‘Rest In Peace’ Ending Explained & Movie Spoilers: What Does Estela Do After Sergio’s Disappearance?
When you’re a bad businessman and neck-deep in debt, run! I wonder if any Indian director would take the step to make a documentary on the Vijay Mallyas and Nirav Modis, but Argentinian director Sebastián Borensztein’s Rest in Peace is a crafty take on fugitives.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Movie?
Sergio Dayán is a businessman with a family he cherishes. Sergio’s young son idolizes him, and his daughter confesses how he’s the only person she relies on at her bat mitzvah. Things aren’t as sunny and rosey as they seem; Sergio owes money to everyone around him. Sergio’s workers in the factory haven’t gotten paid in months, and he’s been threatened by them. A bigshot money lender has given an ultimatum to Sergio. Sergio’s financial conditions have hit such a low that he’s even unable to pay the tuition fees for his daughter.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Movie?
Sergio Dayán is a businessman with a family he cherishes. Sergio’s young son idolizes him, and his daughter confesses how he’s the only person she relies on at her bat mitzvah. Things aren’t as sunny and rosey as they seem; Sergio owes money to everyone around him. Sergio’s workers in the factory haven’t gotten paid in months, and he’s been threatened by them. A bigshot money lender has given an ultimatum to Sergio. Sergio’s financial conditions have hit such a low that he’s even unable to pay the tuition fees for his daughter.
- 3/28/2024
- by Aniket Mukherjee
- Film Fugitives
Rest in Peace is an Argentine thriller film starring Joaquín Furriel and Griselda Siciliani. It is written by Marcos Osorio Vidal and directed by Sebastián Borensztein.
“Rest in Peace” is a thriller that works: founded on compelling performances, a script that knows which buttons to push and when, and a clear vision of the story it wants to tell and how.
Plot
A man plagued by debts decides to vanish. Years later, he returns to confront his past and his family life.
Rest in Peace Film Review of “Rest in Peace”
“Rest in Peace” is, first and foremost, a film that rests on the foundation of a strong script determined to tell its story and, while employing many elements of a thriller, doesn’t insist on being a Hollywood-style thriller. The film expertly creates intrigue, plays the part of a suspense movie but also manages to stay within the realm of drama,...
“Rest in Peace” is a thriller that works: founded on compelling performances, a script that knows which buttons to push and when, and a clear vision of the story it wants to tell and how.
Plot
A man plagued by debts decides to vanish. Years later, he returns to confront his past and his family life.
Rest in Peace Film Review of “Rest in Peace”
“Rest in Peace” is, first and foremost, a film that rests on the foundation of a strong script determined to tell its story and, while employing many elements of a thriller, doesn’t insist on being a Hollywood-style thriller. The film expertly creates intrigue, plays the part of a suspense movie but also manages to stay within the realm of drama,...
- 3/27/2024
- by Veronica Loop
- Martin Cid Magazine - Movies
Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez’s,Saturn Return was the big winner at the Malaga Film Festival on March 9, taking home the awards for Golden Biznaga for best Spanish film, best director and best editing.
Other top prizes went to Celia Rico’s Little Loves, Álex Monoya’s La Casa, Pau Durá’s Birds Flying East (Pájaros) and Mexican drama Radical, by Christopher Zalla.
Saturn Return, a drama inspired by iconic indie rock band Los Planetas, is set in the late 1990s in Granada. It is produced by La Terraza Films, Áralan Films, Ikiru Films, Bteam Prods, Sideral Cinema and Los Ilusos Films.
Other top prizes went to Celia Rico’s Little Loves, Álex Monoya’s La Casa, Pau Durá’s Birds Flying East (Pájaros) and Mexican drama Radical, by Christopher Zalla.
Saturn Return, a drama inspired by iconic indie rock band Los Planetas, is set in the late 1990s in Granada. It is produced by La Terraza Films, Áralan Films, Ikiru Films, Bteam Prods, Sideral Cinema and Los Ilusos Films.
- 3/11/2024
- ScreenDaily
Malaga — Isaki Lacuesta’s “Saturn Return” (“Segundo Premio”), always a frontrunner, topped this week’s Malaga Festival winning its best picture, director (with co-director Pol Rodríguez) and editing (Javi Frutos) awards.
The triple plaudit delivers further recognition for a feature which pulls off the double achievement of being formally inventive and great fun at one and the same time.
Turning on Spanish indie rock group Los Planetas storied attempts to making their third and finally iconic album, but really about people’s need to recast the past as comprehensible narrative and a biopic parody, A broad audience play, “Saturn Return” has been hailed by Spanish newspaper El Mundo as a “masterpiece.”
“Saturn Returns” will do nothing to dent Lacuesta’s status as seemingly suddenly, after years in the wilderness as a supposedly radical filmmaker too out there to take on more ambitious budgets. Lacuesta’s feel-good concluding episode to “Offworld,...
The triple plaudit delivers further recognition for a feature which pulls off the double achievement of being formally inventive and great fun at one and the same time.
Turning on Spanish indie rock group Los Planetas storied attempts to making their third and finally iconic album, but really about people’s need to recast the past as comprehensible narrative and a biopic parody, A broad audience play, “Saturn Return” has been hailed by Spanish newspaper El Mundo as a “masterpiece.”
“Saturn Returns” will do nothing to dent Lacuesta’s status as seemingly suddenly, after years in the wilderness as a supposedly radical filmmaker too out there to take on more ambitious budgets. Lacuesta’s feel-good concluding episode to “Offworld,...
- 3/9/2024
- by John Hopewell and Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Malaga — Opening last Friday with “Dragonkeeper,” also in competition, Spain’s Malaga Festival, its biggest dedicated event for movies from Spain and Latin America, is studded by latest films by Isaki Lacuesta – “Saturn Return,” reportedly fun, broad audience and radical – David Trueba – “The Good Man,” small scale but almost certainly ingratiating – and Antonio Chavarrías’ “Holy Mother,” about an extraordinary real life female figure in Spain’s 9th century Reconquista.
Also in the running is “Rest in Peace,” from notable Argentine writer-director Sebastián Borensztein (“Chinese Takeaway”).
All are front-runners for some kind of award next Saturday. Prominent also is a bevy of first or second features, featuring from Spain three titles from women directors – gender abuse drama “The Snows,” “Nina,” reportedly a Western set in a northern Spanish town, and tragi-comedy “We Treat Women Too Well” – plus a clutch of debuts from Latin America.
This year’s Competition may, in the final analysis,...
Also in the running is “Rest in Peace,” from notable Argentine writer-director Sebastián Borensztein (“Chinese Takeaway”).
All are front-runners for some kind of award next Saturday. Prominent also is a bevy of first or second features, featuring from Spain three titles from women directors – gender abuse drama “The Snows,” “Nina,” reportedly a Western set in a northern Spanish town, and tragi-comedy “We Treat Women Too Well” – plus a clutch of debuts from Latin America.
This year’s Competition may, in the final analysis,...
- 3/4/2024
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
The 27th edition of the Malaga Film Festival (Mff) opens today (March 1) with animated feature Dragonkeeper and a strong line-up of Spanish and Latin American world premieres. The festival is a popular annual meeting point for the Spanish film industry, attended by most buyers and sellers, and showcases the best in new Spanish-language filmmaking.
The world premiere of Salvador Simó and Jian-Ping Li’s Dragonkeeper opens the festival, marking the first time Malaga has raised its curtain with an animated movie. A Spain-China co-production, Dragonkeeper is based on books by Carol Wilkinson, with an English-language voice cast that includes Bill Nighy and Mayalinee Griffiths.
The world premiere of Salvador Simó and Jian-Ping Li’s Dragonkeeper opens the festival, marking the first time Malaga has raised its curtain with an animated movie. A Spain-China co-production, Dragonkeeper is based on books by Carol Wilkinson, with an English-language voice cast that includes Bill Nighy and Mayalinee Griffiths.
- 3/1/2024
- ScreenDaily
Descubre las películas que estarán en el 27 Festival de Málaga: una lista de las películas en competición y fuera de concurso.
Todos los años se celebra en Málaga, el Festival de Cine de Málaga. Un festival que se centra principalmente en producciones españolas y tiene como objetivo promover y celebrar la industria cinematográfica en España, así como proporcionar una plataforma para el reconocimiento y la difusión del cine español. Un festival en el que han tenido su estreno mundial muchas películas que después han sido nominadas a los premios Goya, como es el caso de “20.000 Especies de Abejas” en esta pasada edición de los premios más grandes del cine español.
Este año, el 27 Festival de Málaga se celebra del 1 al 10 de marzo y cuenta con un total de 19 películas (11 españolas y 8 latinoamericanas), que concursarán en la Sección Oficial y 18 películas (15 españolas y 3 latinas) en sección Oficial no competitiva. Una...
Todos los años se celebra en Málaga, el Festival de Cine de Málaga. Un festival que se centra principalmente en producciones españolas y tiene como objetivo promover y celebrar la industria cinematográfica en España, así como proporcionar una plataforma para el reconocimiento y la difusión del cine español. Un festival en el que han tenido su estreno mundial muchas películas que después han sido nominadas a los premios Goya, como es el caso de “20.000 Especies de Abejas” en esta pasada edición de los premios más grandes del cine español.
Este año, el 27 Festival de Málaga se celebra del 1 al 10 de marzo y cuenta con un total de 19 películas (11 españolas y 8 latinoamericanas), que concursarán en la Sección Oficial y 18 películas (15 españolas y 3 latinas) en sección Oficial no competitiva. Una...
- 2/16/2024
- by Marta Medina
- mundoCine
Mubi Podcast: Encuentros returns this week with a new episode.The third episode features:Verónica Llinás, an Argentine actress of theater, film and television, recognized in particular for her comedy skills. In her long film career, she has worked with important Argentine filmmakers such as Martín Rejtman, Sebastián Borensztein, and the production company El Pampero Cine. In 2015, she starred in and co-directed with Laura Citarella La mujer de los perros (Dog Lady), a fictionalized and contemplative self-portrait that premiered at Rotterdam, in which she admirably explored the possibilities of non-verbal language.The second guest is Vladimir Durán, a Colombian actor and director based in Buenos Aires. In 2011 he competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes with his short film Soy tan feliz (I Am so Happy), and in 2018 his first feature film, Adiós entusiasmo (So Long Enthusiasm), premiered at the Berlinale Forum. He has acted in films by Franco Lolli,...
- 12/6/2022
- MUBI
Danish helmer Lone Scherfig is already developing the second season of “The Shift[/link]”, she revealed on Monday during an online Berlinale Series Market talk “From Film to Series.”
Set in a maternity ward and starring Sofie Gråbøl and Pål Sverre Hagen, it’s the first series as a showrunner for Scherfig, who in 2019 opened Berlinale with “The Kindness of Strangers” and won a Silver Bear for “Italian for Beginners.”
“It’s a tribute to the people who work in the healthcare system under extreme pressure, to the care and the love they show, even despite tough working conditions,” she said. “The Shift” is produced by Creative Alliance, with Beta Film handling the sales.
Scherfig was joined by another Silver Bear winner, Argentine director Daniel Burman, back in Berlin with Amazon Prime Video’s “Yosi, the Regretful Spy” – the story of a secret agent infiltrating the Jewish community in Buenos Aires,...
Set in a maternity ward and starring Sofie Gråbøl and Pål Sverre Hagen, it’s the first series as a showrunner for Scherfig, who in 2019 opened Berlinale with “The Kindness of Strangers” and won a Silver Bear for “Italian for Beginners.”
“It’s a tribute to the people who work in the healthcare system under extreme pressure, to the care and the love they show, even despite tough working conditions,” she said. “The Shift” is produced by Creative Alliance, with Beta Film handling the sales.
Scherfig was joined by another Silver Bear winner, Argentine director Daniel Burman, back in Berlin with Amazon Prime Video’s “Yosi, the Regretful Spy” – the story of a secret agent infiltrating the Jewish community in Buenos Aires,...
- 2/15/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
The program announcements continue for this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, with the Series and Generation strands both unveiling today, as well as the line-up for the Co-Production Market. Scroll down for the lists of titles.
The Berlinale Series selection, which is increasingly becoming a more high-profile part of the festival, again boasts several buzzy titles.
