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"Do you think people can change their life?" The Forge has unveiled the official US trailer for an acclaimed indie film titled Sujo, a Mexican drama co-directed by the same talented filmmakers behind The Darkest Days of Us and Identifying Features previously. This initially premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival at the start of this year and screened at many other festivals including Miami, Seattle, Munich, London, and San Sebastian. When a cartel gunman is killed, he leaves behind Sujo, his 4-year-old son - left orphaned and at risk. The shadow of violence surrounds Sujo during each stage of his life. As he grows into a man, Sujo grapples with his fate, realizing that fulfilling his father’s legacy may be inescapable. Starring Juan Jesús Varela, Yadira Perez, Alexis Varela, Jairo Hernández, Sandra Lorenzano, Kevin Aguilar, and Karla Garrido. Reviews describe it as "a gentle film about a harsh world,...

Mexico’s official entry to the Oscars, “Sujo,” made a sweep of the 22nd Morelia Int’l Film Festival (Ficm), winning the festival’s Ojo Awards for Best Film, Director and Screenplay.

Co-helmer-scribes Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, whose debut pic “Identifying Features” won a couple of Sundance awards and took the Best International Feature prize at the Gotham Awards in 2021, also snagged the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema with “Sujo,” their sophomore feature, in January.

Hailed by Variety as an “optimistic alternative to violent drug war movies,” the poignant coming-of-age story revolves around the impact of drug cartels on the youth. The tale follows young Sujo (played by Kevin Uriel Aguilar Luna and Juan Jesús Varela) who grows up surrounded by their violence. When his father, a sicario (hired assassin), is killed, he becomes a target but Sujo’s intrepid aunt rescues him.

Sujo’s win caps...

Mexico’s has selected “Sujo” as the country’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards. The movie written and directed by Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and will hit theaters November 29.

After a cartel gunman from a small Mexican town is murdered, Sujo (Kevin Uriel Aguilar Luna/Juan Jesús Varel), his beloved four-year-old son, is left an orphan and in danger. Sujo narrowly escapes death with the help of his aunt who raises him in the isolated countryside amidst hardship, poverty, and the constant peril associated with his identity.When he enters his teens a rebelliousness awakens in him, and like a rite of passage, he joins the local cartel. As a young man, Sujo attempts to make his life anew, away from the violence of his hometown. However, when his father...

Mexico has picked Sundance Film Festival winner Sujo to represent the country at the 2025 Oscars in the Best International Feature category. The drama from Identifying Features directors Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez premiered at Sundance this year, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema. It is currently doing the festival tour and will screen in San Sebastian and the London Film Festival this fall.

The coming-of-age story focuses on the titular Sujo, the son of a small-town cartel sicario who is orphaned when his father is murdered as a traitor. Under constant threat of death — the cartels traditionally kill male heirs of assassinated members lest they grow up to avenge their fathers — Sujo goes into hiding in the mountains, living in isolation with only his aunts and two young cousins for company. But as a young man, Sujo, played by Identifying Features actor Juan Jesús Varela, drifts...

Mexico has selected the drama film “Sujo” as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2025 Academy Awards. The movie tells the story of a young man growing up in a small Mexican town threatened by cartel violence.

“Sujo” follows the life of its title character after his cartel member father is murdered. Sujo is raised by his aunt in the countryside but grows up surrounded by poverty and danger. As a teen, Sujo gets drawn into the local drug gang. He later tries to escape his violent past. The film explores how destiny and the cycle of cartel activity impact Mexico.

The movie from directors Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Juan Jesús Varela plays the adult Sujo, supported by Yadira Pérez, Alexis Varela and others. Rondero, Valadez, and producers Diana Casarreal, Jewerl Keats Ross,...

Edgar Nito, whose debut feature “The Gasoline Thieves’’ won the Best New Narrative Director award at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, is taking his second feature, “A Fisherman’s Tale,” to world premiere at Spain’s most prominent genre festival, Sitges, and have its Mexican debut at the Morelia film fest, both in October.

Produced by Pablo Cruz and Enrique Lavigne of El Estudio, Nito’s Pirotecnia Films, L.A.-based 4 Ways Entertainment and associate produced by Grupo Morbido’s Pablo Guisa, the fantasy tale turns on a legend when nature once flourished peacefully around a lake and its islands. Men, consumed by dark desires, spread fear, hatred, and death. The fishermen speak of “La Miringua,” a vengeful mythical creature that pulls sinners into the lake’s depths, dragging them to their doom.

Co-written by Nito and Alfredo Mendoza, the film stars a solid cast led by Noé Hernández (“Miss...

