind 43 projects will connect online with industry.

Projects from Bhutan, Cuba and the Philippines are among participants in Tribeca Film Institute’s inaugural virtual Tfi Network film market, set to run from April 27-May 1.

Filmmakers behind 43 projects will connect online with executives, financiers, producers, festival programmers and others in the industry in place of a physical event due to the coronavirus pandemic.

From April 21-23 Tfi staff will guide participants through online pitch training sessions and moderate virtual seminars where invited industry representatives will outline their organisations’ background and tell Tfi artists about possible funding support avenues and resources.

Tribeca Film Institute announced on Thursday the 43 projects that will participate in this year’s Tfi Network film market, to be held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A traditional Tfi Network three-day event would see emerging filmmakers and creators from across the globe coming together in New York City to embark on a day of pitch prep and industry roundtables, along with two days of individual meetings with professionals during the Tribeca Film Festival, which has also moved some of its programming online. This year, Tfi Network, presented by AT&T, will move online from April 27 through May 1. Prior to Tfi Network, filmmakers will attend “Prep Week” from April 21 through April 23, which includes online pitch training sessions with mentors. This year’s 43 winners include scripted projects, documentaries and interactive projects.

“Tfi remains dedicated to creating opportunities for independent artists without compromising their health or safety,” Tribeca Film Institute executive director...

Alexander Abaturov’s “Paradise,” Lola Arias’ “Reas” and Yosep Anggi Noen’s “Voice of Baceprot” figure among 15 documentary features set to be pitched over April 27-28 at the 51st Pitching du Réel.

A co-production forum for creative documentaries, the Pitching is an industry centerpiece at Visions du Réel, one of Europe’s most prestigious documentary festivals.

These titles are joined by 12 others in a lineup which boasts well-known filmmakers, for example, Egypt’s Mohamed Siam, whose “Amal” opened 2017’s Idfa, Argentina’s Gaston Solnicki, director of Venice Horizons player “Kékszakállú, and Nelson Carlo de lo Santos, a Locarno Golden Leopard winner with “Cocote.”

It also takes in an extraordinary range of countries of origen led by France, with three titles in the section, and Switzerland, Argentina and Lebanon with a couple but including 18 territories, marked by a strong Middle East showing with further productions from Egypt, Syria and Quatar.

Projects...

Mexico City — A crossroads for the film industries of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, Los Cabos Intl. Film Festival opens its doors on Wednesday, Nov. 13 with a lineup which takes on board hot-button issues – gender, violence in Mexico, the impact of global platforms – as the Festival consolidates its status as a Mexican new talent platform. 10 Takes on the 2019 edition:

1.Robert De Niro, Gaston Pavlovich And ’The Irishman’

Robert De Niro will attend Los Cabos’ Film Festival’s Opening Ceremony on Wednesday for a gala screening of “The Irishman.” The movie’s presence at Los Cabos can be seen as part thanks to its cinematographer. Mexico’s Rodrigo Prieto, and above all to its Mexican producer, Gastón Pavlovich. Already producer of Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” who stuck with “The Irishman,” through thick and thin as it turned from a Paramount/Stx movie to an Oscar-contending Netflix original.

2.Buzzy Projects

Of Mexican titles,...

Mexico City — Argentina’s Manuel Abramovich, a 2019 Berlinale Silver Bear winner for “Blue Boy,” has tapped French funding for its follow-up, “Pornomelancholia,” one of the highest-profile projects at Mexico’s Los Cabos Film Festival, which kicks off today with a gala screening of “The Irishman,”

Financing from the Region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, a building film-tv hub in South West France, has been secured by the film’s French co-producer, David Hurst at Dublin Films, which is based out of Bordeaux.

As equity finance from production partners has come to dominate over pre-sales in art film financing, and bring far more funding to the table, the number of producers involved on a project is often a good sign of not only its scale but excitement and perceived potential.

Lead produced by Gema Juárez Allen at Argentina’s Gema Films, “Pornomelanholia” is also co-produced by Rachel Daisy Ellis at Brazil’s Desvia, co-writer and...

The verteran German director was giving a masterclass at Nyon’s Visions du Reel festival.