Premiering in Berlin will be Amazon Prime Video’s Argentinian series Yosi, The Regretful Spy, the Swedish show Lust from HBO Max, Sky’s UK series The Rising, and Lone Scherfig Danish show The Shift, which comes from local broadcaster TV2.
The Generation strand, which features youth-focused cinema, includes 14 features this year. The selection marks the last of long-time Generation head Maryanne Redpath.
Elsewhere, the European Film Market has confirmed titles for its Co-Production Market, which like the rest of the industry activity will take place virtually this year.
The Berlinale runs February 10-20 this year,...
The Berlinale Series selection, which is increasingly becoming a more high-profile part of the festival, again boasts several buzzy titles.
Premiering in Berlin will be Amazon Prime Video’s Argentinian series Yosi, The Regretful Spy, the Swedish show Lust from HBO Max, Sky’s UK series The Rising, and Lone Scherfig Danish show The Shift, which comes from local broadcaster TV2.
The Generation strand, which features youth-focused cinema, includes 14 features this year. The selection marks the last of long-time Generation head Maryanne Redpath.
Elsewhere, the European Film Market has confirmed titles for its Co-Production Market, which like the rest of the industry activity will take place virtually this year.
The Berlinale runs February 10-20 this year,...
- 1/14/2022
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Natalia Oreiro (“I’m Gilda”), Gustavo Bassani (“Separados”) and Mercedes Moran (“Spider) head the cast of Argentine Amazon Original “Iosi, El Espía Arrepentido,” one of Amazon Prime Original’s biggest bets to date in Latin America.
The series, an espionage thriller, will be available exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.
Showrun by Daniel Burman, a leading light of the New Argentine Cinema and recent Cannes Un Certain Regard jury member, “Iosi, El Espía Arrepentido” is produced by Oficina Burman, part of The Mediapro Studio, whose credits include “Pequeña Victoria” and “Pequeñas victorias, perdidxs en la Tierra,” both produced with Vis, with the latter acquired for Latin America by Amazon Prime Video.
Burman serves a series creator and showrunner on a banner project for the writer-director, which was one of the two he presented in person at Berlin Festival in 2017 when Mediapro confirmed it had taken a substantial stake in Oficina Burman.
The series, an espionage thriller, will be available exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.
Showrun by Daniel Burman, a leading light of the New Argentine Cinema and recent Cannes Un Certain Regard jury member, “Iosi, El Espía Arrepentido” is produced by Oficina Burman, part of The Mediapro Studio, whose credits include “Pequeña Victoria” and “Pequeñas victorias, perdidxs en la Tierra,” both produced with Vis, with the latter acquired for Latin America by Amazon Prime Video.
Burman serves a series creator and showrunner on a banner project for the writer-director, which was one of the two he presented in person at Berlin Festival in 2017 when Mediapro confirmed it had taken a substantial stake in Oficina Burman.
- 7/26/2021
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Argentinian Oscar winner Juan José Campanella to present comedy The Weasels.
The 37th Miami Film Festival will open on March 6 with The Burnt Orange Heresy and close with Netflix’s recent Sundance world premiere Mucho Mucho Amor on March 15.
Besides the roster of more than 125 feature narratives, documentaries and short films from 30 countries, festival director Jaie Laplante and his team have selected Amy Ryan to receive the Precious Gem Awards on March 9 accompanied a screening of another Sundance selection, Liz Garbus’ Lost Girls.
Midsommar director Ari Aster, Stella Meghie (The Photograph starring Issa Rae) and The Farewell director Lulu Wang...
The 37th Miami Film Festival will open on March 6 with The Burnt Orange Heresy and close with Netflix’s recent Sundance world premiere Mucho Mucho Amor on March 15.
Besides the roster of more than 125 feature narratives, documentaries and short films from 30 countries, festival director Jaie Laplante and his team have selected Amy Ryan to receive the Precious Gem Awards on March 9 accompanied a screening of another Sundance selection, Liz Garbus’ Lost Girls.
Midsommar director Ari Aster, Stella Meghie (The Photograph starring Issa Rae) and The Farewell director Lulu Wang...
- 2/3/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
“The only absolute in history is change,” said the Victorian historian Lord Acton. He might have been talking about the streaming platforms’ current international strategies. Since they launched internationally, Netflix and Amazon’s focus and priorities have been in constant evolution. Current pressures – evolving demographies, new regulation, new competition, still untapped growth – mean that re-engineering won’t stop any time soon.
On Jan. 23, as the Natpe Miami conference wound down, Amazon Prime Video announced out of Miami four new Latin American Amazon Original series: Lucía Puenzo’s “La Jauría” (“The Pack”), “Colonia Dignidad,” produced by Diego Guebel; Daniel Burman and Sebastián Borensztein’s “Iosi, The Repentant Spy”; and Andrés Wood’s “News of a Kidnapping.”
The announcement says much about Amazon Prime Video’s priorities, and the state of the streamer business in Latin America. Five takeaways:
1.Amazon Expands Production Reach
Also on Jan. 23, Amazon announced its first two forays...
On Jan. 23, as the Natpe Miami conference wound down, Amazon Prime Video announced out of Miami four new Latin American Amazon Original series: Lucía Puenzo’s “La Jauría” (“The Pack”), “Colonia Dignidad,” produced by Diego Guebel; Daniel Burman and Sebastián Borensztein’s “Iosi, The Repentant Spy”; and Andrés Wood’s “News of a Kidnapping.”
The announcement says much about Amazon Prime Video’s priorities, and the state of the streamer business in Latin America. Five takeaways:
1.Amazon Expands Production Reach
Also on Jan. 23, Amazon announced its first two forays...
- 1/28/2020
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory, a double Oscar nominee for star Antonio Banderas and the film itself in the Best International Feature race, swept the top categories Saturday at Spain’s Goya Awards. Scroll down for the full list.
Banderas, up for Best Actor at the Oscars, won best actor award at the Spanish film academy’s annual ceremony, held this year in Malaga. Almodovar won best director and for best screenplay, and the film took a total of seven awards from 16 nominations. One of those misses was Penelope Cruz, who lost in the best actress category to Belen Cuesta of The Endless Trench.
Alejandro Amenabar’s While at War, the Spanish Civil War drama that came in with a leading 17 nominations, won five awards including Eduard Fernandez for supporting actor.
Pain and Glory played in competition this year at the Cannes Film Festival, where Banderas won the Best...
Banderas, up for Best Actor at the Oscars, won best actor award at the Spanish film academy’s annual ceremony, held this year in Malaga. Almodovar won best director and for best screenplay, and the film took a total of seven awards from 16 nominations. One of those misses was Penelope Cruz, who lost in the best actress category to Belen Cuesta of The Endless Trench.
Alejandro Amenabar’s While at War, the Spanish Civil War drama that came in with a leading 17 nominations, won five awards including Eduard Fernandez for supporting actor.
Pain and Glory played in competition this year at the Cannes Film Festival, where Banderas won the Best...
- 1/26/2020
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
Amazon Prime Video in Latin America has added four new Amazon Original Series to their catalog from Argentina, Chile and Colombia, the first Originals from the territories. The series will be available on the platform in more than 200 countries and territories.
Chile’s “La Jauría” (“The Pack”) already broadcast on domestic network Tvn, will be joined by three series set to begin production in 2020: “Iosi, El Espía Arrepentido,” “Colonia Dignidad” and “Noticia de un Secuestro.”
From Chile, “La Jauría” is directed by award-winner filmmaker Lucía Puenzo, whose 2007 feature “Xxy” won four prizes at the Cannes Festival. The series stars Chilean Oscar-nominated “A Fantastic Woman” lead actress Daniela Vega in a story of a Catholic school girl who starts a protest against a deadly online game in which men are recruited to commit acts of violence towards women. The girl disappears and her story goes viral when a video of...
Chile’s “La Jauría” (“The Pack”) already broadcast on domestic network Tvn, will be joined by three series set to begin production in 2020: “Iosi, El Espía Arrepentido,” “Colonia Dignidad” and “Noticia de un Secuestro.”
From Chile, “La Jauría” is directed by award-winner filmmaker Lucía Puenzo, whose 2007 feature “Xxy” won four prizes at the Cannes Festival. The series stars Chilean Oscar-nominated “A Fantastic Woman” lead actress Daniela Vega in a story of a Catholic school girl who starts a protest against a deadly online game in which men are recruited to commit acts of violence towards women. The girl disappears and her story goes viral when a video of...
- 1/24/2020
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
The annual Palm Springs International Film Festival in California is always an opportunity to catch up on many of the contenders for the Best International Feature — née Best Foreign-Language — Film Academy Award. Now in its 31st edition, the festival this year has 51 of them, from favorite-to-beat “Parasite” from South Korea and Senegal’s “Atlantics,” to other films quietly making strides in the race: Czech Republic’s “The Painted Bird,” Sweden’s “And Then We Danced,” Russia’s “Beanpole,” Romania’s “The Whistlers,” North Macedonia’s documentary contender “Honeyland,” Norway’s “Out Stealing Horses,” and many more.
The festival will screen 188 films from 81 countries, including 51 premieres, from January 2-13, 2020. The Awards Buzz section includes a special jury of international film critics, who will review these films to present the Fipresci Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, as well as Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay in this category.
The festival will screen 188 films from 81 countries, including 51 premieres, from January 2-13, 2020. The Awards Buzz section includes a special jury of international film critics, who will review these films to present the Fipresci Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, as well as Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay in this category.
- 12/10/2019
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
One hundred eighty-eight films films from 81 countries including 51 premieres highlight the lineup for the 31st annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, which kicks off January 2 with a star-studded gala that has become a must-stop during awards season for Oscar hopefuls. The festival, which runs through January 13, also is known for showcasing a large number of submissions in the Motion Picture Academy’s International Film (formerly Foreign Language) competition and will feature 51 of those entries.
The opening-night film on January 3 is the Italian farce An Almost Ordinary Summer, while the closer is director Peter Cattaneo’s heartwarming dramedy Military Wives in which Kristin Scott Thomas, Sharon Horgan and Jason Flemyng lead a superb ensemble cast. The film had its world premiere at September’s Toronto International Film Festival and became an instant crowd-pleaser. Bleecker Street releases it in 2020.
Among the previously announced honorees at the January 2 gala are Antonio Banderas, Renee Zellweger,...
The opening-night film on January 3 is the Italian farce An Almost Ordinary Summer, while the closer is director Peter Cattaneo’s heartwarming dramedy Military Wives in which Kristin Scott Thomas, Sharon Horgan and Jason Flemyng lead a superb ensemble cast. The film had its world premiere at September’s Toronto International Film Festival and became an instant crowd-pleaser. Bleecker Street releases it in 2020.
Among the previously announced honorees at the January 2 gala are Antonio Banderas, Renee Zellweger,...
- 12/10/2019
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
Buenos Aires — Ventana Sur hosted two of the country’s leading screenwriters to relay the benefits of utilizing a writers’ room while conceptualizing fiction projects, delivered to a packed auditorium on Tuesday afternoon as part of the Fiction Factory series held at the Uca Campus in Puerto Madero.
Director Daniel Burman, known for films such as “Lost Embrace” and series “Victoria Small,” for Vis and Mediapro, sat alongside Sebastián Borensztein, director of “Chinese Take-Away,” starring Ricardo Darin, and co-director of HBO Latin America’s “The Bronze Garden,” produced with Pol-ka. Both used their immense scriptwriting experience to illustrate the concept of writers’ rooms before fielding a battery of questions from an enthusiastic audience.
“There’s been a change, a double change in the habits of consumers. We can choose when we want to watch something. With a click we have it in our hands. This raises the bar when developing...
Director Daniel Burman, known for films such as “Lost Embrace” and series “Victoria Small,” for Vis and Mediapro, sat alongside Sebastián Borensztein, director of “Chinese Take-Away,” starring Ricardo Darin, and co-director of HBO Latin America’s “The Bronze Garden,” produced with Pol-ka. Both used their immense scriptwriting experience to illustrate the concept of writers’ rooms before fielding a battery of questions from an enthusiastic audience.
“There’s been a change, a double change in the habits of consumers. We can choose when we want to watch something. With a click we have it in our hands. This raises the bar when developing...
- 12/6/2019
- by Holly Jones
- Variety Film + TV
Among the record 92 submissions this year, 27 titles are directed or co-directed by women. There are six documentaries in the mix, as well as two animated features. Moreover, for the first time, Ghana and Uzbekistan are each fielding an entry. However, Nigeria’s submission was disqualified by the Academy as being mostly in the English language. Here’s a guide to the films, including logline and sales or production contact.