Principal photography of Mexican writer-director Iria Gómez Concheiro’s dystopian thriller “Here be Dragons” is underway in Mexico, with Gómez Concheiro’s Ciudad Cinema producing alongside “La Jaula de Oro” producer Machete Prods., led by Edher Campos.

“When the project was broached to me last year by Iria and her producing partner Rodrigo Rios Legaspi, I was immediately drawn to it as I was keen to make a science fiction film, especially because it deals with themes that interest me, trouble me and that are very relevant today: the control over a society, the fragility of youth, its struggle in a failing system, global warming, the scarcity of resources and the power those resources hold within a government,” said Campos.

“And that control makes you believe you should be afraid. That indeed, here be dragons,” he added wryly.

Starring Chile’s Alfredo Castro (“El Conde”), Hernán Mendoza (“The Box”) and...

Federation Spain, the Madrid-based arm of top indie European studio Federation Entertainment, has inked to co-produce Xavier Rull’s feature debut “My Stalker,” selected for this year’s Frontières Platform in Cannes.

Structured as a Spain-Mexico-u.S. co-production, “My Stalker” is set up at Monster Box, the horror indie outfit recently launched by Rull with awarded Mexican filmmaker Jack Zagha.

“My Stalker” follows a rising young singer in the music industry, stalked by a mysterious dangerous man who can possess people astrally.

As she struggles to compose a new album, deal with the pressures of fame, and evade her stalker, she descends into a dark world where music, nightmares, and the supernatural collide.

The film was co-created and co-scripted by Rull and María Rocher, Federation Spain’s head of co-production and support strategy.

“‘My Stalker’ is a psychological thriller with an original high concept,” Rull said.

“It explores the gradual...

Filmmaker duo Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero have signed with CAA.

Valadez and Rondero co-directed and co-wrote “Sujo,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize for World Dramatic competition. The film currently holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Their previous film, “Identifying Features,” won best international feature at the 2021 Gotham Awards. Valadez directed, and Valadez and Rondero co-wrote, co-produced and co-edited.

“Identifying Features” premiered at Sundance in 2020, where it won the audience and screenwriting awards.

In 2017, Rondero’s directorial debut, “The Darkest Days of Us,” won two Ariel Awards in Mexico for best actress and best debut film.

Valadez and Rondero continue to be represented by Silent R Management.

In “Sujo,” a cartel gunman in Mexico is killed, leaving behind Sujo, his beloved 4-year-old son. The shadow of violence surrounds Sujo during each stage of his life in the isolated Mexican countryside.

Premiering in January to a Sundance Dramatic World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, “Sujo” from “Identifying Features” filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez has expanded its global reach, closing multiple distribution deals forged by Paris-based Alpha Violet, who heads international distribution.

Paris-based Damned Films has picked up the title for France while Twelve Oaks Pictures, Trigon Films, Cinobo and McF Megacom have swooped on the film for Spain, Switzerland, Greece and Cyprus and Ex-Yugoslavia territories respectively, with Auckland’s Vendetta Films securing rights to the title for the Australia and New Zealand markets.

The sales outfit, who co-produced the title alongside Valadez and Romero’s EnAguas Cine, Mexico’s Corpulenta and California’s Silent R Management, have also negotiated a TV deal with HBO Europe on top of closing a recent sale to Mexico and Latin American via Cinepolis. UTA is assisting with the domestic U.S. market.

“It’s been...

Although it might seem like male directors stand at the forefront of Mexican cinema right now — look at recent Oscar winners such as Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro González Iñárritu — it’s a new wave of female filmmakers who are actually the ones to watch.

Tatiana Huezo (“The Echo”), Fernanda Valadez (“Identifying Features”), and Issa López all shine bright, yet Lila Avilés (“The Chambermaid”) might be the first to come close to Oscar success of her own with “Tótem,” which was shortlisted at this year’s Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film. While Avilés’ acclaimed debut followed a maid working to bring structure and order to empty, uninhabited spaces, her follow-up feature is teeming with life, even if the subject matter might not lend itself to that at first glance.

“Tótem” begins with seven-year-old Sol (Naíma Sentíes) and her mother, Lucia (Lazua Larios), laughing together in a public bathroom.

The winner of the World Dramatic competition at Sundance, co-directors Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s understated and essential Mexican drama “Sujo” is one of two films in this year’s lineup (the other being “Ponyboi”) in which children who were given distinctive names by doomed macho dads spend years wondering what those monikers mean. In both cases, the eventual reveal puts a poignant coda on stories of young Latinos struggling to escape the cycle of ignorance and unhealthy behavior that threatens to pull them under.

An optimistic entry in a traditionally brutal genre, “Sujo” is a story about defying gravity. Like Sleeping Beauty — who manages to prick her finger, even after all of the spinning wheels in the kingdom were thought destroyed — or tragic figures from Greek mythology whose fates are dictated by the gods, the title character seems doomed to follow in the footsteps of his father, Josue...

