News

Exclusive: Italy’s Open Reel has agreed key sales for dramas on its slate, including North America and UK deals for Daniel Nolasco’s Only Good Things and Sergio De León’s Keep Coming Back.

Brazilian Lgbtqia+ feature Only Good Things, which recently premiered at Guadalajara and Frameline has sold to Tla Releasing for North America and the UK, and to Optimale for France and Gm Films for Germany and Austria.

Set in 1984, Only Good Things centres on Antonio who takes care of his small, isolated farm and who takes care and falls in love with Marcelo, a lonely motorcycler...

Now on its 14th edition, the Guadalajara Film Festival’s (Ficg) Premio Maguey sidebar celebrates LGBTQ+ cinema with the addition of series and an animated feature for the first time.

“If we’re talking about inclusion, then we have to practice it ourselves, right? So naturally, it’s also about creating space for diverse content — stories and perspectives that enrich our program in meaningful ways,” said Premio Maguey programming director Pavel Cortés.

10 core films in competition are joined by six others from the other competitive sections, as in the case of toon “Lesbian Space Princess,” which also competes in the animation sidebar.

The series debuting at Premio Maguey are “Amor de papel,” “La Engañada,” shot in Jalisco, and Gabriel Ripstein’s crime dramedy “Mentiras,” which will be honored with a Gala, said Cortés.

“Amor de papel,” directed by Edu Cortés, turns on Christian, a man immersed in his books and fantasies,...

Recent Sundance entry Heightened Scrutiny is among recipients of the Frameline Completion Fund supportingfilms centring on LGBTQ+ people and their communities.

Frameline, the media and arts nonprofit and San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival host, also announced grants toKani Lapuerta’sNiñxs, a documentary about a rural trans adolescence in Mexico that receives its world premiere next month at Visions du Réel Film Festival in Nyon, Switzerland; and Brazil-set love storyOnly Good Thingsfrom Daniel Nolasco.

The award to Heightened Scrutiny marks the third time director Sam Heder has received a Frameline Completion Fund grant after Disclosure (2020) and Kate Bornstein Is A...

‘The Yellow Ceiling’ tells the story of nine former students at Spain’s Lleida Theatre who filed a complaint against two of their teachers for sexual abuse.

Italian sales company The Open Reel has unveiled three new additions to its Cannes Marché slate, including Isabel Coixet’s latest film The Yellow Ceiling.

The feature documentary, produced by Miss Wasabi Films, tells the story of nine former students at Spain’s Lleida Theatre who filed a complaint against two of their teachers for sexual abuse.

The Open Reel’s slate also includes Eleonora Veninova’s debut Things Unsaid. This North Macedonian...

At Swiss doc fest Visions du Réel with Cannes Acid premiere “Coalesce,” Torino-based The Open Reel has closed a raft of deals on its current sales titles, led by Chilean Alberto Fuguet’s “Everything at Once: Paco and Manolo’s Gaze.”

“Being specific titles, and referring to a specific audience, even if in constant expansion, LGBT titles – not only feature films but also documentaries and short films – respond to the constant demand of a slice of the market that is always very receptive to fruition,” said The Open Reel founder Cosimo Santoro. “Consequently, they represent a good guarantee of promotion and sales on a large scale, even in a complicated time like this,” he added.

‘Everything at Once: Paco and Manolo’s Gaze’

In its first deals, “Everything at Once,” a film essay, has been acquired by Paris-based Optimale Distribution for France and French-speaking territories, “Skinny Sister” distributor Matchbox Films for the U.

International sales agency The Open Reel has taken world rights to “We Will Never Die” by Eduardo Crespo (“As Close as Possible”), and will represent it at the upcoming San Sebastian film festival where it is up for the Golden Seashell award.

The film follows Rodrigo and his mother who travel to the town where his elder brother has just died. While Rodrigo will gradually come to grips with the adults’ pain and will start to leave his childhood behind, his mother tries to uncover the mysteries of her son’s death.

