In this year’s Berlinale Shorts, cinema is distilled to its most essential features. Conventional narratives are very much eschewed in favour of complex ideas, bold left turns and bravura filmmaking gestures. This is my fifth time covering the programme for Directors Notes, and once again I am pleased by the aesthetic unity of the offerings as well as their unorthodox filmmaking techniques. You’d be hard-pressed to find another section at the festival with so much diversity. As usual, there may be some films that I found confounding, odd or interminable, but I can’t accuse them of peddling cliché or well-worn narratives. Most notably, while the feature competition at Berlinale contains no animated movies this year, the Shorts has plenty, putting them on an equal footing with their live-action and documentary counterparts. From the unclassifiable to classical filmmaking, strange 3D models to lo-fi romance, here are ten excellent...
- 2/23/2024
- by Redmond Bacon
- Directors Notes
Multi-prized Latin American directors Federico Veiroj, Theo Court, Alicia Scherson and Daniel Hendler head a muscular project lineup at September’s San Sebastian Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, the Spanish festival’s industry centerpiece which underscores this year a welling sea-change in the region’s filmmaking.
“The Moneychanger,” the latest film from Uruguay’s Veiroj, was selected for Toronto’s 2019 Platform; “White on White,” from Chile’s Court, won a best director Silver Lion at 2019’s Venice Horizons; Chile’s Alicia Scherson’s debut “Play” snagged new narrative director at Tribeca in 2005: multi-hyphenate Hendler, from Uruguay, scooped best director at Miami for “The Candidate” in 2017.
Also making the cut are Mexico’s Juan Pablo González and Ana Isabel Fernández, director and co-writer of 2022 Sundance Special Jury Prize winner “Dos Estaciones.” Ezequiel Yanco’s “La vida en común” took best documentary at the Biarritz Latin American Festival in 2019.
Mixing top cineasts...
“The Moneychanger,” the latest film from Uruguay’s Veiroj, was selected for Toronto’s 2019 Platform; “White on White,” from Chile’s Court, won a best director Silver Lion at 2019’s Venice Horizons; Chile’s Alicia Scherson’s debut “Play” snagged new narrative director at Tribeca in 2005: multi-hyphenate Hendler, from Uruguay, scooped best director at Miami for “The Candidate” in 2017.
Also making the cut are Mexico’s Juan Pablo González and Ana Isabel Fernández, director and co-writer of 2022 Sundance Special Jury Prize winner “Dos Estaciones.” Ezequiel Yanco’s “La vida en común” took best documentary at the Biarritz Latin American Festival in 2019.
Mixing top cineasts...
- 8/14/2023
- by John Hopewell and Emiliano De Pablos
- Variety Film + TV
’Three Bullets’ by Génesis Valenzuela wins three prizes, with Gloria Carrión’s ’Pantasma’ also honoured.
The Dominican Republic director Génesis Valenzuela was the big winner at today’s (August 8) awards ceremony for Locarno’s talent development programme Open Doors.
The artist-filmmaker received three awards for her debut feature project Three Bullets (Tres Balas) described as “a visually enthralling journey intertwining colonial history, displacement and criminal investigation.”
The hybrid project employing narrative strategies from fiction, documentary and essay cinema investigates the murder of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Pérez in Spain by four neo-Nazis in 1992. It is produced by Wendy B. Espinal.
Three...
The Dominican Republic director Génesis Valenzuela was the big winner at today’s (August 8) awards ceremony for Locarno’s talent development programme Open Doors.
The artist-filmmaker received three awards for her debut feature project Three Bullets (Tres Balas) described as “a visually enthralling journey intertwining colonial history, displacement and criminal investigation.”
The hybrid project employing narrative strategies from fiction, documentary and essay cinema investigates the murder of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Pérez in Spain by four neo-Nazis in 1992. It is produced by Wendy B. Espinal.
Three...
- 8/8/2023
- by Martin Blaney
- ScreenDaily
Dominican project Tres balas (Three Bullets) has dominated the awards handed out by Open Doors, Locarno Pro’s talent development program for artists from underrepresented communities.
The pic, directed by Génesis Valenzuela and produced by Wendy Espinal, picked up three awards, including a Chf 20,000 Open Doors cash grant alongside a €8,000 development grand handed out by France’s Cnc.
Set in 1992, the project tells the true story of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Pérez, who was brutally murdered by four neo-Nazis while living in Madrid. The attack was the first case of racism and xenophobia recognized by the Spanish State.
The projects synopsis reads: Through a visually enthralling journey intertwining colonial history, displacement, and criminal investigation, the director will delve into Lucrecia’s life as a way to explore the diaspora experience and dislocate the grand narrative of history- as she currently shares Lucrecia’s undocumented status. The present and the past connect,...
