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Like each of Lisandro Alonso‘s cinematic offerings that came before – La Libertad, Los Muertos, Fantasma and Liverpool – the Un Certain Regard debuted, Fipresci Prize winning Jauja regards the solitary man facing the exactings of life, nature and the human spirit. But something is quite different here. There seems to be some kind of scripted narrative, lavish costuming and even what many would call a proper movie star in the robustly mustachioed Viggo Mortensen. Yet by embracing these glacial shifts in the filmmaking process itself, Alonso has elevated his art from contemplatively ethnographic to something much more strange, exciting, illusive and illuminating.

For the first time in his career, Alonso parsed out something resembling a working feature length script in partnership with the Argentinian poet Fabián Casas whom he’d worked with previously on untitled Albert Serra addressed short and took on Mortensen as both his leading man producer on the project,...

Generally speaking, all a viewer needs to do while watching a Lisandro Alonso film is look and listen. Starting with La Libertad (2001), the Argentine director’s features -- the rest of which are Los Muertos (2004), Fantasma (2006), Liverpool (2008), and now Jauja -- have foregone anything resembling conventional, narrative-based filmmaking. Alonso’s recurring subject -- the relationship between people and the landscapes that surround them -- is disarmingly primal, showing non-actors conduct their daily business (La Libertad’s subject is a woodcutter, for instance) in something resembling real-time. Alonso is not interested in backstory or psychology, at least not in the ways these are usually broached and exploited in mainstre...

Competitive strand will feature 14 films, including Jauja starring Viggo Mortensen.

A total of 14 titles have been selected to compete in Horizontes Latinos at the 62nd San Sebastian Festival (Sept 19-27).

The strand comprises productions from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia that have competed or screneed at international festivals but have yet to be seen in Spain.

The selected films compete for the Horizontes Award, decided by a jury and including a prize of €35,000 ($46,000), of which €10,000 ($13,000) goes to the director of the winning film, and the remaining €25,000 ($33,000) to its distributor in Spain.

Casa Grande

Fellipe Barbosa (Brazil - USA)

Set within Rio’s social elite, a teenage boy struggles to escape his overprotective parents as his family spirals into bankruptcy. This second movie by Brazil’s Fellipe Barbosa was presented in the Official Selection at the Rotterdam Festival.

Ciencias naturales (Natural Sciences)

Matías Lucchesi (Argentina - France)

Presented in the Generation section of the Berlin Festival...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Jaeger-LeCoultre revealed award-winning Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso as their 2014 Filmmaker in Residence. The announcement took place last night at a dinner in New York co-hosted by Charles Finch, Lesli Klainberg, Bennett Miller, Todd Solondz, and Lisa Cortes. Last year the role was held by director Andrea Arnold ("Fish Tank," "Wuthering Heights"), who utilized the post to develop her next film "American Honey" and work within the local community, speaking at New York Film Festival panels and nearby high schools. Read More: Here's Why This Was the Best Cannes Film Festival in Years Alonso's work had been described as minimalist comparable to Tarkovsky blending documentary and film. Alonso has directed five features, including "La Libertad" (2001), "Los Muertos" (2004), "Fantasma" (2006), and "Liverpool" (2008). This year he debuted his most recent,...

Argentinean director of Carancho and White Elephant to preside over the jury for Un Certain Regard.

Pablo Trapero, the Argentinean scriptwriter, producer and director of Carancho and White Elephant, will preside over the jury for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25).

The strand will compose 20 films to be announced, along with the films in Competition, at an upcoming press conference on April 17.

Trapero is no stranger to the Croisette, with his prison film Lion’s Den (Leonera) playing in Competition in 2008 and three of his features selected for Un Certain Regard: El Bonaerense (2002); Carancho (2010) and White Elephant (Elefante blanco) (2012).

He said: “I am very proud to take part in another way in the adventure of Cannes. Un Certain Regard, where I have presented three of my films, is always a very exciting selection. It brings us grand masters, promising young talent, new countries and new forms of cinema.”

Pablo Trapero was born...

Argentinean director of Carancho and White Elephant to preside over the jury for Un Certain Regard.

Pablo Trapero, the Argentinean scriptwriter, producer and director of Carancho and White Elephant, will preside over the jury for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25).

The strand will compose 20 films to be announced, along with the films in Competition, at an upcoming press conference on April 17.

Trapero is no stranger to the Croisette, with his prison film Lion’s Den (Leonera) playing in Competition in 2008 and three of his features selected for Un Certain Regard: El Bonaerense (2002); Carancho (2010) and White Elephant (Elefante blanco) (2012).

He said: “I am very proud to take part in another way in the adventure of Cannes. Un Certain Regard, where I have presented three of my films, is always a very exciting selection. It brings us grand masters, promising young talent, new countries and new forms of cinema.”

Pablo Trapero was born...

11. Zama – Dir. Lucretia Martel

Why This Makes Top 10: At number eleven we have Argentinean filmmaker Lucretia Martel’s latest film, her first since 2008’s The Headless Woman (a film that critics were slow to warm to, but ended up being on many a best end of year list in 2008/2009). Previous titles include her stunning debut, 2001’s La Cienega, along with 2004’s The Holy Girl. Her latest is a period piece based on the novel by Antonio de Benedetto and will be produced by Lita Stantic, El Deseo (the Almodovar Bros’ company), as well as a still to be named French producer. Martel is one of the most prolific names to come out the New Argentinean Wave and this looks to be a massively mounted period piece we’re eager to get a look at.

