Eighty-one countries have submitted films for consideration in the 2015 Foreign Language Film Oscar category for the 88th Academy Awards.
Embrace of the Serpent (El Abrazo de La Serpiente) (2015)
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8 Films to Compete for New ‘ Cooperación Española Award ‘ at 63rd San Sebastian Festival
The 63rd San Sebastian Festival will award, for the first time, the new Cooperación Española Award to the producer of the Latin American Film that best contributes to human development, the eradication of poverty and the full exercise of human rights.
Any of the Ibero-American films selected for the Official Selection, New Directors and Horizontes Latinos sections can compete for the Award, to be decided by a 3-member jury.
Films eligible for the Award:
OFFICIAL SELECTION
EVA NO DUERME / EVA DOESN’T SLEEP
PABLO AGÜERO (ARGENTINA – FRANCE – SPAIN)
Evita Perón has died. She is the most loved, but also the most hated political figure of Argentina. A leading expert is given the task of embalming her. After months of hard work, the result is perfect. Meanwhile in Argentina, the coups come one after the other and some dictators want to delete Evita’s legacy from the people’s memory. Her body therefore becomes the focal point of clashes lasting for 25 years. 25 years during which Evita was a more powerful figure than any other living politician.
EL REY DE LA HABANA / THE KING OF HAVANA (pictured in main image above)
AGUSTÍ VILLARONGA (SPAIN – DOMINICAN REP.)
Agustí Villaronga adapts the novel of the same name by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. Recently escaped from reformatory, young Reinaldo tries to get by in the streets of Havana in the late 90s, one of the worst decades for Cuban society. Hopes, disillusionment, rum, good humour and above all hunger, accompany him in his wanderings until he meets Magda and Yunisleidy, survivors like himself. In one or the other’s arms, he will try to escape the material and moral misery surrounding him, living love, passion, tenderness and uninhibited sex to the limit.
HORIZONTES LATINOS
EL ABRAZO DE LA SERPIENTE / EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT
CIRO GUERRA (COLOMBIA – ARGENTINA – VENEZUELA)
Premiered at the Cannes Festival Directors’ Fortnight, the latest film from Ciro Guerra tells the epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between an Amazonian shaman and two Western explorers.
EL BOTÓN DE NÁCAR / THE PEARL BUTTON
PATRICIO GUZMÁN (FRANCE – SPAIN – CHILE)
Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán talks to us in his latest documentary about water, the cosmos and ourselves, human beings. It all begins with the discovery of two mysterious buttons in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Script at the Berlin Festival.
IXCANUL
JAYRO BUSTAMANTE (GUATEMALA – FRANCE)
María, a 17 year-old Mayan girl, lives and works with her family in a plantation on the Guatemalan plateau. Her days go by uneventfully until her parents arrange her marriage to the estate foreman, Ignacio. A film that landed a special mention at the last edition of Films in Progress and competed at the Berlin Festival, where it won the Alfred Bauer Award.
LA OBRA DEL SIGLO / THE PROJECT OF THE CENTURY
CARLOS M. QUINTELA (CUBA – ARGENTINA – GERMANY -SWITZERLAND)
Amidst a mosquito plague, Leonardo, struggling with the breakdown of his relationship, moves back to live with a grandfather who fights with everyone and everything, and a father living with the melancholy of the unfinished. Tiger Award-winner at the last Rotterdam Festival.
PAULINA
SANTIAGO MITRE (ARGENTINA – BRAZIL – FRANCE)
Paulina decides to leave her brilliant law career to teach in a downtrodden Argentinian region. In a hostile atmosphere, she will set about her pedagogical mission, even if it means losing her boyfriend and confrontation with her father. Winner of the Grand Prix and Fipresci Award at the last Cannes Festival Critics’ Week.
LA TIERRA Y LA SOMBRA / LAND AND SHADE
CÉSAR AUGUSTO ACEVEDO (COLOMBIA – CHILE – BRAZIL – NETHERLANDS – FRANCE)
Winner of the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Festival, after having participated at the San Sebastian Co-Production Forum in 2013, this film portrays a family as they try to repair the fragile ties that bind them in the face of their imminent disappearance, brought about by the overwhelming power of progress.
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8 Films on 2015 Milwaukee Film Festival Competition Program incl. THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER, UNCERTAIN, IMPERIAL DREAMS
The 7th Annual Milwaukee Film Festival’s lineup for the Competition Program will feature eight feature films including three documentary and five fiction. Highlights of this year’s program include The Russian Woodpecker, winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s 2015 World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. The debut film for writer, producer and director Chad Gracia, it follows Ukrainian Fedor Alexandrovich as he investigates the political and personal history surrounding his survival of Ukraine’s 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A native of South Milwaukee, Gracia is scheduled to attend the festival.