Albania
“The Delegation”
Director: Bujar Alimani
Logline: In autumn 1990,
a political prisoner is secretly taken out of jail to meet the head of the European delegation investigating human-rights violations. But nothing goes according to plan.
Key Cast: Viktor Zhusti, Ndriçim Xhepa, Xhevdet Feri
Sales: Art Film
Algeria
“Papicha”
Director: Mounia Meddour
Logline: A female student rebels against the bans set by radicals during the civil war and plans a fashion show.
Key Cast: Lyna Khoudri, Shirine Boutella, Amira Hilda Douaouda
Sales:...
Albania
“The Delegation”
Director: Bujar Alimani
Logline: In autumn 1990,
a political prisoner is secretly taken out of jail to meet the head of the European delegation investigating human-rights violations. But nothing goes according to plan.
Key Cast: Viktor Zhusti, Ndriçim Xhepa, Xhevdet Feri
Sales: Art Film
Algeria
“Papicha”
Director: Mounia Meddour
Logline: A female student rebels against the bans set by radicals during the civil war and plans a fashion show.
Key Cast: Lyna Khoudri, Shirine Boutella, Amira Hilda Douaouda
Sales:...
- 11/6/2019
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
Earlier in the week, we finally learned which films would be selected by all of the countries in search of Academy Award love in Best International Feature. Not only did we get the answers to some questions regarding what each nation would pick, but we found that a record breaking 93 submissions have been made here in 2019. It’s truly the largest slate ever for voters to sift through. Talk about a good problem to have! Below you can see all of the titles in competition for the Best International Feature Oscar. Right now, only Parasite from South Korea and Pain and Glory from Spain seem like safe bets, with the former almost assured of winning the Academy Award. Aside from them? Anything goes in this category, which has potential nominees like Atlantics from Senegal, Beanpole from Russia, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind from the United Kingdom, The Chambermaid from Mexico,...
- 10/12/2019
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
A record 93 countries submitted entries in the International Feature Film race at the 2020 Oscars. That is up by six from last year,when the category was still called Best Foreign-Language Film, and eclipses the record 92 submissions in 2018. The nations represented ranged from A (Albania) to V (Vietnam). Predicting the eventual five Oscar nominees is made difficult by the two-step process.
First, the several hundred academy members of the Foreign-Language Film screening committee are required to watch a number of the submissions (upwards of a dozen) over a two-month period that ends in mid December. They will rate them from 6 to 10 and their top six vote-getters make it to the next round, as will three films added by the 20 members of the executive committee.
Those nine semi-finalists will be screened three per day beginning in early January by select committee members in Gotham, Hollywood, London and San Francisco. These 40 folks will...
First, the several hundred academy members of the Foreign-Language Film screening committee are required to watch a number of the submissions (upwards of a dozen) over a two-month period that ends in mid December. They will rate them from 6 to 10 and their top six vote-getters make it to the next round, as will three films added by the 20 members of the executive committee.
Those nine semi-finalists will be screened three per day beginning in early January by select committee members in Gotham, Hollywood, London and San Francisco. These 40 folks will...
- 10/7/2019
- by Paul Sheehan
- Gold Derby
A record-breaking total of 93 countries have submitted entries to be considered for best international film nominations at the Academy Awards.
The Academy announced the full list of eligible films and countries on Monday. Ghana, Nigeria and Uzbekisztan are competing for the first time in the category, which was previously known as the best foreign-language film category.
The previous high for submissions was 92 in 2017. A total of 87 films were submitted last year. Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” won the category this year, becoming the first Mexican entry to win the award.
High-profile entries include South Korea’s “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho’s black comedy which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Spain’s “Pain and Glory” from Pedro Almodovar with Antonio Banderas starring as a film director; Japan’s “Weathering With You,” the country’s first animated entry since “Princess Mononoke”; Senegal’s “Atlantics” from director Mati Diop,...
The Academy announced the full list of eligible films and countries on Monday. Ghana, Nigeria and Uzbekisztan are competing for the first time in the category, which was previously known as the best foreign-language film category.
The previous high for submissions was 92 in 2017. A total of 87 films were submitted last year. Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” won the category this year, becoming the first Mexican entry to win the award.
High-profile entries include South Korea’s “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho’s black comedy which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Spain’s “Pain and Glory” from Pedro Almodovar with Antonio Banderas starring as a film director; Japan’s “Weathering With You,” the country’s first animated entry since “Princess Mononoke”; Senegal’s “Atlantics” from director Mati Diop,...
- 10/7/2019
- by Dave McNary
- Variety Film + TV
The 2020 foreign-language Oscar nominees will come from submissions from 93 countries, up from last year’s 87, and breaking the record 92 from 2017. A contender for the renamed Best International Feature must be a feature-length motion picture (more than 40 minutes) produced outside the United States with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.
Ghana, Nigeria, and Uzbekistan are first-time entrants, but Uganda did not qualify. China (Yu Yang’s “Ne Zha”) and Senegal (Mati Diop’s “Atlantics”) submitted their films under the wire on the deadline of October 1.
Earlier this year, the Academy’s Board of Governors voted not only to rename the Foreign Language Film category, but to expand the shortlist from nine films to 10.
The 2019 submissions, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:
Albania, “The Delegation,” Bujar Alimani, director;
Algeria, “Papicha,” Mounia Meddour, director;
Argentina, “Heroic Losers,” Sebastián Borensztein, director;
Armenia, “Lengthy Night,” Edgar Baghdasaryan, director;
Australia, “Buoyancy,” Rodd Rathjen, director;
Austria, “Joy,...
Ghana, Nigeria, and Uzbekistan are first-time entrants, but Uganda did not qualify. China (Yu Yang’s “Ne Zha”) and Senegal (Mati Diop’s “Atlantics”) submitted their films under the wire on the deadline of October 1.
Earlier this year, the Academy’s Board of Governors voted not only to rename the Foreign Language Film category, but to expand the shortlist from nine films to 10.
The 2019 submissions, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:
Albania, “The Delegation,” Bujar Alimani, director;
Algeria, “Papicha,” Mounia Meddour, director;
Argentina, “Heroic Losers,” Sebastián Borensztein, director;
Armenia, “Lengthy Night,” Edgar Baghdasaryan, director;
Australia, “Buoyancy,” Rodd Rathjen, director;
Austria, “Joy,...
- 10/7/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
The 2020 foreign-language Oscar nominees will come from submissions from 93 countries, up from last year’s 87, and breaking the record 92 from 2017. A contender for the renamed Best International Feature must be a feature-length motion picture (more than 40 minutes) produced outside the United States with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.
Ghana, Nigeria, and Uzbekistan are first-time entrants, but Uganda did not qualify. China (Yu Yang’s “Ne Zha”) and Senegal (Mati Diop’s “Atlantics”) submitted their films under the wire on the deadline of October 1.
Earlier this year, the Academy’s Board of Governors voted not only to rename the Foreign Language Film category, but to expand the shortlist from nine films to 10.
The 2019 submissions, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:
Albania, “The Delegation,” Bujar Alimani, director;
Algeria, “Papicha,” Mounia Meddour, director;
Argentina, “Heroic Losers,” Sebastián Borensztein, director;
Armenia, “Lengthy Night,” Edgar Baghdasaryan, director;
Australia, “Buoyancy,” Rodd Rathjen, director;
Austria, “Joy,...
Ghana, Nigeria, and Uzbekistan are first-time entrants, but Uganda did not qualify. China (Yu Yang’s “Ne Zha”) and Senegal (Mati Diop’s “Atlantics”) submitted their films under the wire on the deadline of October 1.
Earlier this year, the Academy’s Board of Governors voted not only to rename the Foreign Language Film category, but to expand the shortlist from nine films to 10.
The 2019 submissions, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:
Albania, “The Delegation,” Bujar Alimani, director;
Algeria, “Papicha,” Mounia Meddour, director;
Argentina, “Heroic Losers,” Sebastián Borensztein, director;
Armenia, “Lengthy Night,” Edgar Baghdasaryan, director;
Australia, “Buoyancy,” Rodd Rathjen, director;
Austria, “Joy,...
- 10/7/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the full list of countries that have submitted a pic for consideration for the new International Feature Film Oscar category.
Here are the 93 nations and their hopefuls, in alphabetical order:
Albania, The Delegation, Bujar Alimani, director;
Algeria, Papicha, Mounia Meddour, director;
Argentina, Heroic Losers, Sebastián Borensztein, director;
Armenia, Lengthy Night, Edgar Baghdasaryan, director;
Australia, Buoyancy, Rodd Rathjen, director;
Austria, Joy, Sudabeh Mortezai, director;
Bangladesh, Alpha, Nasiruddin Yousuff, director;
Belarus, Debut, Anastasiya Miroshnichenko, director;
Belgium, Our Mothers, César Díaz, director;
Bolivia, I Miss You, Rodrigo Bellott, director;
Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Son, Ines Tanovic, director;
Brazil, Invisible Life, Karim Aïnouz, director;
Bulgaria, Ága, Milko Lazarov, director;
Cambodia, In the Life of Music, Caylee So, Sok Visal, directors;
Canada, Antigone, Sophie Deraspe, director;
Chile, Spider, Andrés Wood, director;
China, Ne Zha, Yu Yang, director;
Colombia, Monos, Alejandro Landes, director;
Costa Rica, The Awakening of the Ants,...
Here are the 93 nations and their hopefuls, in alphabetical order:
Albania, The Delegation, Bujar Alimani, director;
Algeria, Papicha, Mounia Meddour, director;
Argentina, Heroic Losers, Sebastián Borensztein, director;
Armenia, Lengthy Night, Edgar Baghdasaryan, director;
Australia, Buoyancy, Rodd Rathjen, director;
Austria, Joy, Sudabeh Mortezai, director;
Bangladesh, Alpha, Nasiruddin Yousuff, director;
Belarus, Debut, Anastasiya Miroshnichenko, director;
Belgium, Our Mothers, César Díaz, director;
Bolivia, I Miss You, Rodrigo Bellott, director;
Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Son, Ines Tanovic, director;
Brazil, Invisible Life, Karim Aïnouz, director;
Bulgaria, Ága, Milko Lazarov, director;
Cambodia, In the Life of Music, Caylee So, Sok Visal, directors;
Canada, Antigone, Sophie Deraspe, director;
Chile, Spider, Andrés Wood, director;
China, Ne Zha, Yu Yang, director;
Colombia, Monos, Alejandro Landes, director;
Costa Rica, The Awakening of the Ants,...
- 10/7/2019
- by Erik Pedersen
- Deadline Film + TV
A record-breaking total of 93 countries will be competing in the Oscar race for Best International Feature Film, the new name for what previously has been known as the Best Foreign-Language Film category.
The Academy announced the full list of eligible films and countries on Monday, with three countries — Ghana, Nigeria and Uzbekistan — competing in the category for the first time.
The previous high for submissions was 92 films, which was set in 2017. This year’s field also sets a new record for the number of women with films in the race, with 29 female directors responsible for 28 of the qualifying films.
One film, Algeria’s “Papicha,” needed a special ruling from the Academy to retain its eligibility. The film was scheduled to open in Algeria in late September, but the Algerian government cancelled the screenings without explanation just before they were scheduled to happen, presumably because it was uncomfortable with a film...
The Academy announced the full list of eligible films and countries on Monday, with three countries — Ghana, Nigeria and Uzbekistan — competing in the category for the first time.
The previous high for submissions was 92 films, which was set in 2017. This year’s field also sets a new record for the number of women with films in the race, with 29 female directors responsible for 28 of the qualifying films.
One film, Algeria’s “Papicha,” needed a special ruling from the Academy to retain its eligibility. The film was scheduled to open in Algeria in late September, but the Algerian government cancelled the screenings without explanation just before they were scheduled to happen, presumably because it was uncomfortable with a film...
- 10/7/2019
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Argentina’s film academy has submitted Sebastián Borensztein’s Heroic Losers (La Odisea De Los Giles) to the 2020 International Feature Film Oscar category.
The film is based on a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, who also penned the book that was adapted into Juan José Campanella’s 2009 Oscar-winning Argentinian drama The Secret In Their Eyes.
