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ƒmovieMexico’s Alfonso Herrera, best known for his role as the impetuous nephew looking to usurp his drug lord uncle in “Ozark” and as a former member of the wildly popular band Rbd and its TV series “Rebelde,” has joined the cast of “Tesis sobre una domesticación,” a movie adaptation of the multi-awarded novel of trans actress-scribe Camila Sosa Villada.

Now shooting in Argentina, “Tesis…” is a co-production between Argentina’s Laura Huberman, Ramiro Pavón and Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna’s Mexico City-based La Corriente del Golfo.

“Tesis sobre una domesticación” (“Thesis on a Domestication”) relates the story of a successful trans actress (played by Sosa Villalda) and her gay lawyer husband who adopt a child, defying Argentina’s conservative society to form their own family unit. Their attempt at domestic bliss is disrupted when they visit the actress’s home town where her family resides.

Herrera expressed...

Mexico’s most bankable stars, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, have teamed up with L.A. and Miami-based Exile Content to produce Travis Gutiérrez Senger’s documentary on the groundbreaking art group, “Asco: Without Permission.”

The documentary chronicles the Los Angeles based avant-garde art group Asco during the 1970s and ‘80s. Melding activism and art, they challenged Latinx representation in the art world, politics, and Hollywood through their provocative performance art, photography, video and muralism.

García Bernal and Luna will serve as executive producers with their production company La Corriente del Golfo producing alongside Los Angeles-based North of Now and Gutiérrez Senger’s Asa Nisi Masa Films, in association with Exile Content.

Asco is described to have “pioneered avant-garde tactics to respond to issues of racism, representation, and police brutality that were affecting the Chicano community in Los Angeles.”

“Where would we be without the pioneers that irrupt on a scene unsolicited,...

Exclusive: The 12th annual edition of the largest Mexican film festival outside of Mexico, Hola México Film Festival (September 11-20), will take place virtually and exclusively on Lionsgate and Hemisphere’s Spanish-language streaming platform Pantaya.

The festival will feature 20 movies, kicking off with Chicuarotes, directed and produced by Gael Garcia Bernal. The film, which played at Cannes and Toronto last year, centers on a pair of young boys from poor backgrounds who perform clown acts on public transportation to get by. The story takes a turn when the young boys begin to rob passengers.

The program will include contemporary features, documentaries, genre fare and family movies, and will include Q&a’s, ‘virtual red carpets’, an awards ceremony and will try to mirror the physical festival in an online way as much as possible.

“As a result of the current pandemic, we wanted to ensure our industry and filmmaking community...

Exclusive: Gael García Bernal is set to join M. Night Shyamalan’s new secret movie from Universal. Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Vicky Krieps, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Ken Leung are already on board to star in the top-secret project.

Shyamalan will write, produce and direct the untitled film. Like most of his movies, plot details are shrouded in secrecy and can become interconnected to his other films. Shyamalan will also produce along with Ashwin Rajan for Blinding Edge Pictures. Marc Bienstock also serves as producer and Steven Schneider will exec produce.

Reps for Universal and Shyamalan had no comment on the casting.

Universal recently dated Shaymalan’s movie for July 23, 2021 after earlier taking it off the release calendar due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While it is unclear when production will begin given stay-at-home measures, the hope is to start rolling cameras by the fall as...

Gael García Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle) and Diego Luna (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), who are executive producers on Amazon’s upcoming limited series Untitled Cortés and Moctezuma Project, have closed a first-look deal with Amazon Studios. As part of the deal, Bernal and Luna will create and produce content for Amazon Studios to premiere on Amazon Prime Video in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Luna and Bernal recently announced their new production house in Mexico, La Corriente del Golfo, an independent company for cinematic, theatrical, and television productions and a variety of community-oriented projects.

The Untitled Cortés and Moctezuma Projectt, from Amazon Studios and Amblin Television, will be a four-hour epic drama that maps the inexorable march and eventual clash between Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II, leading to the annihilation of an empire and tragic downfall of a civilization that took centuries to build,...

Exclusive: Former Mozart in the Jungle and Coco star Gael García Bernal is set to recur in HBO Max’s Station Eleven, a 10-episode post-apocalyptic drama limited series based on the international bestseller by Emily St. John Mandel, from Maniac creator Patrick Somerville and Paramount TV.

Written and executive produced by Somerville, Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic saga spanning multiple timelines. It tells the stories of survivors of a devastating flu as they attempt to rebuild and reimagine the world anew while holding on to the best of what’s been lost.