German director Werner Herzog voiced his reluctant support of film piracy during a masterclass at Switzerland’s documentary-focused Visions du Réel International Film Festival in Nyon which closed on April 13.

¨Piracy has been the most successful form of distribution worldwide,” said Herzog in response to a comment from Ukrainian producer Illia Gladshtein of Phalanstery Films. Gladshtein said he was only able to access the filmmaker’s works via illegal Torrent sites in Ukraine.

“If you don’t get [films] through Netflix or state-sponsored television in your country,...

This year’s edition of the Berlin Film Festival has come to an end, and Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms” is taking home one of the film world’s most prestigious awards: the Golden Bear for Best Film. “I Was at Home, But” helmer Angela Schanelec was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director by the jury, which was led by Juliette Binoche and gave both acting prizes to the stars of Wang Xiaoshuai’s “Di jui tian chang”.

The full list of winners:

Read More: ‘Synonyms’ Review: An Astonishing, Maddening Drama About National Identity — Berlin

Golden Bear for Best Film: “Synonyms,” directed by Nadav Lapid

Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize: “Grâce à Dieu” (“By the Grace of God”), directed by François Ozon

Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize: “Systemsprenger” (“System Crasher”), directed by Nora Fingscheidt

Silver Bear for Best Director: Angela Schanelec, “Ich war zuhause, aber” “(I Was at Home, But...

Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms,” about a young Israeli man in Paris who has turned his back on his native country, won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale on Saturday.

The Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize went to François Ozon’s French drama “By the Grace of God,” a fact-based account of the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal behind the ongoing trial of Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon.

Accepting the award, Lapid said “Synonyms,” which stars Tom Mercier, would likely be considered “scandalous” in Israel and France – the pic skewers stereotypes from both nations – but added that it was ultimately a celebration.

In his review in Variety, Jay Weissberg wrote that the film takes “a Kalashnikov to the nation’s military culture and its carefully nurtured persecution complex.”

Thanking the Berlinale for selecting his film, Ozon said he did not know whether addressing child sexual abuse...

Few happenings in 2018 world cinema made as much of a splash as the llama in Zama. A flash of humor within Lucrecia Martel’s rather grim and overbearing vision of corruption, violence, and decay, this camelid waltzed onto screens and into hearts with seemingly zero effort. A star was born.

To watch Light Years, Manuel Abramovich’s documentary on the director and her most recent feature, could actually confirm such suspicions: it’s a short but comprehensive look at the way animals naturally inhabit the qualities we typically associate with “non-actor” — present onscreen, if not necessarily ingrained into the texture of a film, and involved without being limited by the constraints of a script or director’s exact wishes — while rather cleanly underlining Martel’s affection for the creature. Just don’t think about this too long, lest you begin a deep dive into the psychology of every animal you’ve ever seen onscreen.

The German festival runs from June 28 to July 7.

The Munich Film Festival opens on Thursday (June 28) with the world premiere of Joachim A. Lang’s Mackie Messer – Brechts Dreigroschenfilm, starring Lars Eidinger as Bertold Brecht.

The film is inspired by Brecht’s 1928 play The Threepenny Opera and Kurt Weill’s song Mack The Knife, which was written for the play.

The German premiere of Andrew Niccol’s Anon, starring Clive Owen as a detective who finds a young woman with no identity, played by Amanda Seyfried, will close the festival on July 7. The sci-fi thriller is produced by Germany’s K5 Film.

Frederick Wiseman's film will feature in the competition side-bar

The latest works from Manuel Abramovich, Filipa César, Raymond Depardon, Damien Manivel and Kohei Igarashi, Ilian Metev, Hong Sang-soo and Frederick Wiseman join the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section of this year's San Sebastian Film Festival, which will open with Ruben Östlund's The Square.

The section will also feature documentaries Ex Libris: New York Public Library by Frederick Wiseman and 12 Days (12 Jours) - about mental health assessments in France - by Raymond Depardon.

Hong Sang-soo who won San Sebastian's Silver Shell for Best Director last year for Yourself And Yours (Dangsinjasingwa dangsinui geot) - returns with The Day After (Geu-hu) about a woman whose predecessor had been having an affair with her boss.