Heroic Losers stars prolific Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin (also of The Secret In Their Eyes fame) alongside his son Chino Darin in a story set in a dying town in Buenos Aires. The pic follows a group of men stung by a financial scam who set out to rob the perpetrator. It was produced by Darin’s own banner Kenya Films with Argentina’s K&s Films and Spain’s Mod Producciones.
The film was released in Argentina on August 15, grossing $4.6M there to date, and also played at Toronto and Spain’s San Sebastian festival on...
The film is based on a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, who also penned the book that was adapted into Juan José Campanella’s 2009 Oscar-winning Argentinian drama The Secret In Their Eyes.
Heroic Losers stars prolific Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin (also of The Secret In Their Eyes fame) alongside his son Chino Darin in a story set in a dying town in Buenos Aires. The pic follows a group of men stung by a financial scam who set out to rob the perpetrator. It was produced by Darin’s own banner Kenya Films with Argentina’s K&s Films and Spain’s Mod Producciones.
The film was released in Argentina on August 15, grossing $4.6M there to date, and also played at Toronto and Spain’s San Sebastian festival on...
- 9/24/2019
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Caper received European premiere at San Sebastian.
Sebastián Borensztein’s adventure caper Heroic Losers will represent Argentina in the international feature film Oscar race.
The Argentina Academy Of Film Arts And Sciences announced the news on Monday night (23). Ricardo Darín stars for the first time alongside his son Chico Darín in the story of agricultural activists who band together to recover money stolen from their collective.
Film Factory handles sales on Heroic Losers (La Odisea de los Giles), which opened in Argentina through Warner Bros and had its European premiere at San Sebastian after the international bow in Toronto earlier in the month.
Sebastián Borensztein’s adventure caper Heroic Losers will represent Argentina in the international feature film Oscar race.
The Argentina Academy Of Film Arts And Sciences announced the news on Monday night (23). Ricardo Darín stars for the first time alongside his son Chico Darín in the story of agricultural activists who band together to recover money stolen from their collective.
Film Factory handles sales on Heroic Losers (La Odisea de los Giles), which opened in Argentina through Warner Bros and had its European premiere at San Sebastian after the international bow in Toronto earlier in the month.
- 9/23/2019
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
Eager as ever to attend Tiff, a festival I have missed only once in the last 29 years, because a cat bite sent me to the hospital, I am looking forward to discoveries and have booked my calendar tight with films!
I am lucky to have seen three films already, two in Cannes, both wonderful, memorable funny and absurd films, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, So. Korea’s submission for Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and a likely winner, as well as So. Korea’s first-ever Palm d’Or winner in Cannes this year; and Elia Suleiman’s This Must Be Heaven, sweetly surreal, as funny as a Jacques Tati film, wryly observing our human race and with a funny little cameo with Gael Garcia Bernal introducing Suleiman to his agent. The third, Synonyms, won this year’s Berlinale Golden Bear. A coproduction of France, Israel and Germany, it...
I am lucky to have seen three films already, two in Cannes, both wonderful, memorable funny and absurd films, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, So. Korea’s submission for Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and a likely winner, as well as So. Korea’s first-ever Palm d’Or winner in Cannes this year; and Elia Suleiman’s This Must Be Heaven, sweetly surreal, as funny as a Jacques Tati film, wryly observing our human race and with a funny little cameo with Gael Garcia Bernal introducing Suleiman to his agent. The third, Synonyms, won this year’s Berlinale Golden Bear. A coproduction of France, Israel and Germany, it...
- 9/3/2019
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Variety has been given access to an exclusive clip and poster from Toronto Special Presentation “La Odisea de los Giles” (“Heroic Losers”) which, starring Ricardo Darín, has just scored in is native Argentina a standout opening weekend of Peso 58.8 million ($1.1 million) and 316,300 admissions for Warner Bros. Pictures.
With “Heroic Losers” having released on Thursday Aug. 15, that four-day first weekend bow is two-to-three times better than any other national title of the year, putting “Heroic Losers” well on track to become the highest-grossing Argentine movie of 2019 in Argentina.
The news would be if the film hadn’t made that kind of box office. It has been released in prime mid-August box office real-estate, when local audiences now expect a big Argentine movie.
Rarely, moreover, has an Argentine movie weighed in with such a pedigree package. A feel-good revenge heist comedy-thriller, studded with tragedy which gives the film momentary harder edges, “Heroic Losers” features the star,...
With “Heroic Losers” having released on Thursday Aug. 15, that four-day first weekend bow is two-to-three times better than any other national title of the year, putting “Heroic Losers” well on track to become the highest-grossing Argentine movie of 2019 in Argentina.
The news would be if the film hadn’t made that kind of box office. It has been released in prime mid-August box office real-estate, when local audiences now expect a big Argentine movie.
Rarely, moreover, has an Argentine movie weighed in with such a pedigree package. A feel-good revenge heist comedy-thriller, studded with tragedy which gives the film momentary harder edges, “Heroic Losers” features the star,...
- 8/19/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Further titles include Belén Funes’ debut ’A Thief’s Daughter’.
Alejandro Amenábar’s While At War is one of 15 Spanish films selected for the various strands of the 2019 San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff) which will run from September 20 -28 this year.
The historical drama is about writer Miguel de Unamuno’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War and stars Karra Elejalde. Amenabar was last at San Sebastian with Regression which opened the festival out of competition in 2015.
It has not been announced if the film is having its world premiere at Ssiff, suggesting an earlier debut at either Venice...
Alejandro Amenábar’s While At War is one of 15 Spanish films selected for the various strands of the 2019 San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff) which will run from September 20 -28 this year.
The historical drama is about writer Miguel de Unamuno’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War and stars Karra Elejalde. Amenabar was last at San Sebastian with Regression which opened the festival out of competition in 2015.
It has not been announced if the film is having its world premiere at Ssiff, suggesting an earlier debut at either Venice...
- 7/19/2019
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Madrid – Alejandro Amenábar, Ricardo Darín and Paco Cabezas, director of episodes from “Peaky Blinders” and “American Gods,” look set to join Penelope Cruz, already confirmed as a Donostia Award winner, at this year’s 67th San Sebastian Intl. Film Festival.
The biggest movie event in the Spanish-speaking world, this year’s San Sebastian runs Sept.20-28.
Amenábar’s awaited “While at War” will compete in main competition, where it will face off, among Spanish titles announced Friday by the San Sebastian Festival, with banner Basque title “The Endless Trench” and“The Thief’s Daughter,” the already buzzy feature debut of Catalan Belén Funes.
Darín stars in and co-produces “Heroic Losers” which receives a Special Screening. Daniel Sánchez-Arevalo’s “Seventeen” will play out of competition – the first time a Netflix Original Film makes San Sebastian’s Official Selection cut.
New Directors, San Sebastian’s main sidebar, frames among Spanish world premieres...
The biggest movie event in the Spanish-speaking world, this year’s San Sebastian runs Sept.20-28.
Amenábar’s awaited “While at War” will compete in main competition, where it will face off, among Spanish titles announced Friday by the San Sebastian Festival, with banner Basque title “The Endless Trench” and“The Thief’s Daughter,” the already buzzy feature debut of Catalan Belén Funes.
Darín stars in and co-produces “Heroic Losers” which receives a Special Screening. Daniel Sánchez-Arevalo’s “Seventeen” will play out of competition – the first time a Netflix Original Film makes San Sebastian’s Official Selection cut.
New Directors, San Sebastian’s main sidebar, frames among Spanish world premieres...
- 7/19/2019
- by John Hopewell and Emiliano De Pablos
- Variety Film + TV
“4×4”
(Television Abierta, Mediapro)
First solo feature from Mariano Cohn, this is a pointed social dramedy about a thief trapped in a 4 x 4 by the car’s owner.
Sales: Latido
“Advantages of Traveling by Train”
(Morena Films, Señor y Señora Films, Logical Pictures)
Aritz Moreno’s debut feature, penned by Javier Gullón, revolves around stories told by untrustworthy narrators: a young editor and a psychiatrist who unexpectedly meet on a train.
Sales: Seville Intl.
“A Sun That Never Sets”
(Miramemira, Kowalski Films, 4 A 4 Prods., Tarantula)
Olivier Laxe, 2016’s Cannes Critics’ winner, now plays Un Certain Regard with this arthouse thriller about a convicted arsonist returning to his native Galician forests.
“Baby”
(Fragil Zinema)
A young junkie gives her newborn baby to a child trafficking racket and soon regrets the act. Juanma Bajo Ulloa directs.
“Bikes”
(Animation Bikes A.I.E., Cvc Group, Aleph Media)
The first Spain-China co-production is an animated...
(Television Abierta, Mediapro)
First solo feature from Mariano Cohn, this is a pointed social dramedy about a thief trapped in a 4 x 4 by the car’s owner.
Sales: Latido
“Advantages of Traveling by Train”
(Morena Films, Señor y Señora Films, Logical Pictures)
Aritz Moreno’s debut feature, penned by Javier Gullón, revolves around stories told by untrustworthy narrators: a young editor and a psychiatrist who unexpectedly meet on a train.
Sales: Seville Intl.
“A Sun That Never Sets”
(Miramemira, Kowalski Films, 4 A 4 Prods., Tarantula)
Olivier Laxe, 2016’s Cannes Critics’ winner, now plays Un Certain Regard with this arthouse thriller about a convicted arsonist returning to his native Galician forests.
“Baby”
(Fragil Zinema)
A young junkie gives her newborn baby to a child trafficking racket and soon regrets the act. Juanma Bajo Ulloa directs.
“Bikes”
(Animation Bikes A.I.E., Cvc Group, Aleph Media)
The first Spain-China co-production is an animated...
- 5/17/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Panama City — Argentine actor Ricardo Darin, currently attending the 8th Iff Panama for the fest’s opening film, “An Unexpected Love,” is prepping a new film, “Heroic Losers,” (La Odisea de los Giles) about an agricultural cooperative in Argentina in 2001, to be directed by Sebastián Borensztein, with whom Darin previously worked on “Koblic” (2016) and “Chinese Take-Out” (2011).
“Love” was the first production from Darin’s new production shingle, Kenya Films, founded in 2018 with his son, Chino Darin.
“Heroic Losers” is their second production. The film is about a group of people from a chic neighborhood of Buenos Aires, who have an idea to create an agricultural cooperative, in 2001, at a very difficult moment in Argentine history, with rampant inflation and banking controls.
Darin plays a retired ex-football player who lives in a small town near Buenos Aires, Villa Alsina, who has the original idea to create the cooperative. Darin explained at...
“Love” was the first production from Darin’s new production shingle, Kenya Films, founded in 2018 with his son, Chino Darin.
“Heroic Losers” is their second production. The film is about a group of people from a chic neighborhood of Buenos Aires, who have an idea to create an agricultural cooperative, in 2001, at a very difficult moment in Argentine history, with rampant inflation and banking controls.
Darin plays a retired ex-football player who lives in a small town near Buenos Aires, Villa Alsina, who has the original idea to create the cooperative. Darin explained at...
- 4/7/2019
- by Martin Dale
- Variety Film + TV
We were big, big fans of Sebastián Borensztein's comedy drama Chinese Takeaway in these parts and now the Argentine helmer has reunited with leading man Ricardo Darin for what promises to be a riveting true life thriller.The year is 1977 and the military dictatorship ruling Argentina has chosen to throw political prisoners into the sea from Navy aircraft as a method of extermination. Captain Tomas Kóblic is about to face the most agonizing crossroads in his life. Summoned with no prior information prior to one of the "flights of death", he finds himself in command of the plane, accompanied by other repressors and surrounded by half-naked men and women in a drugged stupor, whose bodies display the ravages of torture. Kóblic swings from horror to...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 1/26/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Exclusive: Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks has closed key deals on thriller Kóblic starring Ricardo Darin from Goya-winning director Sebastián Borensztein.
Guido Rud and his team have licensed rights in Brazil to Paris Filmes and in Central America to Palmera International. Disney will distribute in Latin America and Seven Films in Greece.
Pope Francis biopic Francisco starring Dario Grandinetti has gone in the Philippines (Pioneer films), Colombia (Procinal) and Chile and Peru (Andes Films).
Disney will distribute in South America, while Must See Movie Releasing holds South Korean rights and Warsaw Movie will release in Poland.