Bernal will play Arthur, a famous actor from a small island off the coast of Mexico.

Somerville also will serve as showrunner. Hiro Murai directs and executive produces with Somerville, Scott Steindorff, Scott Delman, Dylan Russell and Jeremy Podeswa. Nate Matteson will serve as co-ep. Paramount TV is the studio.

Bernal won a Golden Globe Award for his...

Previous | Image 1 of 19 | NextGigi Pritzker, Producer of Opening Night film ‘Motherless Brooklyn.’

Chicago – That’s a wrap! The 55th Chicago International Film Festival, which concluded on Sunday, October 27th, brought glam and excitement to a high energy audience of Windy City film buffs. And they brought the star power to the Red Carpet, including Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne, WWE legend C.M. Punk, “Knives Out” and “Last Jedi” director Rian Johnson, Chicago Executive Producer Gigi Pritzker, civil rights icon Jesse Jackson and Blues legend Buddy Guy.

The hardest working man in the celebrity photo business, HollywoodChicago.com photographer Joe Arce, attended those Red Carpets – from Opening Night with Gigi Pritzker to Closing Night with Buddy Guy – and shot these Exclusive Portraits from the 55th Chicago International Film Festival. Click “Next” and “Previous” to scan through the slideshow or jump directly to individual photos with the captioned links below. All photos © Joe...

Two decades on from the star-making one-two punch of “Amores Perros” and “Y Tu Mamá También” Gael García Bernal’s sophomore directorial film “Chicuarotes” exists very much in the shadow of those two modern Mexican classics. And while measuring his well-intentioned, patchily engaging and largely well-crafted new film against such competition might seem unfair, in truth it’s unavoidable: “Chicuarotes” seems to actively court the comparison, with its rambunctious, street-level story of a volatile teenager flirting with criminality as he tries to bootstrap himself, his girlfriend and his best friend/sidekick/whipping boy out of their hardscrabble circumstances in the slums of Mexico City.

But where Iñarritú and Cuarón’s films also dealt in socially-aware, dramatically dissonant portraits of young Mexicans on the cusp of manhood, they both emitted an infectious, buoyant energy. Here, despite a handful of inspired moments and a rough-hewn but dynamic presentation — due largely to Dp Juan Pablo Ramirez’ lively,...

Mozart in the Jungle star Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, who starred in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, have joined Amazon Studios and Amblin Television’s four-hour miniseries based on the epic saga of Hernan Cortes.

The Wme-represented pair will executive produce the series, currently known as the Untitled Cortés and Moctezuma Project, which stars Oscar winner Javier Bardem in the title role.

The project has also named Ciro Guerra (Waiting for the Barbarians) and Cristina Gallego as directors for all four episodes of what is being described as the largest Spanish-language production of all time.

Production designer Eugenio Caballero, an Oscar winner for his work on Pan’s Labyrinth, also joins alongside costume designer Anna Terrazas (Spectre) and casting director Luis Rosales (Chicuarotes). The Mexican production will be overseen by Stacy Perskie (Narcos:...

Amazon’s upcoming series about Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II has made some high-profile additions to its creative team.

Actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna have come onboard the series as executive producers, while Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego are now attached to direct all four episodes of the series. Production designer Eugenio Caballero, an Oscar winner for his work on “Pan’s Labyrinth,” has also joined the production along with costume designer Anna Terrazas and casting director Luis Rosales. Caballero, Terrazas, and Rosales all previously worked together on the Oscar-winning film “Roma.” The Mexican production will be overseen by Stacy Perskie and local production company Redrum.

The untitled limited series was announced last year, with Javier Bardem attached to star as Cortés. Steven Zaillian is writing the series based on the screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. Zaillian and Bardem will executive produce along with Bernal,...

Santiago, Chile – Eduardo Machuca, the former film co-ordinator of Chile’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has launched his own production company, Machuca Films. “After 25 years at the ministry, I felt I needed to tap my creative side,” said Machuca, who is also tying the knot on Saturday (Aug. 24) with a former Sanfic staffer, Vera Guzman.

Since he left the ministry in March, Machuca has been busy cobbling together various film and TV projects, some of which he is writing, with the help of professional screenwriters. Given his enviable international connections from decades in the biz, Machuca has set up co-productions with leading Mexican post-production house Chemistry and with a number of Colombian shingles to date.