The Gist: Written in 1956, Zama is an existential novel about Don Diego de Zama, a...

After a two-year break between "The Road" and "A Dangerous Method," Viggo Mortensen is on something of a streak (if you can call it that). This year found the actor on the festival circuit with Walter Salles' "On The Road" and the Argentinian drama "Everybody Has A Plan," he's currently shooting "The Two Faces Of January" alongside Kirsten Dunst, and he's looking stay busy in the new year. The actor will star in and produce the next feature effort from Lisandro Alonso. While the director isn't quite a household name, his films "La Libertad" and "Liverpool" have screened at the Cannes Film Festival, so he's certainly got some cred. Co-written by Alonso and Fabian Casas, the story will follow "a Dane and his daughter who journey to a desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization." So...an even more existential or perhaps fantastical version of "The.

Viggo Mortensen has signed to star in and produce Lisandro Alonso's untitled new drama for Massive Inc., Perceval Films and 4L.

Alonso ("La Libertad," "Liverpool") and Fabian Casas penned the story that follows a Danish man and his daughter who journey to a desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization.

Andy Kleinman, Jaime Romandia and Ilse Hughan are also producing. Shooting kicks off early next year in Denmark and Argentina.

Source: Variety...

• Cameron Diaz is attached to play The Other Woman, a comedy about an unwitting mistress who, upon learning her boyfriend is really a married man, teams up with his wife for revenge. Kristen Wiig is also being considered for the film, though it’s unclear whether she would play the wife. Screenwriter Melissa Stack (who penned the Black Listed, but unproduced, I Want to F— Your Sister) penned the script. No director is yet set for the film. [TheWrap]

• Chris Hemsworth is set to star in Candy Store, a thriller from Syriana writer-director Stephen Gaghan about a former elite spook whose...

As Jay Kuehner assesses for Parallax View: "Fantasma, per its title, coyly and spectrally endeavors to bring together the principal 'non-actors' of his previous films to Buenos Aires, to the fabled Teatro San Martín, for--what else?--a retrospective of Alonso's films. The setup is an ingenious way to bring nature to the city, actors to their affect, and audiences to their subjective screens." The program capsule for the Harvard Film Archives notes the offbeat delight in watching Argentino Vargas wandering the labyrinthine corridors of the Teatro San Martín "in search of the film's premiere."

Fantasma was Alonso's way of saying thank you to the lead actors in his first two films: Misael Saavedra (La Libertad) and Argentino Vargas (Los Muertos). He wanted to thank them because they had both helped him change a certain portion of his life when he became his kind of filmmaker. Fantasma is an inbetween film in many respects.

Introducing Los Muertos, Northwest Film Forum Program Director Adam Sekuler offered that Lisandro Alonso's characters are most often playing themselves and--while the trajectory of his films don't always follow a traditional plot--they do follow the trajectory of what all of us go through in any given day. In the selfsame way that Alonso's films might be unfamiliar cinematically, they are very familiar physically. Alonso followed with a brief, hurried introduction as he was desperate to secure a ticket to the Pixies concert at the Paramount. He said that--if he went back home and his friends found out he could have seen the Pixies and didn't--they would never forgive him. Fortunately, he was able to secure his Pixies ticket and returned after the film for a brief Q&A before rushing off again to attend the concert.

Alonso shot Los Muertos three years after La Libertad. He wanted to make...

"Film must provide audiences the opportunity to discover questions."--Lisandro Alonso.

La Libertad (Freedom, 2001) screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and scored nominations and wins on the film festival circuit, including the Fipresci prize. The son of a cattle rancher and disinclined to carry on with the family business, Alonso was a 25-year-old recent graduate of the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires when he made La Libertad; "outside of Buenos Aires but within Argentina." Alonso met the film's protagonist Misael Saavedra on his father's ranch. Misael, logger by trade, epitomized non-urban youth for Alonso; his reaction to the then-popular trend in Argentine cinema to revel in urban narratives. Perhaps it was Alonso's rural background that granted him familiarity with Misael's incommunication?

Alonso spent eight months in the Argentine Pampas with Misael. It was a difficult cohabitation because they had little in common to talk about; but,...

Adam Sekular, Program Director for Seattle's Northwest Film Forum (Nwff), organized the retrospective "At the Edge of the World: the Cinema of Lisandro Alonso", which ran this past week November 11-19, 2009. All four of Alonso's films--La Libertad (2001), Los Muertos (2004), Fantasma (2006) and Liverpool (2008)--received their Seattle premieres and Alonso was present to introduce the films and conduct Q&As afterwards. He likewise led an intimate afternoon "master class."

In his write-up for The Stranger, Sean Axmaker emphasized: "In addition to putting together this Seattle series, Northwest Film Forum has taken up the mantle of distributor for Liverpool in the United States." At Parallax View, Axmaker elaborated: "Liverpool was heralded at both Cannes and Toronto from 2008, proclaimed 'one of the best undistributed films' by both indieWIRE and Film Comment, and 'Best Film of 2008' by Cinema Scope, yet no distribution was forthcoming. So Adam Sekular and Nwff stepped in to...