Other Competition films include the documentary Uncertain, winner of the Best New Documentary Director award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, and the fiction feature Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente), winner of the Art Cinema Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015.
Also of note is director Malik Vitthal’s film Imperial Dreams, which teeters between the Milwaukee Film Festival’s Competition and Black Lens programs, opened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 where it received the Best of NEXT Audience Award. The film has gone on to screen at numerous other festivals and has garnered additional awards, including the Audience Award at the Mill Valley Film Festival and the New Orleans Film Festival. Following Bambi (Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens actor John Boyega) as he is released from prison and returns to Watts, this fiction film tells the story of a man determined to earn a living and provide for his young son. Vitthal is scheduled to attend the festival.
2015 MILWAUKEE FILM FESTIVAL COMPETITION PROGRAM
Cartel Land
(USA, Mexico / 2015 / Director: Matthew Heineman)
A gut-churning documentary following the drug war from both sides of the border, Cartel Land gives unprecedented access to the frightening cycle of violence enacted by the powerful drug cartels and the brave citizens fighting against it. South of the border, a small-town physician and his Autodefensas vigilante group wage war against the Knights Templar cartel, while in the 52-mile stretch of Arizona desert known as Cocaine Alley, the paramilitary group Arizona Border Recon tries to stop the drug war from crossing over. This is a sobering, visceral experience (it was executive produced by The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow) you won’t believe was caught on film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JD7hPM_yxg
Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente)
(Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina / 2015 / Director: Ciro Guerra)
An epic adventure story filled with breathtaking landscapes and pristine black-and-white cinematography, Embrace of the Serpent is the wildly original story of one shaman and the two momentous journeys he made upriver three decades apart. Tackling colonialism from the indigenous point of view, the film follows these two journeys as the shaman, the lone survivor of his tribe, travels with two explorers in search of a mystical flower with healing powers. We follow each fraught journey through a jungle landscape slowly being eroded by encroaching modernity, with echoes of Fitzcarraldo and Apocalypse Now as they burrow ever deeper into the heart of darkness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ff7TcnqHUc
Imperial Dreams
(USA / 2014 / Director: Malik Vitthal)
A redemption tale anchored by an amazing lead performance from John Boyega (star of the upcoming Star Wars film), Imperial Dreams is a family drama with an astonishingly realized father-son relationship at its core. Bambi (Boyega) is coming home to Watts; recently released from prison, he has designs on earning a living as a writer (having been published while incarcerated) to provide for his young son, Day. But he quickly realizes the deck is stacked against him and it’s going to take everything he has to achieve his dreams in this stunning, multiple award-winning drama.
Krisha
(USA / 2015 / Director: Trey Edward Shults)
A feature-length expansion of the short that played at last year’s MFF, Krisha is an explosive psychological exploration of family dynamics on the cutting edge of American independent cinema. A recovering alcoholic and black sheep of the family, 60-something Krisha returns to family over the Thanksgiving holiday, reuniting for the first time in over a decade. But as the night progresses, her confidence in her own rehabilitation begins to wane and her precarious emotional state begins to unravel. It is an extraordinary feature debut with a dizzying lead performance reminiscent of Gena Rowlands in the Cassavetes classic A Woman Under the Influence.
No One’s Child (Nicije dete)
(Serbia, Croatia / 2014 / Director: Vuk Ršumović)
Playing “like a bleakly beautiful fairy tale by the brothers Grimm” (International Federation of Film Critics), this film takes us deep into the mountains of Bosnia, where we’re introduced to a feral child living among the wolves. Upon his discovery in 1988, he is sent to a Belgrade orphanage. There, he struggles to relate to his peers until a friendship allows him to embrace humanity, only for the Balkan War to put pressure on his caretakers to return him to his homeland. Based on a remarkable true story, this gripping exploration of human nature is a compassionate look at personal and national identity.
