Penelope Cruz’s latest project is headed to theaters in United Kingdom…
The 47-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning actress’ Spanish-language comedy Official Competition, co-starring Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez, has been acquired for UK distribution by Protagonist Pictures.
The announcement came ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
In Official Competition, Oscar winner Cruz plays renowned filmmaker Lola Cuevas, who is recruited by a billionaire entrepreneur who impulsively decides to create an iconic movie. Banderas stars as Hollywood heartthrob Félix Rivero, and joining them is Argentinian actor Oscar Martínez (The Distinguished Citizen), who plays radical theatre actor Iván Torres.
The Spanish-language comedy, directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat from a script they wrote with Andrés Duprat, will also screen in the Special Presentations section of the Toronto International Film Festival and will open this year’s Perlak Section at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Produced by The Mediapro Studio, the film has already sold to a string of international indie buyers.
“We are incredibly excited to work with such a talented cast and such lauded directors. We’re thrilled to bring this hilarious and witty film to UK audiences at a time when it is much needed,” said Curzon officials.
Protagonist CCO George Hamilton added: “Our friends at Curzon have a prodigious record in delivering high-quality films to discerning UK audiences, making them the perfect partners to distribute this whip-smart comedy, led by A-list talent at the top of their game, and helmed by some of Spain’s most fiercely talented filmmakers. We know Official Competition is in the best hands possible.”
Michel Franco is preparing for Sundown in England…
The BFI London Film Festival has confirmed an eight-strong lineup for its Official Competition this year, with the 42-year-old Mexican film director, screenwriter and producer’s latest project making the cut.
Franco’s Sundown is the only film from a Latinx filmmaker set to compete at the festival.
The drama, written and directed by Franco, stars Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting McMillan and Samuel Bottomley.
Sundown, which centers on a wealthy man who attempts to abandon his family on vacation, is schedule to have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2021.
Here’s the complete list of movies in competition:
Belle (Japan, dir-scr. Mamoru Hosoda) Il Buco (Italy-Germany-France, dir. Michelangelo Frammartino) The Hand Of God (Italy, dir-scr. Paolo Sorrentino) Nitram (Australia, dir. Justin Kurzel) Hit The Road (Iran, dir. Panah Panahi) Sundown (Mexico-France-Sweden, dir-scr. Michel Franco) Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (Chad-France-Germany-Belgium, dir-scr. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun) True Things (UK, dir. Harry Wootliff)
A jury will select a winning film, to be announced at the LFF Awards Ceremony on October 17.
“With Official Competition our aim is to present a curated programme that showcases the breadth and richness of international cinema for our audiences. Anyone new to the LFF should consider Official Competition a big neon sign that is blinking: “enter here”. This eight film selection is full of individual cinematic diamonds – each one unique and beautiful in its own way. Together they are dazzling and demonstrate the endless potential of cinema in the hands of a great filmmaker. With a selection like this we have made the jury’s job very difficult indeed,” said LFF Director Tricia Tuttle.
Paz Vega will be spending the Night in the United States…
Saban Films has acquired the North American rights to the action thriller American Night, starring the 45-year-old Spanish actress.
The announcement comes ahead of the film’s debut at the Venice Film Festival, with plans to release it in theaters this fall.
The first feature from writer-director Alessio Della Valle is a neo-noir set in New York City’s corrupt contemporary art world, which stars Emile Hirsch, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Vega, Jeremy Piven, Michael Madsen and more.
The film follows art dealer John Kaplan (Meyers) and Michael Rubino (Hirsch), the ruthless head of New York’s mafia, as they fight for money, art, power and love.
American Night hails from Martha Productions, Pegasus Entertainment, QMI and RAI Cinema. Martha Capello and Ilaria Dello Iacono produced the film, with Giorgio Ferrero exec producing.
“We look forward to working with Director Alessio Della Valle on his feature directorial debut American Night,” said Saban Films’ Bill Bromiley. “His experiences travelling the world have equipped him with a unique perspective and make him such a gifted filmmaker.”
Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for Dune, starring the 42-year-old Guatemalan & Cuban actor.
It’s the first clip of the highly anticipated film since the initial trailer hit last September, prior to the recent schedule change.
Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September before it hits theaters and HBO Max day-and-date on October 22.
This trailer begins with Zendaya’s character Chani surveying the deserts of her planet Arrakis before kicking into higher gear with action scenes and a dash or two of comedy (“Look at you – put on some muscle?,” asks Jason Momoa’s Duncan upon seeing Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides. “I did?”, Chalament responds. “No,” says Momoa.)
In addition to Isaac, Zendaya, Chalamet and Momoa, Dune features Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Chang Chen and David Dastmalchian, with Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem.
The official synopsis: A mythic and emotionally charged hero’s journey, Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive.
Dune, a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures presentation of a Legendary Pictures Production, is also being released in 3D and Imax, will makes its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and then plays the Toronto Film Festival. Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth wrote the script.
Warner Bros. has released a series of character posters from Dune, its upcoming sci-fi tentpole starring the 42-year-old Guatemalan & Cuban actor.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the film is an update of Frank Herbert’s novel, which was turned into a 1984 movie by David Lynch.
Dune is set to have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September before it hits theaters and HBO Max day-and-date on October 22.
In addition to Isaac, Dune‘s cast includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Sharon Duncan Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen and David Dastmalchian, with Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa and Javier Bardem.
The character posters revealed via the film’s social media pages feature Chalamet, who stars as Paul Atreides; Zendaya as Chani; Ferguson as Lady Jessica; Momoa as Duncan Idaho; Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides; Bardem as Stilgar; Brolin as Gurney Halleck; and Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
The plot centers on Atreides, a brilliant and gifted man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence — a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential — only those who can conquer their fear will survive.
Villeneuve directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth.
The 78th Venice Film Festival will open with Pedro Almodovar’s Madres Paralelas, starring the 47-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning actress.
The film will play in Competition and will open the fest on September 1. It also stars Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Julieta Serrano and Rossy De Palma.
The story follows two women, Janis and Ana, who coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and got pregnant by accident.
Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which chance will undertake to develop and complicate in such a decisive way that it will change the lives of both.
The film is produced by El Deseo and will be distributed in Italy by Warner Bros. Pictures. Almodóvar received Venice’s 2019 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
“I was born as a film director in 1983 in Venice,” commented Almodóvar, “In the Mezzogiorno Mezzanotte section. Thirty-eight years later I am called to open the festival. I cannot explain the joy and the honor, and how much this means to me without falling into complacency. I am very grateful to the festival for this recognition and hope to be up to it”.
Venice director Alberto Barbera added: “I am grateful to Pedro Almodóvar for having given us the privilege of opening the film festival with his new movie, an intense and sensitive portrait of two women as they contend with a pregnancy with unpredictable consequences, women’s solidarity, and sexuality that is experienced in full freedom and without hypocrisy, all against the backdrop of a reflection on the ineluctable need for truth that is to be unwaveringly pursued. This is a very welcome return to Venice in Competition for the recipient of our 2019 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, many years after the success of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown the movie that marked his definitive triumph on the international scene.”
The Match Factory has acquired the rights to The Box (La Caja), the second feature of the Mexican filmmaker, who previously won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion with From Afar.
The Box will likely to find a berth at the Cannes Film Festival or the Venice Film Festival.
The film follows Hatzin, a teenager from Mexico City, who travels to collect the remains of his father, which have been found in a communal grave in the northern part of Mexico. But a casual encounter with a man who shares a physical resemblance with his father fills Hatzin with both doubts and hope about his parent’s true whereabouts.
Vigas says that in the film he reflects on “the theme of identity from various points of view.” He adds: “Latin American history is very young. Until a relatively short time ago, we were still European colonies; as a continent, we are trying to understand who we are and where we are going. Though still an adolescent, Hatzin is an uncanny presence through which the film explores this theme from various perspectives.”
Hatzin’s story gets entangled with one of north Mexico’s saddest realities, an area well known for the disappearance of more than 20,000 women in the last 10 years in mysterious circumstances.
Vigas was able to shoot in an actual maquiladora – the low cost assembly plants of the Ciudad Juarez region. These plants’ international owners rarely share details about their production lines or their working conditions.
The Box is the third film in a thematic trilogy Vigas has developed about Latin American fathers. The first film, the short Elephants Never Forget (Cannes Critics’ Week, 2004) provided the seed for the second work, Viga’s first feature, From Afar.
The Box cast includes Hernán Mendoza and Hatzín Navarrete. It is written by Vigas and Paula Markovitch.
Luis López Carrasco is celebrating his big Discovery…
The 39-year-old Spanish filmmaker took home the Best International Film prize for his documentary The Year of the Discovery (El año del descubrimiento) on Sunday at Argentina’s Mar del PlataInternational Film Festival, the only Latin American film fest granted a Category A status by producers association FIAPF, placing it in the same league as the Cannes Film Festival, VeniceFilm Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival and Locarno Film Festival, among others.
Due to the restraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival hosted an online edition and offered free access to all Argentine residents.
Carrasco’s sophomore feature follows his debut film El Futuro, which premiered at Locarno and collected numerous awards on the festival circuit.
The Year of the Discovery portrays the flipside of 1992 Spain, which celebrated hosting the 1992 Barcelona Games and the World Expo in Seville while in Murcia, south-east Spain, enraged workers from the naval, mining and chemical sectors where companies were shut down, battled alongside students against the police, culminating with the launch of Molotov cocktails that set fire to the regional government’s Parliament.
In a video call from Spain, a grateful López Carrasco dedicated the award to his parents and brother “for being the people who most taught me how to listen.”
Colombian Camilo Restrepo’s Los Conductos won the best film prize in the festival’s Latin American competition. Winner of last year’s Mar del Plata Work in Progress competition, Los Conductos marks an attempt to explore Colombia’s civil conflicts with a style outside the canons of social realism as it follows a man in his attempts to flee from a sect and the trauma that still haunts him.
Maria Alvarez’s The Lost Time (El Tiempo Perdido) trounced a strong lineup in the Argentine competition, which included notable titles like Esquirlas, The History of the Occult and Las Ranas, to nab the best Argentine film prize.
In The Lost Time, a group of now aged friends find new and personal meaning in Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time at each of the 18 years they have gathered at a Buenos Aires bar to discuss it.
“In this online edition, more than 200,000 people saw the films we have programmed, and on YouTube, more than 180,000 people followed our events, so I congratulate the public who have known how to adapt to our circumstances,” said festival president Fernando Juan Lima at the online closing ceremony. “We miss the City of Mar del Plata and its movie theaters, but we are going to return,” he declared.
“We celebrate [the festival’s] continuity even with the challenges that the pandemic has imposed on us,” concurred festival artistic director Cecilia Barrionuevo. The festival paid homage to filmmaker-politician Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas, Argentine actress-writer-director Maria Luisa Bemberg and, naturally, Argentina’s greatest hero, soccer star Diego Maradona, who died Nov. 25 from heart failure.
Augusto Costa, minister of production, science, and technological innovation, also announced that Mar del Plata would be the site of the fifth regional headquarters of Argentine film school, Enerc.
“From the government and from the ministry, we reaffirm our absolute commitment to the festival and to the audiovisual industry of the province,” said Costa.
2020 MAR DEL PLATA ASTOR PIAZZOLLA PRIZES
OFFICIAL INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
BEST FILM “The Year of the Discovery,” (Luis López Carrasco, Spain, Switzerland)
BEST DIRECTOR Matías Piñeiro, (“Isabella,” Argentina)
BEST PERFORMANCE María Villar, (“Isabella,” Argentina)
BEST SCREENPLAY
Nicolás Prividera, (“A Farewell to Memory,” Argentina)
SPECIAL JURY “Moving On,” (Yoon Dan-bi, Korea)
LATIN AMERICAN COMPETITION
BEST FILM “Los Conductos,” (Camilo Restrepo, Colombia, Brazil, France)
SPECIAL MENTION “Mascarados,” (Marcela Borela and Henrique Borela, Brazil)
SPECIAL MENTION “Fauna,” (Nicolás Pereda, Mexico)
BEST SHORT “Correspondence,” (Dominga Sotomayor and Carla Simón, Chile)
ARGENTINE COMPETITION
BEST FILM “The Lost Time,” (María Álvarez, Argentina)
SPECIAL MENTION “Las Ranas,” (Edgardo Castro, Argentina)
BEST SHORT “Homage to the Work of Philip Henry Gosse,” (Pablo Martín Weber)
BEST DIRECTOR “Esquirlas,” (Natalia Garayalde, Argentina)
ALTERNATE STATES
BEST FILM
“My Dear Spies,” (Vladimir Léon, France)
SPECIAL MENTION “Heliconia,” (Paula Rodríguez Polanco, France, Colombia)
WORK IN PROGRESS
BEST PROJECT “Morichales,” (Chris Gude, Colombia, U.S.)
BEST LATIN AMERICAN DEBUT FILM, YOUNG CRITICS PRIZE “History of the Occult,” (Cristian Ponce, Argentina)
Jayro Bustamante could be bringing the horror to the Oscars…
The 43-year-old Guatemalan film director and screenwriter’s politically charged horror film La Llorona, which won the Venice Days sidebar at last year’s Venice Film Festival, is Guatemala’s selection to the 2021 International Oscar race.
It’s the second film by Bustamante to get his country’s Academy Awards submission, after his debut feature Ixcanulin 2015.
His latest film fuses the Latin American Llorona myth and modern reality in an exposé of the genocidal atrocities against the Mayan community in Guatemala.
The plot delves into magical realism as it follows Enrique (Julio Diaz), a retired general who oversaw the Mayan genocide and is haunted by his devastating crimes, and possibly a wrathful supernatural force that is targeting him and his family.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and survivor of the atrocities, also appears in the film.
The film, which had its U.S. bow this year at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of its August 6 premiere on Shudder, currently has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Guatemala has yet to be nominated for the International Feature Film Oscar.
Diego Boneta’s latest film is heading across the pond…
Arthouse outfit MUBI has acquired all UK and Ireland rights to Michel Franco’s Venice Film Festival drama New Order, starring the 29-year-old Mexican singer and actor.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.
Conceived six years ago, Franco’s timely class conflict drama sees a high-society wedding interrupted by the arrival of unwelcome guests as protests rage on the streets.
Written, produced and directed by Franco, the film features an ensemble cast comprised of Boneta, Naian González Norvind, Darío Yazbek Bernal, Lisa Owen, Fernando Cuautle, Mónica Del Carmen, Eligio Meléndez, Patricia Bernal, Roberto Medina, Enrique Singer and Gustavo Sánchez Parra.
Boneta served as an executive producer on the project.