“Two years ago, Chemistry began to develop content, with its first production a mini-web series ‘Las Bodas de Malena,’ six of them produced by the Discovery Channel, Mexico,” said Chemistry’s Andres Martinez-Rios. The company...

Gael García Bernal said acting for the likes of Oscar winners Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón helped groom him for the director’s chair and praised cinema as “the only medium” that allows artists to “explore the gray areas” in unparalleled ways.

“The world is so full of certainties now, and cinema is the one that can open up those spaces with poetry and really provoke,” he said.

The Mexican multi-hyphenate was appearing at the Sarajevo Film Festival after a special screening of his second directorial feature, “Chicuarotes.” Earlier this week, the festival handed an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award to Iñárritu, who directed Bernal in his breakout role in “Amores Perros.”

Speaking at a masterclass on Wednesday, Bernal discussed some of his influences as an actor and director, as well as the inspiration behind “Chicuarotes,” which world premiered out of competition in Cannes. Set in San Gregorio Atlapulco,...

Santiago — Chile’s Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic) launched its 15th edition Sunday Aug. 18 with three of Latin America’s best-known actors, Gael Garcia Bernal, Wagner Moura (“Narcos”) and Graciela Borges (“La Cienaga”), to which it bestowed career recognition awards.

“It’s been 15 years in which we have presented more than 1,400 films,” noted Francisca Saieh, director of festival sponsor CorpArtes Foundation at the opening ceremony, as she paid tribute to her late sister, producer Soledad Saieh, one of the driving forces of the festival.

“It is noteworthy that in the past two years we have increased attendance by 20%, drawing an audience of more than 250,000 in the past 15,” said artistic director Carlos Nuñez who, together with his StoryBoard Media partner Gabriela Sandoval, runs the festival.

Garcia Bernal came to present his second directorial effort, “Chicuarotes,” which premiered in Cannes, while Moura opened the festival with his directorial debut, “Marighella,” a historical...

Oscar-winning directors Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Pawel Pawlikowski both received Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Awards on Friday at the opening ceremony of the 25th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, Southeast Europe’s leading film showcase.

They were joined on the red carpet by the cast and crew of the opening film, “The Son,” led by director Ines Tanović, and Mexican production designer Eugenio Caballero, who won an Oscar for Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” and was Oscar nominated for Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma.” Caballero will open the 13th edition of Talents Sarajevo, and will deliver a lecture about his work.

A new red carpet was designed to mark the fest’s 25th anniversary. Its pattern is inspired by a traditional Sarajevo carpet dating back to 1930, held in the National Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and represents “a symbiosis of modern and traditional design.”

Our new red carpet is ready Sarajevo mon amour!

Tom Harper’s “The Aeronauts,” a period drama that reunites “The Theory of Everything” stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, is one of more than 80 features and 20 shorts that have been added to the lineup at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, Tiff organizers announced on Tuesday.

“The Aeronauts” is one of two new galas, the other being Giuseppe Capotondi’s thriller “The Burnt Orange Heresy,” with Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debecki and Mick Jagger. Other films added to the lineup include new work by Terrence Malick, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Noah Hawley, Olivier Assayas, Trey Edward Shults, Ken Loach and Gael Garcia Bernal.

The two new galas complete that section in Toronto at 20 films, while 16 new Special Presentations bring that section to 55. The additions include Kenny Leon’s “American Son”; Jason Lei Howden’s “Guns Akimbo,” with Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving; Marc Meyers’ “Human Capital,” with Liev Schreiber and Marisa Tomei; Max Winkler’s “Jungleland,...

Venice premieres La Llorona and El Príncipe are among the 15 titles.

The line-up for the Horizontes Latinos section at this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival (September 20-28) includes films that have won awards at Cannes and Sundance.

The strand will showcase 15 Latin American productions of which seven are first or second works. All the titles (except Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona) are competing for the Horizontes Award, which comes with a €35,000.

Among this year’s line-up is César Díaz’s Critics Week title Our Mothers, which won the Camera d’Or for best first film at Cannes. There...

Madrid — Frederico Veiroj’s “The Moneychanger,” Andrés Wood’s “Spider” and Gael García Bernal’s “Chicuarotes” will play in San Sebastian’s Horizontes Latinos, the Spanish Festival’s most important sidebar, along with its New Directors strand, and a virtual best of the fests titles of Latin American movies with standout at Sundance in particular, plus Berlin, Cannes, Venice and no doubt the upcoming Toronto.