For the larger part of the last two decades, Mexican cinema has been over saturated with hard-to-stomach chronicles of the monstrous drug violence ravaging the country, but no one is approaching such darkness with the layered sensibility and aesthetic poetry of directors Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero. Proven by their soul-shattering and award-winning previous collaboration, “Identifying Features” (which Valadez directed and Rondero co-wrote), they see the ongoing crisis not for its potential for spectacle or tactless shock value, but for the unspeakable human tragedy that it is.

While “Identifying Features” followed a mother searching for her son, a migrant victim of the horrors, their slightly more hopeful latest, “Sujo,” flips the focus to trace how young men from small, impoverished towns are trapped by the inescapable cycles of violence and become ruthless perpetrators. Here, Valadez and Rondero, now officially co-writing and co-directing, extend their cinematic empathy even to those society...

Ahead of its international bow in World Cinema Dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival, Beverly Hills-based United Talent Agency’s Independent Film Group has pounced on domestic sales representation for the unconventional narco narrative “Sujo,” from “Identifying Features” creators Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez.

UTA joins Paris-based outfit Alpha Violet (“Apples”), which handles international sales as well as co-producing the new Sundance title.

“Alpha Violet is thrilled to continue working with Fernanda and Astrid after the success of ‘Identifying Features.’ Being a larger team to support our filmmakers is fantastic!” Virginie Devesa, co-head of Alpha Violet, told Variety.

Screening within the fest’s World Cinema Dramatic competition, the project tackles inherited identity and the weighty struggles that suffocate cartel communities through the eyes and experiences of a toddler, Sujo, who comes of age having lost parents in a town marred by brutality.

“In Mexico, there’s an immense crisis...

Manborg: The Novelization Blasts Onto Bookshelves From Author Bret Nelson And Encyclopocalypse Publications: "Encyclopocalypse Publications, founded by Saturn and Rondo Award-winning writer/producer Mark Alan Miller is proud to add Manborg to its wildly addicting novelization series.

Manborg is penned by Bret Nelson (author of Lumber and Other Tales) from the original script by Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie.

“Whenever I read about the movie, Manborg, it is noted early and often that the team at Astron 6 managed to make it for 1,000 Cad. I’d rather note, early and often, that the budget limitations were overcome by the talent and tenacity of the filmmakers.” Nelson says. “Yes, it has a garage-band feel and it’s rough around the edges. But look deeper. The wide shots of Meganet City feature vehicles and people in the backgrounds, you’d expect a pan across a still image. In dialogue, the usual low-budget,...

XYZ Films has acquired writer-director Michelle Garza Cervera’s hotly anticipated breakout feature “Huesera” for theatrical release in North America and has released the first teaser and poster for the film.

“Huesera” is one of the first slate of titles under its new distribution arm and an early pick-up ahead of the Tribeca Film Festival, where the film will world premiere.

The film follows Valeria, whose joy with becoming pregnant dissolves as she is cursed by a dark power. As danger surrounds her, she’s forced deeper into the occult, and a pact with a coven of witches may be her only hope. Valeria is played by Natalia Solián (“500 Millions of Red Shoes”), alongside Alfonso Dosal (“Narcos: Mexico”), Mayra Batalla (“Prayers for the Stolen”), Mercedes Hernández (“Identifying Features”), Aída López (“Capadocia”), and Martha Claudia Moreno.

The film is produced by Machete, Disruptiva Films, and Señor Z and is co-written by Garza Cervera and Abia Castillo.

After years of on-screen successes led by the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón, female directors are making their mark with urgent, disquieting cinema

When young Ana is forced to have her hair cut in Tatiana Huezo’s film Prayers for the Stolen, her tears indicate the heartbreak of lost youth. It’s a protective measure taken by her mother who is desperate to prevent Ana from being kidnapped, like so many other young girls in their town have been, by the drug cartels who patrol the surrounding area. Prayers for the Stolen, the first fiction feature from Mexican-Salvadorian documentary-maker Huezo, captures the brutality and fear of growing up in such circumstances.

The facts are grim. An Amnesty International report released in September 2021 found that 10 women and girls are killed every day in Mexico. More broadly, the Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2006, 150,000 people have been killed in...

HBO and HBO Max will be home to new original films, highly anticipated streaming debuts of new releases, and the finales of three popular series throughout February. Below, we’ve assembled a complete list of everything new on HBO and HBO Max in February 2022, and it includes a new thriller from director Steven Soderbergh and starring Zoe Kravitz called “Kimi.” The original feature takes place in a Covid-19 pandemic Seattle and follows an agoraphobic tech worker who discovers violent crimes have occurred in a data stream. The Max Original film premieres on Feb. 10.