The pic, directed by Génesis Valenzuela and produced by Wendy Espinal, picked up three awards, including a Chf 20,000 Open Doors cash grant alongside a €8,000 development grand handed out by France’s Cnc.
Set in 1992, the project tells the true story of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Pérez, who was brutally murdered by four neo-Nazis while living in Madrid. The attack was the first case of racism and xenophobia recognized by the Spanish State.
The projects synopsis reads: Through a visually enthralling journey intertwining colonial history, displacement, and criminal investigation, the director will delve into Lucrecia’s life as a way to explore the diaspora experience and dislocate the grand narrative of history- as she currently shares Lucrecia’s undocumented status. The present and the past connect,...
- 8/8/2023
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Locarno — Two movie projects which capture best the brewing revolution in Latin American filmmaking walked off with the biggest plaudits at this year’s Locarno Open Doors prize ceremony on Tuesday.
Both underscore the mindset reset among cineasts – their questioning of received wisdom accompanied by the explosion in invention being brought to low-budget filmmaking in the region.
Directed by Nicaragua’s Gloria Carrión and produced by Leonor Zuñiga, “Pantasma” took the biggest cash prize on offer, CHF25,000 from Visions Sud Est, for a project which begs to differ from Nicaragua’s Contras were U.S.-backed mercenaries.
“Pantasma” presents a more nuanced vision, based on the memoirs of former Sandinista Felix Vigil and his dawning realization, during the Sandinista-Contra War that the revolution was “fighting Nicaraguan peasants and not paid mercenaries [whch] will make him question everything he believes in,” Carrión has noted.
Fleeing Nicaragua as Daniel Ortega has increasingly suppressed...
Both underscore the mindset reset among cineasts – their questioning of received wisdom accompanied by the explosion in invention being brought to low-budget filmmaking in the region.
Directed by Nicaragua’s Gloria Carrión and produced by Leonor Zuñiga, “Pantasma” took the biggest cash prize on offer, CHF25,000 from Visions Sud Est, for a project which begs to differ from Nicaragua’s Contras were U.S.-backed mercenaries.
“Pantasma” presents a more nuanced vision, based on the memoirs of former Sandinista Felix Vigil and his dawning realization, during the Sandinista-Contra War that the revolution was “fighting Nicaraguan peasants and not paid mercenaries [whch] will make him question everything he believes in,” Carrión has noted.
Fleeing Nicaragua as Daniel Ortega has increasingly suppressed...
- 8/8/2023
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
A revolution is working through Latin American filmmaking. It’s powered by new gen cineastes, educated at top film schools, very often women, who are questioning pretty much everything everywhere all at once, re-representing themselves and questioning what can make up a movie these days.
Locarno’s Open Doors is a case in point. Five takeaways on this year’s lineup:
Recalibration of a Sense of Self
“Three Bullets,” at Open Doors Projects Hub, is made by Dominican Génesis Valenzuela, an alum of San Sebastian’s prestigious Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, which plumbs the murder of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Pérez, shot and killed by four neo-Nazis, the same year that Spain celebrated its conquest of Latin America. Valenzuela will come in at the film as she reconstructs her own identity as a “human being/woman/Afro-Caribbean/filmmaker.” “The driving force of this film is the desire for emancipation, both from...
Locarno’s Open Doors is a case in point. Five takeaways on this year’s lineup:
Recalibration of a Sense of Self
“Three Bullets,” at Open Doors Projects Hub, is made by Dominican Génesis Valenzuela, an alum of San Sebastian’s prestigious Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, which plumbs the murder of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Pérez, shot and killed by four neo-Nazis, the same year that Spain celebrated its conquest of Latin America. Valenzuela will come in at the film as she reconstructs her own identity as a “human being/woman/Afro-Caribbean/filmmaker.” “The driving force of this film is the desire for emancipation, both from...
- 8/1/2023
- by John Hopewell and Pablo Sandoval
- Variety Film + TV
There's an episode of the criminally under-seen "Los Espookys" — which you can stream on HBO Max — that's been on my mind as of late. Titled "Las Muchas Caras de un Hombre" ("One Man's Many Faces"), the episode sees the show's oddball protagonists forced to work a second time for one of their least-favorite clients, Dr. Lucrecia. A controlling and incompetent scientist who squanders her boss' money pretending to research extra-terrestrial life, Dr. Lucrecia has decided her husband is the real cause of all her problems. Forget that her husband, who seems mostly harmless (if also hapless), has had nothing to do with her bad behavior in the past. Dr. Lucrecia keeps insisting that's the case until those around her simply give up trying to convince her otherwise.
Why, you may ask, is this weirdo going on about a relatively obscure Spanish-language absurdist comedy series in an article supposedly about the...
Why, you may ask, is this weirdo going on about a relatively obscure Spanish-language absurdist comedy series in an article supposedly about the...
- 4/13/2023
- by Sandy Schaefer
- Slash Film
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