Animated feature El Americano 3D with the voice talent of Lisa Kudrow has gone to the Middle East and Turkey (Tanweer), Peru (Star Film) and Central America (Palmera International). Top Film previously acquired for Cis and East Europe.
Guido Rud and his team have licensed rights in Brazil to Paris Filmes and in Central America to Palmera International. Disney will distribute in Latin America and Seven Films in Greece.
Pope Francis biopic Francisco starring Dario Grandinetti has gone in the Philippines (Pioneer films), Colombia (Procinal) and Chile and Peru (Andes Films).
Disney will distribute in South America, while Must See Movie Releasing holds South Korean rights and Warsaw Movie will release in Poland.
Animated feature El Americano 3D with the voice talent of Lisa Kudrow has gone to the Middle East and Turkey (Tanweer), Peru (Star Film) and Central America (Palmera International). Top Film previously acquired for Cis and East Europe.
- 9/13/2015
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
My experience last November at Los Cabos International Film Festival was fabulous! Set up to promote film coproduction and financing among Mexico, U.S., and Canada, the festival allowed all of us to be very close and connected to our peers in the business – international sales agents, writers of all kinds, programmers and filmmakers. There we met the bright new talent, so idealistic and yet so knowledgeable and educated about film in the world. To be able to see films, concentrate on creating business and still have time to mingle -- this is what makes a festival a happy experience.
Among the many people I met there, was Ben Odell, partner at 3Pas Studios, the newly launched production company that he and Mexico’s most beloved and renowned comic star and director, Eugenio Derbez, founded on the strength and success of the $100 million dollar grossing comedy, "Instructions Not Included".
The success of this film also allowed the film’s producer Monica Lozano to establish Alebrije Distribución a new distribution company which will acquire distribution rights for the Latin and North American markets.
Monica has had her hand in 23 productions since her first film, "Amores Perros". Her most recent success was "Instructions Not Included", the Us$ 5.5 million film that became the highest grossing Spanish language film of all time in the U.S., and the second highest grossing film in any language in Mexico.
But to return to Ben and his new company, the subject of this blog: 3Pas in Spanish means three steps, but is also a play on words, something Mexicans like a lot. Tres Pas sounds like tripas, which in English means guts, or tripe. Personally, I too love tripas. Deliciosas!
I Finally met Ben at Los Cabos Film Festival. I say I "finally" met him, because we have so many friends in common and ever since I have been following Latino films and writing my book on Latin America and the film business, I had often heard of Ben as the head of production for Pantelion, U.S.'s only sustained and successful Latino film distributor.
Last September, when Strategic Partners’ Laura Mackenzie in Halifax invited me to moderate a panel on “The Games Maker”, an Argentinean-Canadian-Italian coproduction, Ben’s name was prominent as the one who made the match between Argentina’s Juan Pablo Buscarini and Canada’s Tina Pehme and Kim Roberts.
I always had him pictured as my other friend whose last name is Odell, a slight and wiry, dark haired type. How surprised I was to see this big, handsome blond who exuded warmth and a good-willed wit and storytelling skill. Love at first sight! And I am sure I am not the only one who is smitten with him.
I wish I could convey his spirit, humor and strength as he recounted his life and career(s) to me in the hour we spent together in his new spacious, airy and bright Santa Monica office where Ben Shalom-Martinez was the third person in the new company, manning a phone system not yet working.
I told Ben I had read his mini bio in IMDb, and it made me want to know how he had gotten into the Latino side of the business. I expected him to reveal that, in fact, and in spite of his name, he was Latino.
One year out of college, Ben said, "I worked in editing with the Maysles Brothers. I was a P.A. on the first film John Turturro directed called “Mac”, and I was a reader for Art Linson. And that was my degree in Liberal Arts in Film. I wanted to be a screenwriter but I didn’t feel I had enough life experience. A family friend offered me a job in commercial production in Colombia. It was 1992 and my dad said: “if you love all things Latino, go learn Spanish and become an expert in the Latino market. It’s going to need people that understand it. No one was really talking about its importance then but that piece of advice changed my life. I moved to Colombia to learn Spanish and start what would be a life long journey in all things Latino, from U.S. Latino to Latin America. It’s not a single market but there is a connectivity between all of it.”
Ben grew up in Pennsylvania and when he was six years old, neighbors, who had old friends from Colombia, did an exchange of one of their children with a Colombian child. “My father ended up basically adopting that child for the year he lived with our neighbors and from that grew a friendship with this Colombian family.”
When he was 12 years old the whole Colombian family moved to Philadelphia. “I wanted them to adopt me. They were crazy, emotional, passionate, loving. It was a warmth and lust for life I hadn’t really experienced in suburban white America. And then I realized there was a whole country full of them.” At 15 he went with a friend to Colombia and loved it.
His father eventually married someone from that family. So Ben's connection to Colombia, if not to all of Latin America was very organic. Colombia is not part of the "U.S. Latino market" per se, but Colombia and the rest of Latin America share certain characteristics and commonalities — views on life and death, family, spirituality -- that end up working their way into storytelling that are shared throughout the U.S. Latino market and Latin America along with a larger emotional scale in the tone of their storytelling.
Odell lived in Colombia from 1992 to 2000. He also worked as a freelance journalist before becoming a Spanish language television writer and screenwriter there.
When he was in Colombia working in commercials, he met Tom Quinn, a journalist Iiving there for 25 years, working for Time Magazine and running an English language rag called The Colombian Post. In his youth ,Tom had run with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson. He had lots of adventures and lots of stories of those days.
Ben asked Tom what was the most compelling story they could make into a movie that wasn’t about narcotrafficking, and Tom said one word: “Emeralds.” Colombia supplies 60% of the world's emeralds. The mines in the Emerald Zone have strong drug laundering connections as well, as one might guess. The land is leased by the government to the three or four mining companies and they control everything with no supervision by the government.
The society is totally feudal. Workers labor for the companies for 28 days of the month and on the last two days they are allowed to keep whatever they find. Victor Carranza ran everything. He was The Don, violent and scary. A small man, about 5'2". He died in prison worth over a billion dollars.
Ben thought this was a great story to develop into a movie, and so he went back to New York to the contacts he had made including an exec at Tribeca Films. “They all said the same thing, great story but you are not a writer. Go write the script and then we’ll talk.” Ben returned to Colombia to do research.
In the meanwhile he began writing for Colombian TV. He had never written a feature film script, nor did he speak Spanish. He had, however, taken a course in feature film screenwriting with Robert McKee. And he had a girlfriend who was bilingual. He knew about Colombian TV and he saw the potential for legitimizing the story first as a TV show and then making it into a feature later.
Tom Quinn was very well known in Colombia as he was the Time News correspondent there at a moment when the magazine had a lot of power; the drug wars were one of its most consistent cover stories. They pitched it to Rti TV, and structured it like "The Fugitive".
There is a drug, called Burandanga, scientifically known as Scopolamine. It comes from a plant that grows wild in Colombia. The drugged one loses control of his or her will. He once heard a story about a man in a bar who wakes up in jail accused of a murder he can’t remember. This became the basis of the story. The lead goes into the Emerald Zone and drugged by burundanga, he kills one on the wrong side in a war going on there. He wakes up with no recollection and a full on civil war going on around him. He can't get out of the Emerald Zone until he finds the man who drugged him. The title of this series that Tom and he pitched and in 1998 created was "Fuego verde", like the 1954 Hollywood movie, “ Green Fire” starring Grace Kelly and Stewart Grainger.
As a television writer, he eventually created and wrote over 300 hours of Spanish-language narrative television including “Fuego Verde” -- the first-ever action series. It was one of the highest rated series on Colombian television. He also co-wrote the Colombian political satire feature film, “ Golpe de estadio”, which was nominated for Spain's Academy Award, the Goya in 1999, and was Colombia's nomination to the Oscar in 2000. It is still one of the highest grossing Colombian films of all time.
In the film, "Golpe de estadio", (Golpe de Estado means “Coup d'état”but it also could mean “Coup d’ Stadium”), an oil company has set up a camp for geological research in a small village in Colombia that has been named New Texas. It becomes the target of the guerrillas who are constantly clashing with police in the area. The confrontation is put on hold however during the TV transmission of the world Cup qualifiers. The two sides declare a sort of truce so that they can all watch the match between Colombia and Argentina on the only working TV in the town. Colombia wins the game, 5 to 0, (a victory, in real life, infamous in the annals of world cup) and of course the Colombian police and guerrilla find themselves cheering for the same team.
"Golpe" was released in theaters in 1999 while the drug wars and war between the guerrillas and the government were moving into peace talks. It came out during the war, and Ben naively believed it could make tangible impact on the country. Instead they received death threats. It was a very volatile time.
He left Colombia and put together a business plan to make movies for Latino audiences. He was too green and he was way ahead of his time so instead he went to film school at Columbia University.
He went to film school thinking it was only to network and realized he knew nothing about film writing or production. "Going to film school's more valuable if a student already has some experience," Ben says.
"Confess", a feature length film he produced in his second year of film school (2005) was one of his thesis projects. It was made for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Ali Larter and Melissa Leo starred in it (way before she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Role in “The Fighter”). The movie was about a disgruntled computer hacker of mixed race, who struggles to adjust to life after a jaunt in prison. He takes his anger online forcing confessions out of those who slighted him. Eventually his focus becomes political. “It had all the trappings of a first time filmmaker. But conceptually it was scratching the surface of trends that wouldn’t appear online until years later. This was several years before YouTube took hold, which is a lifetime in human years.”
"For my second film, we had Scorsese as an executive producer. When we started preproduction we quickly discovered that one of our two investors really didn’t have the money. He signed a contract to invest while he was still trying to raise the funds“
At this point in our discussion Ben and I went off on a tangent...Money that falls out at the last minute is such a common story. Do these guys think the money will come just because they have "bet" on it, using the film as collateral?... Do they just want to go for the ride, as far as they can go?... are they sociopaths, liars, gamblers, on drugs or what? I remember when I worked at Ifa (until it became ICM); at the Motion Picture Division's meetings that Mike Medavoy held every week, agents would sometimes report on someone wanting to invest in film, and once Mike said "No. Not him. He has a very bad reputation, and his money is not good. We don't want that kind of money." But young producers know very little about vetting financial prospects.
This digression is only to illustrate the fact that that in this person-to-person business it is important to know who you are dealing with.
But Odell’s luck was going to change. Just a few weeks after the implosion of the film, he got an email from Jim McNamara. NBC had bought McNamara's Telemundo for Us$ 3 billion . McNamara had been CEO of New World, a position once held by Harry Sloan and Jon Feltheimer. Feltheimer went off to Sony TV which had a majority stake in Telemundo. McNamara, who had just been president of Universal TV worldwide, was brought in to run Telemundo
After leaving Telemundo, he went back to Feltheimer, in the early days of building Lionsgate, to discuss his new idea. At the time -- this was 2006 -- there were two Spanish language networks, 600 Spanish language radio stations, 2,000 Spanish language newspapers, and no one was making movies in Spanish. Felt liked it and they made a deal. Panamax was born.
McNamara knew of Odell when he was buying TV series for Telemundo. He bought a lot of the TV shows Odell had written.
Panamax’ made a six picture deal with Lionsgate. Odell became President of Production at Panamax Films and produced many feature films and TV movies both in Spanish and in English for the Hispanic market.
On one of their first scouting trips, Odell and McNamara went to see a play called “Latinologues” written by Rick Najera. In it, there was a Mexican actor named Eugenio Derbez. Derbez was known only for Spanish language TV at the time. He wrote, directed, produced and starred in his own shows for Televisa. These shows also played on Univision in the U.S. and were building a huge fan base in both countries as well as much of the Spanish-speaking world.
Latinologues was made up of multiple monologues from different actors playing roles as Latino archetypes. Derbez did three or four different characters. “When he came on stage,” recalls Odell, “He was electrifying, hilarious, magnetic. And then I met him afterwards. He was the humblest man, quiet, and a bit shy. I realized what an amazing talent he was, he had that ‘it factor’ – when he turned it on, it turned on the room.”
At the time Odell and McNamara were packaging a project called "Under the Same Moon" and suggested Derbez for a role. They flew the director, Patricia Riggen, to N.Y. to meet him. While Lionsgate ended up not financing the project, Derbez stayed in the picture. “Looking back, I think a significant part of why that movie did $20 million in box office between U.S. and Mexico, was Eugenio. He was already a mega star. No one really knew it in the general market because they weren’t paying attention to the success of his shows. Hollywood tends to ignore the Spanish speaking market, but the U.S. is the second biggest Spanish speaking country in the world and Eugenio has built a huge following there.”