Also coming in February is the “Raised by Wolves” Season 2 premiere on Feb. 3, with new episodes released weekly, as well as the season premiere of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” on Feb. 20. And coming to a close in February are the original series “Euphoria,” “And Just Like That…” and “Peacemaker,” which all air finales this month.

For its list of new releases of February 2022, HBO Max is bringing back one of its biggest original series.

The Ridley Scott-directed sci-fi epic Raised by Wolves helped launch HBO Max back in 2020 and now it’s finally back for another season. Raised by Wolves season 2 premieres with three episodes on Feb. 3. This season will continue the conflict between future atheists and theists on a remote planet, while two androids raise some kids.

February 2022 also sees the end of another, more recent HBO Max hit. Peacemaker airs its finale on Feb. 17. Thankfully that same day sees the premiere of another exciting original. Dream Raider is a Mandarin-language sci-fi thriller that carries some big Inception vibes.

There aren’t many original movies of note this month, but there are a lot of recent hits coming to HBO Max as library titles. Nightmare Alley arrives on Feb. 1, followed by The Many Saints of Newark on Feb.

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2021, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

By many metrics, 2021 was a terrible year. Whether it was the persistence of a global pandemic and the ineffectiveness of those in charge to properly manage it or the increasing inanity of Film Twitter discourse clogging one’s timeline every day, it often felt like there was nowhere to seek relief from this year’s woes. But there was salvation somewhere: inside the films themselves. Despite what some may lead you to believe, and despite the perhaps rather milquetoast quality of many of this year’s award candidates, 2021 was the best year for cinema we’ve seen in quite some time.

Whether you were able to head back to theaters at some point during the year or remained watching from the safety of your own home, there...

Mexican producer-director Iria Gómez Concheiro is unveiling at Guadalajara “Here Be Dragons,” a co-production between her own label Ciudad Cinema – alongside exec producer Rodrigo Ríos Legaspi – and Colombia’s Trilce Cinema, with Alejandro Rey and Claudia Sánchez.

Set in a vaguely anachronistic 2040, “Here Be Dragons” is a sci-fi drama-adventure movie which follows 18-year old Candelaria as she tries to survive an uncertain, devastated country where sinister military forces rule.

Fearing an imminent barbaric invasion, Candelaria flees from her father and a chaotic, brutal regime, while undertaking an initiatory trip to unveil the truth about love and this menace. The title refers to the Latin inscription “hic sunt dracones” (dragons are here) used on old navigational maps to signal unexplored or dangerous areas.

Project “Here Be Dragons” wil be prsented at the Guadalajara Festival Co-Production Meetings from Sunday.

Previously it has been put through the Morelia Lab, where it won a special mention,...

Mexico’s Cuevas de Altamira and Avanti Cinema and Argentina’s Gualicho Cine and Isla Bonita have joined forces to co-produce “Ángeles,” the latest feature from director-producer-writer Paula Markovitch, whose feature film debut, coming-of-age drama “The Prize,” won two Berlin Silver Bears in 2011.

Cuevas de Altamira is Markovitch’s label. A tough drama, its main characters are a poor kid who sells candies in the street and a fifty-something man sunk in despair, said the director.

First directing 1999’s “Perriférico,” a short starring Diego Luna, Markovitch has developed into an influential Latin American cineaste, co-wroting Fernando Eimbcke’s “Duck Season” which swept Guadalajara in 2004 snagging eight awards, and Lorenzo’s Vigas’ 2021 Venice hit, “The Box.”

“Ángeles” will be Markovitch’s fourth feature as director. It explores the unexpected and raw story of David and Ángeles. “One afternoon, David confesses to Ángeles that he’s going to jump off a building and kill himself.

by Nathaniel R

"Identifying Features" is available to rent on several services

The nominations for the 63rd annual Ariel Awards (Mexico's Oscars essentially) have been announced. Identifying Features, a drama about a mother travelling across Mexico in search of answers about her son who vanished trying to cross the border made the biggest noise with 16 nominations. In happy news All of the Best Picture nominated films are readily available online to US audiences. We've seen more of the Ariel contenders than usual thanks to their festival appearances and current availability (links in the nomination list if we've written about them). Identifying Features is up against two films we loved, Dance of the 41 and Los Lobos along with Tragic Jungle and a documentary called The Three Deaths of Marisela Escobedo... ...

A question as seemingly benign as “You’re Laura’s mother, right?” becomes the moment when Cielo’s life changes forever. The query, posed by a toothy-smiled young man, is born not out of curiosity but out of a need to make sure he’s found the right woman to extort. Even as he grins, there’s a sinister edge to his nonchalance when addressing Cielo, who slowly starts piecing together what’s afoot. Laura did not return home the night before and, as the cocksure young man soon informs her, she never will unless Cielo can come up with an exorbitant ransom fee.

What follows may well be accurately described as a revenge narco-western set in Northern Mexico. But such a synopsis risks sensationalizing the subject matter of “La Civil” and flattening its aesthetic prowess. Just as a mundane interaction kicks off a harrowing search that will leave Cielo...

A week after Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela) announces his immigration dreams to his mother Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) — a simple plan, consisting of alighting to Arizona with his best friend Rigo (Armando García), getting a job, and not much else — the young Mexican teenager is gone. Months later, the boys have yet to announce their arrival in the United States, nor have they returned to the landlocked state of Guanajuato. They, like so many before and likely after them, have simply gone missing, and in a country where such a tragedy is all too common, it falls on the people they’ve left behind to figure out what has happened to their beloved boys.

Fernanda Valadez’s feature directorial debut “Identifying Features” takes that seemingly tear-jerking concept — one beset by knotty bureaucratic issues, painful language barriers, and the sense of further danger around every bend — and turns it into an artfully...

Riz Ahmed, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Michaela Coel win prizes.

Nomadland picked up its second and third awards in three days as it won best feature and the IFP Gotham Audience Award at the 30th annual Gotham Awards on Monday (January 11).

Searchlight Pictures’ drama directed by Chloé Zhao topped the National Society Of Film Critics vote at the weekend and is gathering impressive momentum during awards season and prevailed in a category where women directed every nominee.

In a strong night for British talent Riz Ahmed won best actor for Sound Of Metal, Kingsley Ben-Adir of One Night In Miami emerged victorious in the Breakthrough Actor contest,...

“Nomadland” has been named the best independent film of 2020 at the 30th annual Gotham Awards, which were handed out on Monday night at a hybrid ceremony from New York City.

The film won in a category in which all five nominated films were directed by women: Chloe Zhao for “Nomadland,” Kitty Green for “The Assistant,” Kelly Reichardt for “First Cow,” Eliza Hittman for “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and Natalie Erika James for “Relic.”

The win made Zhao the first director to have two films take the top prize at the Gothams. She won in 2018 for “The Rider.”

Acting awards went to Riz Ahmed from “Sound of Metal” for best actor, Nicole Beharie for “Miss Juneteenth” for best actress and Kingsley Ben-Adir from “One Night in Miami” for breakthrough actor.

The screenplay category resulted in a tie between Radha Blank for “The Forty-Year-Old Version” and Dan Sallitt for “Fourteen.” The documentary...

The 2020 Gotham Awards have already made history, with all of this year’s best feature nominees directed by women. The ceremony, which will livestream on the Independent Filmmaker Project and Variety’s Facebook pages beginning at 8 p.m. Et, is sure to offer more of the same.

The 30th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards contenders are led by Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” which received all four major noms: best feature, screenplay, actor and breakthrough actor. Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland,” Kitty Green’s “The Assistant” and Natalie Erika James’s “Relic” are also nominated for best feature.

In the best actor category, Chadwick Boseman received a posthumous nomination for his role in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” The other nominees in the category include Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”), Jude Law (“The Nest”), John Magaro (“First Cow”) and Jesse Plemons (“I’m Thinking of Ending Things...

The Gotham Awards for independent film are being handed out tonight, January 11. More than 1,200 Gold Derby users have been predicting the winners since nominations were announced in October, and their predictions have been combined to generate our official racetrack odds. Scroll down to see our forecasts in 10 categories, with the nominees listed in order of their odds and our projected winners highlighted in gold.

SEE2021 Gotham Awards nominations: All 5 Best Feature nominees directed by women

“Nomadland” is the favorite to win Best Feature at these awards, which it would add to its already abundant pile of plaudits. It has already been named the best film of the year by critics in Boston, Chicago, Indiana and Greater Western New York, not to mention the Alliance of Women Film Journalists and the National Society of Film Critics.

But this wouldn’t be the first time director Chloe Zhao claimed this prize. Her...

“We’ve built up a track record by meeting challenges.”

Kino Lorber has picked up US rights to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Venice Silver Lion winner Wife Of A Spy, the latest in a long line of festival gems and prestige titles that has helped the New York distributor further distinguish itself this year.

Richard Lorber and his team plan a spring 2021 release on the pre-Second World War Hitchcockian thriller about a Japanese actress and her wealthy merchant husband who try to smuggle evidence to the US of a human experimentation programme in Japan-controlled Manchuria.

Kurosawa reunites with Japanese actress Yu...

The original Spanish-language title of Identifying Features is Sin Señas Particulares, or “No Particular Signs”—a reference to the individuating marks found, or not, on unclaimed corpses found near the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s an echo of Sin Nombre (“Nameless”), Cary Joji Fukunaga’s vivid immigration-thriller debut from 2009, and an apt title for a film that takes a fresh look at lives erased and distorted by migration and violence. Though Trump-era border policy is an implicit backdrop to the cartel activity and mass abductions she depicts, debuting director Fernanda Valadez’s zoomed-in perspective is on family trauma, not imperial culpability.

The Sundance audience and screenwriting award-winner Identifying Features begins in Guanajuato, in central Mexico, with the lyrical sight of a boy, Jesus, walking through a field to tell mother Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) of his intention to cross the border. Jesus walks off through the windblown grass with another...

"Don't ask those questions in public. You don't know who's listening." Kino Lorber has unveiled an official US trailer for an indie mother drama from Mexico titled Identifying Features, also known as Sin Señas Particulares (No Particular Signs) in Spanish. And the German title is Was Geschah mit Bus 670?, which just translates to What Happened to Bus 670?. The film follows Mercedes Hernandez as a mother who travels across Mexico in search for her son who authorities say died while trying to cross the border into the United States. "From this simple but urgent premise, director Fernanda Valadez has crafted a lyrical, suspenseful slow burn, equally constructed of moments of beauty and horror, and which leads to a startling, shattering conclusion. Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Audience and Screenplay Awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival." This also stars David Illescas, Juan Jesús Varela, Ana Laura Rodríguez, Laura Elena Ibarra,...

Heading into this year’s Guadalajara’s Co-Production Meetings, the team behind Michelle Garza’s maternal horror flick “Huesera” has shared with Variety news of a new minority co-producer, choreographer and key casting details.

“Huesera” is produced by Paulina Villaviencio from Mexico’s Disruptiva Films and Edher Campos of Machete Producciones. Villaviencio’s recently produced Simon Hernández‘s 2019 Sitges Documenta Award-winner “La venganza de Jairo,” documenting the final shoot of Colombian genre master Jairo Pinilla.

A recent Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences addition, Campos’ impressive resume includes Cannes awarded fare such as Michael Rowe’ Cannes Camera d’Or-winner “Leap Year” and Diego Quemada-Díez’s “La Jaula de Oro,” which scooped A Certain Talent award for its leads in 2013. Most recently, he produced Heidi Ewing’s Sundance Audience Award and Next Innovator Award-winner “I Carry You with Me.”

Lorena Ugarteche from Peru’s Señor Z will co-produce on the...

Swedish Film Institute announces Wild Card funding recipients for debut development funding.

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Burhan Qurbani is the big winner at the 2020 Stockholm International Film Festival, taking the Bronze Horse for best film and also the best actor prize for Welket Bungué.

Mexican director Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features was also a double winner for best director and best debut.

His compatriot Michel Franco was presented with this year’s Stockholm Impact Award for his film New Order. Gunda, by Victor Kossakovsky, won the Bronze Horse for best documentary.

Katherine Waterston won best actress for The World To Come.

‘Nomadland’ and ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ secure two nominations each.

Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow leads the nominations for the 30th IFP Gotham Awards, in which the nods for best feature are all directed by women.

Period drama First Cow, first seen at Telluride 2019 and released by A24, secured four nominations for best feature, screenplay and actor, for John Magaro, as well as breakthrough actor, for Orion Lee.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Titles that scored two nominations included Chloe Zhao’s Venice Golden Lion winner Nomadland, for best feature and actress Frances McDormand; and Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always,...

This year’s awards season, delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, finally got underway with the announcement of the 2021 Gotham Awards nominations on November 12 (last year’s big reveal was on Oct. 24). These awards are presented by the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) and honor the best of the year as determined by small committees of film journalists and festival programmers. The five Best Feature nominees, which were all directed by women, are: “The Assistant,” “First Cow,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” “Nomadland” and “Relic.” Scroll down to see the complete list of contenders.

Will these awards preview the Oscars? Perhaps. Last year’s Best Feature award went to “Marriage Story,” which did go on to reap a Best Picture bid. However, that was the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, its rival Gotham Awards nominees — “The Farewell,” “Hustlers,” “Uncut Gems” and “Waves” — were all snubbed by the Academy Awards.

Why is this?...

The starting pistol of awards season has been officially fired with the 30th annual IFP Gotham Awards announcing its nominations and making history. For the first time, women direct all the nominees for best feature. Among them are “The Assistant” from Kitty Green, “First Cow” from Kelly Reichardt, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” from Eliza Hittman, “Nomadland” from Chloé Zhao and “Relic” from Natalie Erika James.

In the best actor category, Chadwick Boseman received a posthumous nomination for his work in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” a performance likely to be shortlisted by many awards bodies over the next few months. The other nominees included Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”), Jude Law (“The Nest”), John Magaro (“First Cow”) and Jesse Plemons (“I’m Thinking of Ending Things”).

For the actresses, the group gave a very diverse field of cultures and experience. Nicole Beharie’s turn in “Miss Juneteenth” is a riveting portrait, and...

Kitty Green’s “The Assistant,” Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” and Natalie Erika James’ “Relic” have been nominated as the best independent films of 2020 at the 30th annual IFP Gotham Awards, the Independent Filmmaker Project announced on Thursday.

All five nominees in the Best Feature category were directed by women, a first for the Gothams.

With four nominations in the eight film categories, the period drama “First Cow” led all films in nominations. “Nomadland” and “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” each received two nominations, as did six other films that were not nominated in the Best Feature category: “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” “Miss Juneteenth,” “Saint Frances,” “The Vast of Night,” “The Nest” and “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.”

Nominees in the new Best International Feature category included Maimouna Doucoure’s “Cuties,” which led to protests by conservative critics when it aired on Netflix.

With days to spare before the opening night of this year’s Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival, organizers were suddenly forced to contend with a dramatic spike in coronavirus cases in Greece’s second city, prompting them to scrap plans for a hybrid edition and move entirely online.

The sudden reversal, said festival director Orestis Andreadakis, was “really, really difficult,” but not entirely unforeseen, as the country grapples with a second wave of Covid-19 that has far outpaced the first wave in the spring. Contingency plans were already in place, as Andreadakis and his colleagues spent months preparing for a variety of scenarios. “It was extremely difficult, because it was as if [we were] preparing three festivals” at the same time, he said.

On Nov. 3, the Greek government introduced a raft of new measures determined to halt the pandemic’s spread, including a curfew in both Thessaloniki and the country’s capital, Athens,...

Fernanda Valadez’s feature debut “Identifying Features” (“Sin Señas Particulares”) has collected the 18th Morelia Int’l Film Festival’s Best Film Ojo prize as well as Audience Award and best actress plaudit for its lead, Mercedes Hernandez.

In a spare and sparsely attended closing ceremony on Sunday evening, Hernandez was among only two winners who were present to come on stage. A visibly moved Hernandez said: “My son, when asked what I do, says I earn my living by crying, probably because he has seen me act in plays or movies.”

“Paradoxically, my character in this film cannot cry as she has to contain her rage, she has to persist in looking for her son… as there is nothing worse for a mother than not knowing if her son is dead or alive.”

The topical drama, about a mother searching desperately for her son who has vanished while attempting to cross into the U.

‘Identifying Features’ by Mexican filmmaker Fernanda Valadez wins top prize.

Mexican director Fernanda Valadez’s drama Identifying Features has won the top prize for best feature at the 2020 Zurich Film Festival, which awarded all its top Golden Eye honours to female directors.

Identifying Features is about a woman who travels across Mexico in search of her son, who is presumed dead after trying to cross the border, and teams with a recently deported young man.

The film premiered at Sundance where it won an audience award and screenplay prize, and more recently screened at San Sebastian, where it picked up the Horizons award.

The 68th San Sebastián Film Festival helped revive the global festival circuit this season with a physical event held September 18-26 in Spain. The lineup, which kicked off with Woody Allen’s “Rifkin’s Festival,” concluded with the annual awards September 26.

The festival’s big winner was Georgian writer/director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature “Beginning,” taking four of the jury prizes including Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress, and the Golden Shell for Best Film. A psychological portrait of the effects of an extremist attack on a rural place of worship, “Beginning” was originally slotted for a Cannes competition premiere, and also played the Toronto International Film Festival. Next, it will head to the ongoing New York Film Festival.

Other highlights included Florian Zeller’s Oscar hopeful “The Father,” winner of the Audience Award — and a likely Best Actor nominee next year for Anthony Hopkins’ devastating turn as a man wrestling with dementia.

13 films were in the running for prizes in this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival competition, but it doesn’t appear to have been much of a contest at all. In a stunning sweep, Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature “Beginning” took four of the jury’s seven prizes, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress for star Ia Sukhitashvili, and finally the Golden Shell for Best Film.

It’s a remarkable haul for a harrowing, avant-garde film that has taken critics by surprise this fall festival season, also landing the Fipresci critics’ prize in Toronto last week. The Franco-Georgian production centers on a close-knit community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in remote rural Georgia, and tracks the growing psychological torment of its leader’s wife (played by Sukhitashvili) in the wake of an extremist attack on their place of worship.

