Armando Espitia Signs with United Talent Agency (UTA)

Armando Espitia is ready for Hollywood…

United Talent Agency (UTA) has signed the 29-year-old Mexican actor in all areas. 

Armando Espitia

Espitia most recently starred in Heidi Ewing’s drama I Carry You With Me, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Awardand Grand Jury Awardin the Next!categories.

Espitia first came to prominence with his leading role in Amat Escalante’s Cannes Film Festival title Heli and also starred as the lead in Nuestras Madreswhich opened at Cannes in Critics’ Weekwhere it picked up the Caméra d’Or.

Additionally, he has appeared in several features including Ayúdame A Pasar La Noche,and Open Cage

On the television side, his credits include Amazon’s Diablo GuardiánTelemundo’s El Recluso as well as History Channel’s Texas Rising

He also founded the theater company Conejo Con Prisa.

Escalante’s “Heli” Earns Best International Film Honors at Munich International Film Festival

Amat Escalante’s latest project continues to impress international audiences…

The 34-year-old Mexican director’s drug drama Heli was named the winner of the Arri/Osram best international film award at this year’s Munich International Film Festival.

Amat Escalante

Heli, an independent Mexican crime drama released in May, tells the story of the titular protagonist (portrayed by Armando Espitia), a 17-year-old boy living with his wife (Linda González) and his sister, Estela (Adrea Vergara).

The film follows the arcs of these characters and Estela’s boyfriend (Juan Eduardo Palacios) as they struggle with drugs, violence, and corruption.

Heli

It’s the latest award for the Escalante, who was named best director at the Cannes Film Festival for his exceptional work on Heli.

Meanwhile, his fellow countryman Sebastian Hofmann won the CineVision prize for his debut, the horror tale Halley.

The drama/horror film tells the story of Alberto, who forms an unusual friendship with Luly, the manager of the 24-hour gym where he works as a night guard.

Escalante Wins Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival

Despite strong competition from the likes of the Coen Brothers and Asghar Farhadi, Amat Escalante has managed to take home some serious Cannes hardware.

The 34-year-old Mexican filmmaker on Sunday won the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his ultra-violent film Heli, which takes a look at Mexico’s blood-drenched drug wars.

Amat Escalante

Escalante, who was forced onto the defensive after the film’s violence left some members of the audience uneasy, paid tribute to this year’s Cannes jury headed by Steven Spielberg.

“This earthquake, I wasn’t expecting this! Thank you to this brave jury… to Mexico, I hope we never get used to suffering… ” he said.

Heli tells the story of a family caught up in gangland battles in an unnamed desert region of contemporary Mexico and contains protracted torture scenes.

In one scene, a character sets the genitals of a suspected cocaine thief ablaze.

Escalante reacted to criticism of the film by calling it an accurate depiction of the situation in underworld crime-blighted Mexico.

And he dismissed critical questions about upsetting audiences.

“What’s the point of not showing the violence just so the audience can go through the story and not suffer so much when actually that’s not how violence is in real life?” he asked reporters.

“I think I’m curious about sex and death and violence, and so that’s all in the film,” added Escalante, whose last picture Los Bastardos, set among the Mexican community in Los Angeles, played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 2008.

Heli features amateur actors, telling the story of a police cadet who falls for the 12-year-old sister of a factory worker named Heli (Armando Espitia).

Variety called Heli “an accomplished but singularly unpleasant immersion” into the drug wars and noted that it was the most “explicit, realistically violent film” in the Cannes competition in several years.

However Robbie Collin, a reviewer for London’s Daily Telegraph, said: “Even a bleak existence can make an uplifting story.”

Heli may be the most optimistic film you will ever see in which one young man sets another’s genitals on fire,” he wrote.