Ben also made the art house Spanish language thriller, "Padre Nuestro" in 2007 which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. IFC changed the title to “Sangre de mi Sangre” for its U.S. release. It also played at New Directors/ New Films at Museum of Modern Art in New York in the Spring of 2007, received two Independent Spirit Awards nominations, for Best First Feature (for which Odell was nominated) and Best Screenplay. Odell also produced “Un Cuento Chino” aka “Chinese Take-Out” (a Spanish/ Argentinean co-production), starring Argentina’s most popular actor, Ricardo Darin (“El Secreto de los Ojos”), written and directed by Sebastián Borensztein. In Spanish, referring to a story as a cuento chino is equivalent to calling it a tall tale.
“Chino” was the top grossing Argentinean film of 2011 and one of the highest grossing Argentinean films of all times. In its international release it has broken box office records for Latin American films in both Latin America and Europe. It won the Argentinean Academy Award for best feature and the Goya, the Spanish Academy Award, for Best Latin American Film. It won numerous festivals including the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Rome Film Festival.
When Odell was developing the script with Borensztein in 2009, he sent the script to Derbez, who immediately expressed interested in remaking it. “I loved the original story and movie,” Derbez said. “There is a heartfelt relationship that develops between these two very different people set around a whimsical, comical and magical world.”
Odell was also an executive producer on the English language 3D family thriller, “ The Games Maker”, starring Joseph Fiennes and Ed Asner. Made as a coproduction with Disney Latin America, the movie was produced in Argentina by Pampa Films and directed by Juan Pablo Buscarini, one of the producers of “Un Cuento Chino”. It was released widely across Latin America in the summer of 2014 and continues its theatrical release around the world.
Several years into Panamax’s deal with Lionsgate, a joint venture was created between Panamax, Televisa and Lionsgate called Pantelion Films. McNamara became chairman of Pantelion and Ben became President of Production.
Under the new deal he produced the 2012 coming of age comedy “Girl in Progress”, directed by “Under the Same Moon” director Patricia Riggen and staring Eva Mendes, Eugenio Derbez, Mathew Modine and Patricia Arquette
His most recent film was the inspirational true story, “Spare Parts”, starring George Lopez, Jamie Lee Curtis and Marisa Tomei which was released in January 2015.
While Eugenio was making his breakout film "Instructions not Included” neither he nor Ben had any idea it would be so big. “Instructions Not Included,” was released in 2013 by Pantelion and grossed $44.5 million, making it the highest-grossing Spanish-language film ever released in the U.S. It grossed another $55 million overseas making it the number one Spanish language movie in the world.
The two realized, this was The One Time In A Career To Capitalize, and they decided to go together, to focus on brand-building, based on Eugenio's popularity and to go beyond his own work, in English and Spanish. Together they formed 3pas Studios which signed a first-look deal with Pantelion in August 2014.
They are in development on many feature films including “Un Cuento Chino”, a remake of the French comedy, “The Valet” and an untitled original script about an aging Latin lover from writers Chris Spain and Jon Zack (“The Perfect Storm”) which Derbez will star in and produce with Ben.
“We are developing multiple projects with an eye to shooting one at the end of 2015,” Odell said.
Meantime, Eugenio Derbez just filmed roles in Warner Brothers’ “Geostorm” with Gerard Butler and Sony Pictures “ Miracles from Heaven” with Jennifer Garner, and Queen Latifah. The latter was directed by Patricia Riggen who directed Derbez in both “Under the Same Moon” and “Girl in Progress”.
Ben is sure that his producing partner will go way beyond his current core Latino market “He is so lovable to watch. He has a magic about him that is undeniable and transcends language and culture.”...
Among the many people I met there, was Ben Odell, partner at 3Pas Studios, the newly launched production company that he and Mexico’s most beloved and renowned comic star and director, Eugenio Derbez, founded on the strength and success of the $100 million dollar grossing comedy, "Instructions Not Included".
The success of this film also allowed the film’s producer Monica Lozano to establish Alebrije Distribución a new distribution company which will acquire distribution rights for the Latin and North American markets.
Monica has had her hand in 23 productions since her first film, "Amores Perros". Her most recent success was "Instructions Not Included", the Us$ 5.5 million film that became the highest grossing Spanish language film of all time in the U.S., and the second highest grossing film in any language in Mexico.
But to return to Ben and his new company, the subject of this blog: 3Pas in Spanish means three steps, but is also a play on words, something Mexicans like a lot. Tres Pas sounds like tripas, which in English means guts, or tripe. Personally, I too love tripas. Deliciosas!
I Finally met Ben at Los Cabos Film Festival. I say I "finally" met him, because we have so many friends in common and ever since I have been following Latino films and writing my book on Latin America and the film business, I had often heard of Ben as the head of production for Pantelion, U.S.'s only sustained and successful Latino film distributor.
Last September, when Strategic Partners’ Laura Mackenzie in Halifax invited me to moderate a panel on “The Games Maker”, an Argentinean-Canadian-Italian coproduction, Ben’s name was prominent as the one who made the match between Argentina’s Juan Pablo Buscarini and Canada’s Tina Pehme and Kim Roberts.
I always had him pictured as my other friend whose last name is Odell, a slight and wiry, dark haired type. How surprised I was to see this big, handsome blond who exuded warmth and a good-willed wit and storytelling skill. Love at first sight! And I am sure I am not the only one who is smitten with him.
I wish I could convey his spirit, humor and strength as he recounted his life and career(s) to me in the hour we spent together in his new spacious, airy and bright Santa Monica office where Ben Shalom-Martinez was the third person in the new company, manning a phone system not yet working.
I told Ben I had read his mini bio in IMDb, and it made me want to know how he had gotten into the Latino side of the business. I expected him to reveal that, in fact, and in spite of his name, he was Latino.
One year out of college, Ben said, "I worked in editing with the Maysles Brothers. I was a P.A. on the first film John Turturro directed called “Mac”, and I was a reader for Art Linson. And that was my degree in Liberal Arts in Film. I wanted to be a screenwriter but I didn’t feel I had enough life experience. A family friend offered me a job in commercial production in Colombia. It was 1992 and my dad said: “if you love all things Latino, go learn Spanish and become an expert in the Latino market. It’s going to need people that understand it. No one was really talking about its importance then but that piece of advice changed my life. I moved to Colombia to learn Spanish and start what would be a life long journey in all things Latino, from U.S. Latino to Latin America. It’s not a single market but there is a connectivity between all of it.”
Ben grew up in Pennsylvania and when he was six years old, neighbors, who had old friends from Colombia, did an exchange of one of their children with a Colombian child. “My father ended up basically adopting that child for the year he lived with our neighbors and from that grew a friendship with this Colombian family.”
When he was 12 years old the whole Colombian family moved to Philadelphia. “I wanted them to adopt me. They were crazy, emotional, passionate, loving. It was a warmth and lust for life I hadn’t really experienced in suburban white America. And then I realized there was a whole country full of them.” At 15 he went with a friend to Colombia and loved it.
His father eventually married someone from that family. So Ben's connection to Colombia, if not to all of Latin America was very organic. Colombia is not part of the "U.S. Latino market" per se, but Colombia and the rest of Latin America share certain characteristics and commonalities — views on life and death, family, spirituality -- that end up working their way into storytelling that are shared throughout the U.S. Latino market and Latin America along with a larger emotional scale in the tone of their storytelling.
Odell lived in Colombia from 1992 to 2000. He also worked as a freelance journalist before becoming a Spanish language television writer and screenwriter there.
When he was in Colombia working in commercials, he met Tom Quinn, a journalist Iiving there for 25 years, working for Time Magazine and running an English language rag called The Colombian Post. In his youth ,Tom had run with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson. He had lots of adventures and lots of stories of those days.
Ben asked Tom what was the most compelling story they could make into a movie that wasn’t about narcotrafficking, and Tom said one word: “Emeralds.” Colombia supplies 60% of the world's emeralds. The mines in the Emerald Zone have strong drug laundering connections as well, as one might guess. The land is leased by the government to the three or four mining companies and they control everything with no supervision by the government.
The society is totally feudal. Workers labor for the companies for 28 days of the month and on the last two days they are allowed to keep whatever they find. Victor Carranza ran everything. He was The Don, violent and scary. A small man, about 5'2". He died in prison worth over a billion dollars.
Ben thought this was a great story to develop into a movie, and so he went back to New York to the contacts he had made including an exec at Tribeca Films. “They all said the same thing, great story but you are not a writer. Go write the script and then we’ll talk.” Ben returned to Colombia to do research.
In the meanwhile he began writing for Colombian TV. He had never written a feature film script, nor did he speak Spanish. He had, however, taken a course in feature film screenwriting with Robert McKee. And he had a girlfriend who was bilingual. He knew about Colombian TV and he saw the potential for legitimizing the story first as a TV show and then making it into a feature later.
Tom Quinn was very well known in Colombia as he was the Time News correspondent there at a moment when the magazine had a lot of power; the drug wars were one of its most consistent cover stories. They pitched it to Rti TV, and structured it like "The Fugitive".
There is a drug, called Burandanga, scientifically known as Scopolamine. It comes from a plant that grows wild in Colombia. The drugged one loses control of his or her will. He once heard a story about a man in a bar who wakes up in jail accused of a murder he can’t remember. This became the basis of the story. The lead goes into the Emerald Zone and drugged by burundanga, he kills one on the wrong side in a war going on there. He wakes up with no recollection and a full on civil war going on around him. He can't get out of the Emerald Zone until he finds the man who drugged him. The title of this series that Tom and he pitched and in 1998 created was "Fuego verde", like the 1954 Hollywood movie, “ Green Fire” starring Grace Kelly and Stewart Grainger.
As a television writer, he eventually created and wrote over 300 hours of Spanish-language narrative television including “Fuego Verde” -- the first-ever action series. It was one of the highest rated series on Colombian television. He also co-wrote the Colombian political satire feature film, “ Golpe de estadio”, which was nominated for Spain's Academy Award, the Goya in 1999, and was Colombia's nomination to the Oscar in 2000. It is still one of the highest grossing Colombian films of all time.
In the film, "Golpe de estadio", (Golpe de Estado means “Coup d'état”but it also could mean “Coup d’ Stadium”), an oil company has set up a camp for geological research in a small village in Colombia that has been named New Texas. It becomes the target of the guerrillas who are constantly clashing with police in the area. The confrontation is put on hold however during the TV transmission of the world Cup qualifiers. The two sides declare a sort of truce so that they can all watch the match between Colombia and Argentina on the only working TV in the town. Colombia wins the game, 5 to 0, (a victory, in real life, infamous in the annals of world cup) and of course the Colombian police and guerrilla find themselves cheering for the same team.
"Golpe" was released in theaters in 1999 while the drug wars and war between the guerrillas and the government were moving into peace talks. It came out during the war, and Ben naively believed it could make tangible impact on the country. Instead they received death threats. It was a very volatile time.
He left Colombia and put together a business plan to make movies for Latino audiences. He was too green and he was way ahead of his time so instead he went to film school at Columbia University.
He went to film school thinking it was only to network and realized he knew nothing about film writing or production. "Going to film school's more valuable if a student already has some experience," Ben says.
"Confess", a feature length film he produced in his second year of film school (2005) was one of his thesis projects. It was made for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Ali Larter and Melissa Leo starred in it (way before she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Role in “The Fighter”). The movie was about a disgruntled computer hacker of mixed race, who struggles to adjust to life after a jaunt in prison. He takes his anger online forcing confessions out of those who slighted him. Eventually his focus becomes political. “It had all the trappings of a first time filmmaker. But conceptually it was scratching the surface of trends that wouldn’t appear online until years later. This was several years before YouTube took hold, which is a lifetime in human years.”