A challenging film to economically distil, it has prompted...

The film also won best director, best actress and best screenplay.

Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning has won the Golden Shell for best film at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The film has also been awarded the prizes for best director, best actress for Ia Sukhitashvili, and best screenplay for Kulumbegashvili and co-writer Rati Oneli by a competition jury headed by Luca Guadagnino.

It is the first time a Georgian film has won the Golden Shell.

The Silver Shell for best actor was shared by the four stars of Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round - Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen,...

The San Sebastian Festival’s new Works in Progress Latam program will unveil from Sept. 22 six film productions from Latin America to potential production partners and sales agents.

Examining such topics as militant activism, the relationship between leaders and followers, employers and employees, identity, devoutness and belief systems, this year’s projects reflect universal subject matter in films from Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Wip Latam, which runs Sept. 22-24, replaces San Sebastian’s Films in Progress event after its 18-year run.

This year’s works include “The Fossilized Remains,” Jerónimo Quevedo’s Argentine drama about young militants in Buenos Aires; Manuel Nieto’s “The Employer and the Employee,” an Uruguayan-Argentine-Brazilian-French co-production about the relationship between two young men, a boss and his worker, and the convoluted relationship of both with work, freedom and happiness; and “Boreal,” Federico Adorno’s Paraguayan-Mexican co-production about the followers of a Mennonite leader and...

More than half of all competition titles directed by women.

Switzerland’s Zurich Film Festival (Zff) has unveiled the full programme for its 2020 edition, which is set to go ahead as a physical event from September 24 to October 4.

Scroll down for list of competition titles

The 16th edition of the festival will comprise 165 films, of which 23 are world premieres and more than half of the competition titles are directed by women. Zff also revealed that Oscar-winning UK actress Olivia Colman will receive an honorary award and Johnny Depp is set to attend the festival with a new documentary.

The feature...

Pixar’s ‘Soul’ and Chloe Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’ are two of four cinema-only titles.

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled the full programme for its 2020 physical-virtual hybrid edition, with 58 features playing to audiences across the UK from October 7-18.

Pixar’s Soul and Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland starring Frances McDormand join Steve McQueen’s festival opener Mangrove and Francis Lee’s closer Ammonite as the four cinema-only titles, playing at select venues across the country.

Scroll down for the full lineup of features

A further 10 titles will play both in cinemas and via the festival’s online platform. These...

Yulene Olaizola’s “Tragic Jungle,” Natalia Meta’s “The Intruder” and Clarisa Navas’ “One in a Thousand” will compete in the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Latinos Horizontes, a showcase of standout recent movies from Latin America that this year underscores the emergence or consolidation of a new generation of female filmmakers in Latin America.

In all, women direct or co-direct seven of the nine features in Horizontes Latinos, a section which also features two world premieres: “La Verónica,” from Chile’s Leonardo Medel; and “Unlimited Edition,” co-directed by Virginia Cosín, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Santiago Loza and Romina Paula.

Certainly, this year’s San Sebastian makes no claim via its selection to women having suddenly taken over the Latin American industry: Four of the five titles from the region in other sections, including main competition (Argentine Eduardo Crespo’s “Nosotros Nunca Moriremos”) and New Directors (Brazilian João Paulo Miranda’s “Memory House”) are made by men.

The narrative feature “Minari” and the documentary “Boys State” have won the top prizes from the U.S. jury at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, which announced its winners at an awards ceremony on Saturday night. “Minari,” director Lee Isaac Chung’s coming-of-age story about a Korean-American boy, also won the festival’s audience award.

The only other films to win more than one award were “Identifying Features” (“Sin Senas Particulares”), Fernanda Valadez’s drama about a Mexican woman searching for a son who disappeared while attempting to cross the border; and “I Carry You With Me,” in which documentary director Heidi Ewing makes her narrative feature debut about an aspiring Mexican chef whose life changes when his sexuality becomes public. “Identifying Features” won the audience award in the World Cinema Dramatic section and a jury award for its screenplay, while “I Carry You With Me” won the audience award in...

The Sundance Film Festival had its share of big deals this year, from the record-setting $17,500,000.69 that Neon and Hulu paid for Palm Springs to a pair of $12 million deals for The Night House (Searchlight) and Uncle Frank (Amazon).

With the powder still settling, the 2020 fest handed out its annual awards Saturday night in a ceremony at Basin Fieldhouse in Park City, where it also revealed that Tabitha Jackson has been named the new Director, succeeding the retiring John Cooper.

Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari was the big winner tonight, taking both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Based on Chung’s real life, the drama follows a Korean-American family that moves from L.A. to Arkansas to chase the American Dream.

Other films that have managed to take the top two awards at the fest recently include Birth of a Nation in...