The cast includes Romina Escobar (“Brief Story from the Green Planet”), Rodrigo Santana and Brian Alba. The film is produced by Santiago Loza and Rita Cine, with the support of Argentina’s National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts.

The Open Reel will also represent first feature “Arima,” directed and produced by Jaione Camborda at San Sebastian where...

Outfest Los Angeles is going virtual this year and they have unveiled their stacked lineup for the 11-day festival which kicks off August 20.

The LGBTQ film fest fest will include over 160 films with 35 world premieres, 10 North American premieres and 4 U.S. premieres to Los Angeles for 2020. The fest will live on http://www.outfestla2020.com and there will also be “Outfest LA Under the Stars”, a drive-in experience will take place at the stunning Calamigos Ranch in Malibu, where for two extended weekends the Festival will be hosting a series of drive-in screenings across six-nights on two lots, including both kick-off and closing events. The drive-in screenings will start with the Sundance pic The Nowhere Inn starring musicians Annie Clark and Carrie Brownstein. Other screenings will be announced in the upcoming weeks.

Over 70% of films at Outfest LA directed by female, trans, and Poc filmmakers. The Breakthrough Centerpiece will be...

Tom of Finland has a lot to answer for. His gorgeously lurid illustrations of bulging male musculature, tumescent crotches, extravagant mustaches and granite jawlines not only defined the iconography for a joyously irreverent gay subculture that had previously been given little expression, it also established a hypermasc gay dreamboat ideal that derives a lot of its power from its sheer unattainability. That gap, between everyday reality and oiled, leather-daddy fantasy certainly tortures Sandro (Leandro Faria Lelo), the central character of “Dry Wind,” and if it’s one that Daniel Nolasco’s offbeat, mischievous, explicit debut also cannot quite bridge, damned if it doesn’t have a good XXX-rated go at it.

Sandro is not a Tom of Finland fantasy. He is a middle-aged factory safety officer at a plant in rural, inland Brazil, whom we first meet hanging out hairily at the local open-air pool. Sandro dangles his feet in the pool disconsolately,...

Competition

“All the Dead Ones”

Caetano Godardo, Marco Dutra

Following up on their Locarno-prized “Good Manners,” genre auteur Dutra and Gotardo deliver a lushly turned-out family drama that converts ghostliness into political metaphor, conflating 1899 Sao Paulo with its high-rise present, asking if the uneasy relationship between Brazil’s white elite and black majority has essentially changed.

Sales: Indie Sales

Encounters

“Los Conductos”

Camilo Restrepo

Pinky, on the run from a sect, takes to squatting, making T-shirts for a living, taking drugs and spinning images of the Apocalypse, damnation, revenge. A spectral, crazed allegory of Colombian post-civil conflict reinsertion that won Mar del Plata’s 2019 Works in Progress.

Sales: Best Friend Forever

Panorama

“A Common Crime”

Francisco Márquez

Set in class-riven Argentina and packing, reportedly, a great finale and commanding performance from lead Elisa Carricajo as an Argentine university teacher who fails to help her maid’s son, with literally haunting consequences.

The section will also showcase the world premiere of Srdan Golubović’s Father

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-Mar 1) has completed the line-up of its Panorama strand with a further 15 world premieres.

The newly announced titles take the Panorama total to 35, after a first wave of features for the strand were announced last month.

They include the world premiere of Bassam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli (previously titlted Mughal Mowgli), which stars Riz Ahmed as a UK rapper on the verge of international stardom when a crippling illness strikes him down, and he is forced to move back in with his family.

Italian sales agent does business in Berlin.

Turin-based sales agency The Open Reel has closed deals on a number of titles in its European Film Market slate.

Spi International has acquired rights for the Us and China on Jelle Stroo’s La Deuxieme and Enrique Castro Rios’ Decembers (Diciembres).

The former is a Belgian drama about a spiritual leader of a community who promises a second life to his disciples but starts to questions his own beliefs.

The Panama-Colombia co-production Decembers centres on a reconciliation between survivors of the 1989 American invasion of Panama. The Open Reel has licensed non-exclusive worldwide...