"For my second film, we had Scorsese as an executive producer. When we started preproduction we quickly discovered that one of our two investors really didn’t have the money. He signed a contract to invest while he was still trying to raise the funds“
At this point in our discussion Ben and I went off on a tangent...Money that falls out at the last minute is such a common story. Do these guys think the money will come just because they have "bet" on it, using the film as collateral?... Do they just want to go for the ride, as far as they can go?... are they sociopaths, liars, gamblers, on drugs or what? I remember when I worked at Ifa (until it became ICM); at the Motion Picture Division's meetings that Mike Medavoy held every week, agents would sometimes report on someone wanting to invest in film, and once Mike said "No. Not him. He has a very bad reputation, and his money is not good. We don't want that kind of money." But young producers know very little about vetting financial prospects.
This digression is only to illustrate the fact that that in this person-to-person business it is important to know who you are dealing with.
But Odell’s luck was going to change. Just a few weeks after the implosion of the film, he got an email from Jim McNamara. NBC had bought McNamara's Telemundo for Us$ 3 billion . McNamara had been CEO of New World, a position once held by Harry Sloan and Jon Feltheimer. Feltheimer went off to Sony TV which had a majority stake in Telemundo. McNamara, who had just been president of Universal TV worldwide, was brought in to run Telemundo
After leaving Telemundo, he went back to Feltheimer, in the early days of building Lionsgate, to discuss his new idea. At the time -- this was 2006 -- there were two Spanish language networks, 600 Spanish language radio stations, 2,000 Spanish language newspapers, and no one was making movies in Spanish. Felt liked it and they made a deal. Panamax was born.
McNamara knew of Odell when he was buying TV series for Telemundo. He bought a lot of the TV shows Odell had written.
Panamax’ made a six picture deal with Lionsgate. Odell became President of Production at Panamax Films and produced many feature films and TV movies both in Spanish and in English for the Hispanic market.
On one of their first scouting trips, Odell and McNamara went to see a play called “Latinologues” written by Rick Najera. In it, there was a Mexican actor named Eugenio Derbez. Derbez was known only for Spanish language TV at the time. He wrote, directed, produced and starred in his own shows for Televisa. These shows also played on Univision in the U.S. and were building a huge fan base in both countries as well as much of the Spanish-speaking world.
Latinologues was made up of multiple monologues from different actors playing roles as Latino archetypes. Derbez did three or four different characters. “When he came on stage,” recalls Odell, “He was electrifying, hilarious, magnetic. And then I met him afterwards. He was the humblest man, quiet, and a bit shy. I realized what an amazing talent he was, he had that ‘it factor’ – when he turned it on, it turned on the room.”
At the time Odell and McNamara were packaging a project called "Under the Same Moon" and suggested Derbez for a role. They flew the director, Patricia Riggen, to N.Y. to meet him. While Lionsgate ended up not financing the project, Derbez stayed in the picture. “Looking back, I think a significant part of why that movie did $20 million in box office between U.S. and Mexico, was Eugenio. He was already a mega star. No one really knew it in the general market because they weren’t paying attention to the success of his shows. Hollywood tends to ignore the Spanish speaking market, but the U.S. is the second biggest Spanish speaking country in the world and Eugenio has built a huge following there.”
Ben also made the art house Spanish language thriller, "Padre Nuestro" in 2007 which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. IFC changed the title to “Sangre de mi Sangre” for its U.S. release. It also played at New Directors/ New Films at Museum of Modern Art in New York in the Spring of 2007, received two Independent Spirit Awards nominations, for Best First Feature (for which Odell was nominated) and Best Screenplay. Odell also produced “Un Cuento Chino” aka “Chinese Take-Out” (a Spanish/ Argentinean co-production), starring Argentina’s most popular actor, Ricardo Darin (“El Secreto de los Ojos”), written and directed by Sebastián Borensztein. In Spanish, referring to a story as a cuento chino is equivalent to calling it a tall tale.
“Chino” was the top grossing Argentinean film of 2011 and one of the highest grossing Argentinean films of all times. In its international release it has broken box office records for Latin American films in both Latin America and Europe. It won the Argentinean Academy Award for best feature and the Goya, the Spanish Academy Award, for Best Latin American Film. It won numerous festivals including the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Rome Film Festival.
When Odell was developing the script with Borensztein in 2009, he sent the script to Derbez, who immediately expressed interested in remaking it. “I loved the original story and movie,” Derbez said. “There is a heartfelt relationship that develops between these two very different people set around a whimsical, comical and magical world.”
Odell was also an executive producer on the English language 3D family thriller, “ The Games Maker”, starring Joseph Fiennes and Ed Asner. Made as a coproduction with Disney Latin America, the movie was produced in Argentina by Pampa Films and directed by Juan Pablo Buscarini, one of the producers of “Un Cuento Chino”. It was released widely across Latin America in the summer of 2014 and continues its theatrical release around the world.
Several years into Panamax’s deal with Lionsgate, a joint venture was created between Panamax, Televisa and Lionsgate called Pantelion Films. McNamara became chairman of Pantelion and Ben became President of Production.
Under the new deal he produced the 2012 coming of age comedy “Girl in Progress”, directed by “Under the Same Moon” director Patricia Riggen and staring Eva Mendes, Eugenio Derbez, Mathew Modine and Patricia Arquette
His most recent film was the inspirational true story, “Spare Parts”, starring George Lopez, Jamie Lee Curtis and Marisa Tomei which was released in January 2015.
While Eugenio was making his breakout film "Instructions not Included” neither he nor Ben had any idea it would be so big. “Instructions Not Included,” was released in 2013 by Pantelion and grossed $44.5 million, making it the highest-grossing Spanish-language film ever released in the U.S. It grossed another $55 million overseas making it the number one Spanish language movie in the world.
The two realized, this was The One Time In A Career To Capitalize, and they decided to go together, to focus on brand-building, based on Eugenio's popularity and to go beyond his own work, in English and Spanish. Together they formed 3pas Studios which signed a first-look deal with Pantelion in August 2014.
They are in development on many feature films including “Un Cuento Chino”, a remake of the French comedy, “The Valet” and an untitled original script about an aging Latin lover from writers Chris Spain and Jon Zack (“The Perfect Storm”) which Derbez will star in and produce with Ben.
“We are developing multiple projects with an eye to shooting one at the end of 2015,” Odell said.
Meantime, Eugenio Derbez just filmed roles in Warner Brothers’ “Geostorm” with Gerard Butler and Sony Pictures “ Miracles from Heaven” with Jennifer Garner, and Queen Latifah. The latter was directed by Patricia Riggen who directed Derbez in both “Under the Same Moon” and “Girl in Progress”.
Ben is sure that his producing partner will go way beyond his current core Latino market “He is so lovable to watch. He has a magic about him that is undeniable and transcends language and culture.”...
- 8/5/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Exclusive: Disney has swooped on Latin American and Spanish rights to Kóblic, a thriller that reunites Argentinian idol Ricardo Darin with his Chinese Take-Out director Sebastián Borensztein.
Guido Rud’s Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks closed the early deal on the $3.5m project and has scored a Greek pre-sale with Seven Films.
Production on Kóblic is set to start in Argentina on July 20 with Darin playing a Navy captain in the late 1970s during the country’s ‘Dirty War’ who refuses to take part in the death flights, whereby drugged dissidents are dropped from planes.
The officer takes refuge in a coastal city and flies crop dusters for a family friend. He eventually falls for a local woman and confronts a thuggish police chief as the dictatorship’s agents close in on his whereabouts.
Darin, who appeared in Argentina’s Oscar-nominated Wild Tales as well as Oscar winner The Secret In Their Eyes and Nine Queens, will star alongside...
Guido Rud’s Buenos Aires-based FilmSharks closed the early deal on the $3.5m project and has scored a Greek pre-sale with Seven Films.
Production on Kóblic is set to start in Argentina on July 20 with Darin playing a Navy captain in the late 1970s during the country’s ‘Dirty War’ who refuses to take part in the death flights, whereby drugged dissidents are dropped from planes.
The officer takes refuge in a coastal city and flies crop dusters for a family friend. He eventually falls for a local woman and confronts a thuggish police chief as the dictatorship’s agents close in on his whereabouts.
Darin, who appeared in Argentina’s Oscar-nominated Wild Tales as well as Oscar winner The Secret In Their Eyes and Nine Queens, will star alongside...
- 5/14/2015
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
A look back at 2012 reveals an undeniable fact, it has been a great year for Latino film. Sundance started the year off strong with films like Aurora Guerrero’s sweet and tender Mosquita y Mari and Marialy Rivas’ rambunctious Joven y Alocada (Young & Wild). Gina Rodriguez broke out in Filly Brown, as a rapper who needs to make it big so she can raise money to get her mom out of jail. In the film, Jenni Rivera played the part of Filly’s mom in her first, and sadly last, movie role.
There was also a strong Latin American presence at Cannes this past summer, boasting films from Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. It might as well have been called Mexi-Cannes, with Mexican films winning awards across all main sections of the festival. Carlos Reygadas was honored as the Best Director for his controversial film Post Tenebras Lux, despite having received boos at its premiere screening. The prize for the Critics’ Week section went to Aquí y Allá (Here and There) and Después de Lucía (After Lucia) won the top prize for Un Certain Regard.
It’s been an especially favorable year for Chilean cinema. The New York Film Festival, in its 50th edition this past Fall, included three highly anticipated films by Pablo Larraín, Valeria Sarmiento, and the late Raúl Ruiz. And Chile continued to outshine the rest of the region by winning two top spots at the Festival Internacional de Nuevo Cine Latino de La Habana (the Havana Film Festival) just a few days ago. Pablo Larraín’s No, starring Gael Garcia Bernal, won the First Coral Prize. It’s a brilliant take on the real life story of an advertising campaign that ousted General Pinochet from power during a shining moment in Chilean politics. Violeta se fue a los cielos (Violeta Went To Heaven), a biopic about internationally famous Violeta de la Parra, a Chilean singer, songwriter, and poet won the Second Prize.
Whether it was at Cannes, Sundance, or countless other festivals, Latino films were winning award after award this year and even getting distribution (albeit usually in limited release). With the flurry of activity surrounding the region’s filmmaking, it can be hard to keep up with it all. Thankfully, there are professionals who get paid to keep track of what movies are receiving accolades, have the most buzz, and got picked up for distribution. LatinoBuzz went straight to the experts, film programmers, to ask, “What’s your top 5 Latino films of 2012?”
Carlos Gutierrez, Co-Founder and Director of Cinema Tropical
In no particular order, a list of five Latin American films that made it to Us screens in the past year (some of them are a couple of years old), which I highly recommend.
De Jueves a Domingo (Thursday Till Sunday), Director: Dominga Sotomayor, Chile
O Som ao Redor (Neighboring Sounds), Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil
El Estudiante, Director: Santiago Mitre, Argentina
El Velador, Director: Natalia Almada, Mexico
El Lugar Más Pequeño (The Tiniest Place), Director: Tatiana Huezo, Mexico/El Salvador
Juan Caceres, Director of Programming at the New York International Latino Film Festival
Mosquita y Mari is a gorgeous film full of heart. Marialy Rivas (Director of Joven y Alocada) is an incredibly exciting new voice in Latin American cinema. She's fearless and full of love. I'm a huge fan of Lucy Mulloy (Director of Una Noche). She draws these wonderful performances from non-professional actors. A natural at using the lens to tell a story. In Las Malas Intenciones Fatima Buntinx plays the lead perfectly. Andres Wood made a beautiful film called 'Machuca', that captured the soul of Chile in the 70's and he does the same with a bio-pic of Violeta Parra, a folk singer who was a part of 'La Nueva Canción Chilena'.
Mosquita y Mari, Director: Aurora Guerrero, USA
Joven y Alocada (Young and Wild), Director: Marialy Rivas, Chile
Una Noche, Director: Lucy Mulloy, Cuba
Violeta Se Fue A Los Cielos (Violeta Went to Heaven), Director: Andrés Wood, Chile
Las Malas Intenciones (The Bad Intentions), Director: Rosario García-Montero, Perú
Christine Davila, Programming Associate at Sundance Film Festival
There are way too many Latino films and not enough coverage on American Latino films so with that -- mine are going to be strictly American Latino films.
Los Chidos, Director: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, USA/Mexico
Mosquita y Mari, Director: Aurora Guerrero, USA
Elliot Loves, Director: Terracino, USA
Aquí y Allá (Here and There), Director: Antonio Méndez Esparza, USA/Spain/Mexico
Love, Concord, Director: Gustavo Guardado, USA
Lisa Franek, Artistic Director at the San Diego Latino Film Festival
Just 5?? That's tough! In Filly Brown, Gina Rodriguez turns in a great performance, and I expect to see more great things from her very soon. No, I saw at Cannes, and it was fascinating, especially in contrast to Larraín's previous (amazing) films. La Hora Cero has unforgettable scenes and characters! La Mujer de Ivan has amazing acting, and I believe Maria de Los Angeles Garcia is definitely a talent to watch. Reportero is also fantastic.
La Mujer de Iván, Director: Francisca Silva, Chile
No, Director: Pablo Larraín, Chile/France/USA
La Hora Cero, Director: Diego Velasco, Venezuela
Reportero, Director: Bernardo Ruiz, USA/Mexico
Filly Brown, Directors: Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos, USA
Marcela Goglio, Programmer for Latinbeat at The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Las Acacias, Director: Pablo Giorgelli, Argentina
As Cançoes (Songs), Director: Eduardo Coutinho, Brazil
Unfinished Spaces, Directors: Alyssa Nahmias & Benjamin Murray, USA
O Som ao Redor (Neighboring Sounds), Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil
Aquí y Allá (Here and There), Director: Antonio Méndez Esparza, USA/Spain/Mexico
Pepe Vargas, Executive Director of the International Latino Cultural Center and Chicago Latino Film Festival
Not an easy task to come up with 5 titles - there are so many good movies.
La Piel que Habito (The Skin I Live In)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
Salvando al Soldado Pérez, (Saving Private Perez)
Director: Beto Gómez, Mexico
Un Cuento Chino (Chinese Take-Out)
Director: Sebastián Borensztein, Argentina/Spain
Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves)
Director: Juan Martínez Moreno, Spain
Mariachi Gringo
Director: Tom Gustafson, USA/Mexico
Amalia Cordova, Coordinator of the Latin American Program at the Film and Video Center of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
Granito, Director: Pamela Yates, USA/Guatemala/Spain
Desterro Guarani, Directors: Patricia Ferreira y Ariel Duarte Ortega, Brazil
Violeta Se Fue A Los Cielos (Violeta Went to Heaven), Director: Andrés Wood, Chile
5 x Favela – Agora por nós Mesmos (5 x Favela, Now by Ourselves), Directors: Manaíra Carneiro, Wagner Novais, Cacau Amaral, Rodrigo Felha, Luciano Vidigal, Cadu Barcelos, and Luciana Bezerra, Brazil
Un Cuento Chino (Chinese Take-Out), Director: Sebastián Borensztein, Argentina/Spain
Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in Latino film with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzz on twitter.
There was also a strong Latin American presence at Cannes this past summer, boasting films from Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. It might as well have been called Mexi-Cannes, with Mexican films winning awards across all main sections of the festival. Carlos Reygadas was honored as the Best Director for his controversial film Post Tenebras Lux, despite having received boos at its premiere screening. The prize for the Critics’ Week section went to Aquí y Allá (Here and There) and Después de Lucía (After Lucia) won the top prize for Un Certain Regard.
It’s been an especially favorable year for Chilean cinema. The New York Film Festival, in its 50th edition this past Fall, included three highly anticipated films by Pablo Larraín, Valeria Sarmiento, and the late Raúl Ruiz. And Chile continued to outshine the rest of the region by winning two top spots at the Festival Internacional de Nuevo Cine Latino de La Habana (the Havana Film Festival) just a few days ago. Pablo Larraín’s No, starring Gael Garcia Bernal, won the First Coral Prize. It’s a brilliant take on the real life story of an advertising campaign that ousted General Pinochet from power during a shining moment in Chilean politics. Violeta se fue a los cielos (Violeta Went To Heaven), a biopic about internationally famous Violeta de la Parra, a Chilean singer, songwriter, and poet won the Second Prize.
Whether it was at Cannes, Sundance, or countless other festivals, Latino films were winning award after award this year and even getting distribution (albeit usually in limited release). With the flurry of activity surrounding the region’s filmmaking, it can be hard to keep up with it all. Thankfully, there are professionals who get paid to keep track of what movies are receiving accolades, have the most buzz, and got picked up for distribution. LatinoBuzz went straight to the experts, film programmers, to ask, “What’s your top 5 Latino films of 2012?”
Carlos Gutierrez, Co-Founder and Director of Cinema Tropical
In no particular order, a list of five Latin American films that made it to Us screens in the past year (some of them are a couple of years old), which I highly recommend.
De Jueves a Domingo (Thursday Till Sunday), Director: Dominga Sotomayor, Chile
O Som ao Redor (Neighboring Sounds), Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil
El Estudiante, Director: Santiago Mitre, Argentina
El Velador, Director: Natalia Almada, Mexico
El Lugar Más Pequeño (The Tiniest Place), Director: Tatiana Huezo, Mexico/El Salvador
Juan Caceres, Director of Programming at the New York International Latino Film Festival
Mosquita y Mari is a gorgeous film full of heart. Marialy Rivas (Director of Joven y Alocada) is an incredibly exciting new voice in Latin American cinema. She's fearless and full of love. I'm a huge fan of Lucy Mulloy (Director of Una Noche). She draws these wonderful performances from non-professional actors. A natural at using the lens to tell a story. In Las Malas Intenciones Fatima Buntinx plays the lead perfectly. Andres Wood made a beautiful film called 'Machuca', that captured the soul of Chile in the 70's and he does the same with a bio-pic of Violeta Parra, a folk singer who was a part of 'La Nueva Canción Chilena'.
Mosquita y Mari, Director: Aurora Guerrero, USA
Joven y Alocada (Young and Wild), Director: Marialy Rivas, Chile
Una Noche, Director: Lucy Mulloy, Cuba
Violeta Se Fue A Los Cielos (Violeta Went to Heaven), Director: Andrés Wood, Chile
Las Malas Intenciones (The Bad Intentions), Director: Rosario García-Montero, Perú
Christine Davila, Programming Associate at Sundance Film Festival
There are way too many Latino films and not enough coverage on American Latino films so with that -- mine are going to be strictly American Latino films.
Los Chidos, Director: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, USA/Mexico
Mosquita y Mari, Director: Aurora Guerrero, USA
Elliot Loves, Director: Terracino, USA
Aquí y Allá (Here and There), Director: Antonio Méndez Esparza, USA/Spain/Mexico
Love, Concord, Director: Gustavo Guardado, USA
Lisa Franek, Artistic Director at the San Diego Latino Film Festival
Just 5?? That's tough! In Filly Brown, Gina Rodriguez turns in a great performance, and I expect to see more great things from her very soon. No, I saw at Cannes, and it was fascinating, especially in contrast to Larraín's previous (amazing) films. La Hora Cero has unforgettable scenes and characters! La Mujer de Ivan has amazing acting, and I believe Maria de Los Angeles Garcia is definitely a talent to watch. Reportero is also fantastic.
La Mujer de Iván, Director: Francisca Silva, Chile
No, Director: Pablo Larraín, Chile/France/USA
La Hora Cero, Director: Diego Velasco, Venezuela
Reportero, Director: Bernardo Ruiz, USA/Mexico
Filly Brown, Directors: Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos, USA
Marcela Goglio, Programmer for Latinbeat at The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Las Acacias, Director: Pablo Giorgelli, Argentina
As Cançoes (Songs), Director: Eduardo Coutinho, Brazil
Unfinished Spaces, Directors: Alyssa Nahmias & Benjamin Murray, USA
O Som ao Redor (Neighboring Sounds), Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil
Aquí y Allá (Here and There), Director: Antonio Méndez Esparza, USA/Spain/Mexico
Pepe Vargas, Executive Director of the International Latino Cultural Center and Chicago Latino Film Festival
Not an easy task to come up with 5 titles - there are so many good movies.
La Piel que Habito (The Skin I Live In)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
Salvando al Soldado Pérez, (Saving Private Perez)
Director: Beto Gómez, Mexico
Un Cuento Chino (Chinese Take-Out)
Director: Sebastián Borensztein, Argentina/Spain
Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves)
Director: Juan Martínez Moreno, Spain
Mariachi Gringo
Director: Tom Gustafson, USA/Mexico
Amalia Cordova, Coordinator of the Latin American Program at the Film and Video Center of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
Granito, Director: Pamela Yates, USA/Guatemala/Spain
Desterro Guarani, Directors: Patricia Ferreira y Ariel Duarte Ortega, Brazil
Violeta Se Fue A Los Cielos (Violeta Went to Heaven), Director: Andrés Wood, Chile
5 x Favela – Agora por nós Mesmos (5 x Favela, Now by Ourselves), Directors: Manaíra Carneiro, Wagner Novais, Cacau Amaral, Rodrigo Felha, Luciano Vidigal, Cadu Barcelos, and Luciana Bezerra, Brazil
Un Cuento Chino (Chinese Take-Out), Director: Sebastián Borensztein, Argentina/Spain
Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in Latino film with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzz on twitter.
- 12/19/2012
- by Vanessa Erazo
- Sydney's Buzz
José Coronado, No Rest for the Wicked Pedro Almodóvar didn't have much luck at the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Goya Awards this evening in Madrid: Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In won a total of four Goyas, but none for its director/writer. Starring Antonio Banderas as a plastic surgeon, Elena Anaya as his captive woman, and Jan Cornet as the good-looking young man whom the doctor blames for the death of his daughter, the sex-bending mystery melodrama won Goyas for Best Actress (Anaya), Best New Actor (Cornet), Best Original Music (Alberto Iglesias, his tenth Goya win), and Best Makeup/Hair. [Full list of Premios Goya winners/nominations.] Instead of the internationally renowned (and BAFTA winner) The Skin I Live In, the 2012 Goyas' big winner was Enrique Urbizu's No habrá paz para los malvados / No Rest for the Wicked, the story of a murderous, corrupt cop. No Rest for the Wicked won Goyas for Best Picture,...
- 2/20/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Elena Anaya, Antonio Banderas, The Skin I Live In No Rest For The Wicked Tops, Pedro Almodóvar Empty-Handed: Goyas 2012 Winners Best Film La Piel que habito / The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodóvar * No habrá paz para los malvados / No Rest for the Wicked, Enrique Urbizu La Voz dormida / The Sleeping Voice, Benito Zambrano Blackthorn. Sin destino / Blackthorn, Mateo Gil Best Foreign Film in the Spanish Language Boleto al paraíso (Cuba), Gerardo Chijona Miss Bala (Mexico), Gerardo Naranjo * Un cuento chino / Chinese Take-Away (Argentina), Sebastián Borensztein Violeta se fue a los cielos (Chile), Andrés Wood Best European Film Jane Eyre (United Kingdom), Cary Fukunaga Melancholia (Germany / Denmark / France), Lars von Trier * The Artist (France), Michel Hazanavicius Carnage (France), Roman Polanski Best Director Pedro Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In Benito Zambrano, The Sleeping Voice * Enrique Urbizu, No Rest for the Wicked Mateo Gil, Blackthorn Best New Director Paula Ortiz, De tu ventana a la mía...
- 2/20/2012
- by Steve Montgomery
- Alt Film Guide
Sebastián Borensztein "Un Cuento Chino" took top prizes at the International Rome Film Festival over the weekend, winning the international jury award for best film as well as the Audience nod for best feature at the festival. Ashley Sabin and David Redmon's "Girl Model," meanwhile, took Rome's "Marc' Aurelio Award" for best documentary. The list of 2011 International Rome Film Festival prizes (with information provided by the festival International Jury ...
- 11/6/2011
- Indiewire
The International Rome Film Festival announces fifteen films playing in competition at the fest's 6th edition. From October 27-November 4, the Italian festival will open with Luc Besson's The Lady (out of competition), close with a digitally restored version of Breakfast at Tiffany's (marking its 50th anniversary), and in-between will showcase Leander Haubmann's Hotel Lux, Pål Sletaune's Babycall, Tanya Wexler's Hysteria, Juhn Jaihong's Poongsan, Fred Schepisi's The Eye of the Storm, Cédric Kahn's Une vie meilleure, Jaffe Zinn's Magic Valley, Sebastián Borensztein's Un Cuento Chino and Pawel Pawlikowski's La Femme du cinquièmen (The Woman in the Fifth), starring Kristin Scott Thomas (pictured). The four Italian films playing in competition are Ivan Cotroneo's La kryptonite nell borsa, Pupi Avati's Il cuore grande delle ragazze, Marina Spada's ...
- 10/13/2011
- Thompson on Hollywood
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