Argentine rising star Manuel Abramovich brings his second film Solar which looks at the function of the Argentine Army more than three decades after the end of the dictatorship...

ZamaThe programme for the 2017 edition of the Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, and includes new films from Darren Aronofsky, Lucrecia Martel, Frederick Wiseman, Alexander Payne, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Abdellatif Kechiche, Takeshi Kitano and many more.COMPETITIONmother! (Darren Aronofsky)First Reformed (Paul Schrader)Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton)The Leisure Seeker (Paolo Virzi)Una Famiglia (Sebastiano Riso)Ex Libris - The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)Angels Wear White (Vivian Qu)The Whale (Andrea Pallaoro)Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz)Ammore e malavita (Manetti Brothers)Jusqu'a la garde (Xavier Legrand)The Third Murder (Hirokazu Kore-eda)Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno (Abdellatif Kechiche)Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh)L'insulte (Ziad Doueiri)La Villa (Robert Guediguian)The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro)Suburbicon (George Clooney)Human Flow (Ai Weiwei)Downsizing (Alexander Payne)Out Of COMPETITIONFeaturesOur Souls at Night (Ritesh Batra)Il Signor Rotpeter (Antonietta de Lillo)Victoria...

Will 2017 be the year that Venice gets its king-making mojo back? After a steady run of debuting recent best picture winners — from “Spotlight” to “Birdman” — the festival missed out on last year’s big winner, “Moonlight,” which bowed at Telluride. This year’s lineup is a promising one, and while it’s still very early in the process, it’s difficult not to pick through today’s announcement of the festival’s slate and not search for the big contenders.

As was previously announced, the festival will open with Alexander Payne’s social satire “Downsizing,” starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig. The festival will also play home to the premiere of the Netflix original “Our Souls at Night,” as part of their planned tribute to stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Annette Bening will lead the competition jury, ending an 11-year succession of male jury chiefs.

Read MoreIndieWire Fall Film...

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) kicks off its 16th annual Doc Fortnight on Thursday, a 10-day festival that includes 20 feature-length non-fiction films and 10 documentary shorts. This year’s lineup includes four world premieres and a number of North American and U.S. premieres.

Read More: 2017 New Directors/New Films Announces Full Lineup, Including ‘Patti Cake$,’ ‘Beach Rats,’ ‘Menashe’ and More

The festival is far from the only major North American showcase for non-fiction cinema. Festivals ranging from Hot Docs to True/False have played key roles in the expanding documentary festival circuit. However, Doc Fortnight has maintained its own niche on the scene, by aiming to expose undiscovered stories and filmmakers, screening a range of documentaries from around the world and capturing the ways in which artists are pushing the boundaries of non-fiction filmmaking.

“It’s not an industry festival, there aren’t awards, and distributors aren’t all coming looking to buy,...

Both military and civilian senses of the word "detachment" spring to mind during Manuel Abramovich's arms-length documentary Soldier (Soldado), which dispassionately observes a teenage volunteer's first few months in uniform. This is a competent, dutiful example of the fly-on-the-barracks-wall sub-genre, the Argentinian director's superlative, prize-winning shorts prove he's capable of much more. Non-fiction festivals and channels should give it an inspection following its bow in the youth-friendly Generation section of the Berlinale.

Standing just five-five and weighing 130 pounds — height and weight are recorded during his induction medical — young Juan Jose Gonzalez isn't...

Youth-focused Berlinale sidebar will feature 62 short and feature films from 41 countries.Scroll down for full list

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed the completed list of titles that will play in this year’s Generations sidebar, which focuses on youth and children’s films.

In total, there are 62 short and feature-length films hailing from 41 countries.

Titles include the world premiere of Carla Simon’s coming-of-age feature debut Summer 1993 (Estiu 1993), which has already been snapped up by New Europe Film Sales.

Among the further films added are features from China, the USA and Korea.

As previously announced, Michael Winterbottom’s music documentary On The Road will open the Generation 14plus programme this year.

Further films playing in the strand include Dash Shaw’s My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea, which features the voices of Jason Schwartzman, Maya Rudolph, Lena Dunham and Susan Sarandon, and 2016 Tiff Platform title Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves...