Berger’s “Blancanieves” Wins Cine Latino Award

Pablo Berger is one of this year’s shining stars at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

The 49-year-old Spanish director’s latest film Blancanieves, which premiered in the United States at the festival, claimed the Cine Latino Award in Palm Springs.

Blancanieves

Blancanieves, which earned 18 Goya Award nominations last week, is a black-and-white silent film that re-imagines Snow White as a female bullfighter in 1920s Seville. The film is described as an homage to the black-and-white Golden Age of Europe’s silent cinema.

Blancanieves beat out Argentina’s Las mariposas de Sadourni, directed by Dario Nardi, to win the award.

Meanwhile, Peru’s El limpiador, directed Adrian Saba, won the New Voices/New Visions Award; Paraguay’s 7 Boxes, directed by Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori earned honorable mention honors.

The festival, which began January 3, screened 182 films from 68 countries, including 42 of the 71 foreign language entries for this year’s Academy Awards.

“Blancanieves” Earns 18 Goya Award Nominations

Pablo Berger‘s silent black-and-white reinterpretation of the Snow White fable, Blancanieves, is this awards season’s Goya darling.  

The 49-year-old Spanish director’s film, hailed as an homage to 1920s European silent films, leads the pack with 18 nominations for the Spanish Film Academy‘s Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent to the Oscars.

Blancanieves

Blancanieves, which recently debuted in the U.S. at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, received nominations in the best picture, best director, best original screenplay and best editing, best original music and best original song categories.

In addition, six of the films stars earned nods, including Maribel Verdú in the Best Actress category, Daniel Giménez Cacho in the Best Actor field and Macarena García in the Best Actress Revelation category.

“We are very, very happy. We ran for 18 possible nominations and we got 18,” said Blancanieves producer Ibon Cormenzana. “We’ve sold to many territories and in two weeks we’ll release in theaters in France. I think we’ve benefited from the success of the The Artist.”

Meanwhile, Alberto Rodriguez’s Unit 7 earned 16 nominations, Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible received 14 nods and Fernando Trueba’s The Artist and The Model picked up 13 nominations.

The Impossible’s Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor will compete for lead actress and supporting actor thanks to a change in the Spanish Academy’s rules that allows non-Spanish speaking actors who participate in Spanish productions to compete for acting honors. That translates to Watts vying for the lead acting nod against Verdu’s evil step-mother from Blancanieves, Penelope Cruz from Volver a nacer and Aida Folch‘s muse-like performance in The Artist and the Model.

Blancanieves’ Cacho, Model’s Jean Rochefort, Unit’s Antonio de la Torre and veteran actor Jose Sacristan from The Dead Man and Being Happy will compete for the lead actor statue.

In Spain, Bayona’s film has broken box office records, where it is just about to hit the 42 million euro mark at the box office.

“Our objective is to sell more than 6 million tickets,” said Impossible producer Ghislain Barrois.

The Spanish academy will dole out the awards on February 17 at a gala ceremony in Madrid.

“Blancanieves” to Open the Palm Springs International Film Festival

Blancanieves is leaving the forest and heading to Palm Springs…

Blancanieves

The Spanish film, a reinterpretation of the Snow White fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, has been picked to kick off the Palm Springs International Film Festival next month.

Directed by Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger, the black-and-white silent film – described as an homage to the black-and-white Golden Age of Europe’s silent cinema – re-imagines Snow White as a female bullfighter in 1920s Seville. The film is Spain’s entry in the Oscar race for a Best Foreign Language Film nomination.

Blancanieves will open the festival, which will feature 180 films from 68 countries, on January 3. The festival concludes on January 14.

Huezo Sánchez Among Palm Springs Film Festival Award Winners

The first time’s a charm for Mexico’s Tatiana Huezo Sánchez, who has picked up one of the top prizes at the 23rd Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Tatiana Huezo Sanchez

The 40-year-old part-Salvadorean/part-Mexican director/cinematographer, who moved to Mexico City at the age of 4, received the John Schlesinger Award this past weekend, which is presented to a first-time documentary filmmaker, for her work behind the lens on The Tiniest Place (El Lugar Más Pequeño).

The documentary tells the heartbreaking yet hopeful story of Cinquera, a small town in rural El Salvador that was completely depopulated during the Civil War, as told by the survivors who have returned with astonishing resilience to rebuild their lives on their native soil.

El lugar mas pequeno

It’s a very personal project for Huezo Sánchez, who was inspired to make the documentary after her first moments in her grandmother’s town.

“A few years ago I visited my paternal grandmother in San Salvador and she took me to the town were she was born, Cinquera. It took us three hours to get there on dirt roads. That same evening we arrrived I went out for a walk, alone.  Suddenly an eldery woman hugged me, “Rina!” she shouted ‘you came back! You haven’t changed a bit!’ I didn’t know how to react, I told her it was a mistake, that I wasn’t Rina. The woman didn’t believe me. I’m not Rina, but I could have been.,” recalls Huezo Sánchez, about how her opera prima came to be. “Later, I stepped into the small town church, the walls were filled with bullet holes, there were only a few wooden benches, a military helicopter tail hung on a wall. There were very few religious images on the walls but there were rows of portraits of young people that died in the war. The images and sensations of this space touched me deeply. I felt a need to know everything that happened here.”

Huezo Sánchez has received the John Kennedy Statue, which is called “The Entertainer,” for her win at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, one of North America’s biggest film festivals attracting about 130,000 attendees each year with its features and documentaries from around the world.