“Spider” will have its European Premiere at San Sebastian.

Bookended by Patricio Guzman’s “The Cordillera of Dreams” and “La Llorona,” the latest from Jayro Bustamante, whose “Tremors” also makes the Horizontes Latinos cut, the section also captures key trends forging Latin America’s new landscape of Latin American movies.

Mined and prized by major festivals, Latin America has yet to go off the boil. The big prizes are going ever more, however, to lesser-known talents. Alejandro Landes’ “Monos” won a Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award,...

Barcelona — David R. Romay’s feature debut “Beyond the Mountain” snagged Best Feature at Lleida’s 25th Latin America Film Festival of Catalonia, hosted in the world’s culinary capital for grilled snails, 84 miles west of Barcelona.

A dramatic thriller starring Benny Emmanuel (Gael García Bernal’s “Chicuarotes”), it follows Miguel, a young, solitary man whose routine existence working for a public typing service office is turned upside down when he finds his mother lying dead on the floor with a letter to his deadbeat dad in her hand. Tragic events force him to face a forgotten past and to seek out his father with murderous intent.

The award follows Guadalajara best actor and press awards this year.

“I wanted to involve the viewer in the plot without any kind of narrative tricks, without having to tell them what to feel,” Romay explained to Variety.

He added: “The music is discreet,...

Gael Garcia Bernal burst onto the scene as an exciting young screen talent back in 2000 in Cannes, playing a teenager looking for a way out of the slums of Mexico City in Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's triptych about human cruelty and violence, Amores Perros. Nineteen years later, Bernal returns as director of another story of hood rats angling for an exit by any means necessary. But Chicuarotes, which shuffles wacky caper comedy, absurdist melodrama and awkward eruptions of gritty violence in a messy collision far stronger on sustained verve than disciplined plotting, is an exhausting misfire.

Bernal's 2007 ...

Cannes — There’s a scene right at the beginning of “Chicuarotes,” Gael García Bernal’s second movie as a director, where Cagalera and Moleteco, two teens from the humble San Gregorio Atlapulco district of Mexico City, board a bus in clown’s makeup, and launch into a clumsy comedic sketch.

Maybe because it’s delivered in San Gregorio Atlapulco argot, their effort to beg some money goes totally ignored.

Then Cagalera pulls out a revolver. The passengers duly cough up money, mobiles. Cagalera and Moleteco escape to the bouncy strains of a Spanish-language version of “I Fought the Law.”

That’s the only way to go, pull out a gun, Cagalera tells Moleteco.

Written by Augusto Mendoza in the slang of San Gregorio, where he grew up – “chicuarotes” refers there to both a type of chili and to hardheaded individuals – the film follows Cagalera and Moleteco’s increasingly desperate attempts...

Gael García Bernal is an actor that many of the readers of The Playlist are likely familiar with. He’s probably best known for acting in films like “Y Tu Mamá También,” “Amores perros,” “Babel,” “The Science of Sleep,” and recently in “The Kindergarten Teacher.” But for his next film, his sophomore feature-length drama, the award-winning actor steps behind the camera for a new crime drama “Chicuarotes.”

Read More: Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon A Time’ Joins New Films From Gaspar Noe & Gael Garcia Bernal As Late Cannes Additions

As seen in the new trailer for the film, “Chicuarotes” follows the story of two young men in Mexico, trying to get out of their “shitty town” by any means necessary.

Continue reading ‘Chicuarotes’ Trailer: Gael García Bernal’s Latest Directorial Effort Will Premiere At Cannes at The Playlist.

Gael García Bernal and La Corriente del Golfo, his Mexico City production house launched last year with Diego Luna, have unveiled the poster for “Chicuarotes,” directed by the multi-prized Mexican actor-producer and world premiering in Official Selection at next week’s Cannes Film Festival.

Since García Bernal’s feature debut “Deficit,” selected for Cannes’ Critics’ Week in 2007, he has continued to direct: a segment of “Revolución,” for example, an episode of “Mozart in the Jungle,” which won him a Golden Globe as an actor, and the pilot for Fox Networks Group Latin America’s “Here on Earth,” which he showran and which won the inaugural Zurich Series Award last year.

A dramedy, “Chicuarotes” is, however, García Bernal’s second feature as a director.

Playing out of competition at Cannes as a special screening, “Chicuarotes” turns on two teens,Cagalera and Moloteco, from San Gregorio Atlapulco district of Mexico City who,...