https://vimeo.com/108777880
The Russian Woodpecker
(USA, Ukraine / 2015 / Director: Chad Gracia)
Eccentric Ukrainian Fedor Alexandrovich, endearing performance artist and childhood survivor of the Chernobyl disaster, has always suspected the truth behind the incident that left him irradiated was being kept from him. When a dark secret reveals a web of deceit extending into the roots of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, he must decide if revealing this truth is worth the great personal risk it poses, with tensions between Russia and Ukraine once again at their breaking point. Cultural history, personal portrait, and conspiracy thriller combine in this thrilling and humorous documentary that captures history repeating itself before our very eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rd4ARsbg_0
Uncertain
(USA / 2015 / Directors: Ewan McNicol, Anna Sandilands)
Hauntingly evocative, Uncertain is a Southern gothic capturing life in the titular and tiniest of American towns (“You’d have to be lost in order to find it,” the local sheriff explains), a place so exotic it beggars belief. We follow three wayward souls looking to start over (Uncertain, TX exerts a magnetic pull over those fleeing their past) in a documentary told with a distinct lack of condescension. While Uncertain, TX may be on the brink of disappearing altogether (a natural weed is slowly choking off its water source), you’re sure to never forget it after viewing this astoundingly beautiful documentary debut.
https://vimeo.com/124721333
Violet
(Belgium, Netherlands / 2014 / Director: Bas Devos)
A senseless act of violence leaves 15-year-old Jesse bereft of his best friend and adrift in a sea of grief in this impressionistic debut feature. This is a uniquely cinematic experience, bending the audience’s perception to that of its grief-stricken protagonist (portions were shot on 65mm, immersing you in his world) as family and friends all struggle to cope with their loss. Culminating in a bravura eight-minute final shot, Violet is hard to watch yet ultimately rewarding—image, editing, and sound design working in perfect concert to bring to life the vivid sense of dislocation left in the wake of random violence.
https://vimeo.com/85068938
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Narrative and Documentary Competition Films at 2015 Hamptons International Film Festival Incl. FRENCH BLOOD, RAMS, TIKKUN
The 23rd Annual Hamptons International Film Festival revealed the films in the Narrative and Documentary Competition. The jury will select winners in each category; awards will be announced in a ceremony in East Hampton on Monday, October 12.
The feature films in this year’s Narrative Competition include Matt Sobel’s Take Me to the River, Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent, Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun, Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams, and Diastème’s French Blood.
This year’s Documentary Competition feature films include the World Premiere of Jon Fox’s Newman, David Shapiro’s Missing People, Jean-Gabriel Périot’s A German Youth, Michael Madsen’s The Visit, and Ilinca Calugareanu’s Chuck Norris Vs. Communism.
The jury deciding the winners of the 2015 Hamptons International Film Festival Narrative and Documentary Competition includes Michael H. Weber, screenwriter of 500 Days of Summer and The Fault in Our Stars; Dan Guando, head of U.S. Production and Acquisitions at The Weinstein Company; Josh Charles, star of television’s The Good Wife and Masters of Sex; Marshall Fine, renowned author, journalist and film critic; and Sarah Lash, acquisitions consultant at Conde Nast Entertainment.
EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (Colombia)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Ciro Guerra
Inspired by the real experiences of explorers in the Amazon, Embrace of the Serpent centers on the relationship between Karamakate, a shaman of an extinct tribe carrying secrets and traditions, and two scientists in search of a sacred plant, capable of immense healing. Opting for powerful black and white cinematography, director Ciro Guerra tracks their parallel stories over 40 years with trips deep into the jungle. Winner of the top prize at the Cannes Directors Fortnight, the film intimately captures the thirst for knowledge and the ravages of colonialism that have destroyed the harmony and balance at the heart of the indigenous way of life.
RAMS (Iceland)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Grímur Hákonarson
Brothers Gummi (Sigurdur Sigurjonsson) and Kiddi (Theodor Juliusson) live side-by-side but have not spoken in forty years. Stubborn and competitive, they only communicate via handwritten notes delivered by their loyal sheepdog Somi. When a deadly virus threatens their prize-winning sheep and livelihood, they are forced to come together to save their unique family breed, and themselves, from extinction. Winner of the Un Certain Regard Award in Cannes, Rams details the hardships of daily farm work in remote Iceland with humanism and humor. Stunningly combining otherworldly landscapes and powerful performances, director Grímur Hákonarson expertly builds this gentle comedy to reveal a deeper and emotionally moving tale.
TAKE ME TO THE RIVER (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Matt Sobel
Accompanying his parents to a Nebraskan family reunion couldn’t be more uncomfortable for Ryder (Logan Miller), a gay Californian teenager. For his mother’s sake he agrees to act “normal,” but nonetheless attracts some unwanted attention from his conservative relatives. The only one who seems to like him is 9-year-old Molly (Ursula Parker), but a strange encounter between the two of them raises many questions and places Ryder at the center of a long-buried family secret. A superbly acted drama from first-time filmmaker Matt Sobel, Take Me to the River reveals itself through Ryder’s perplexed point of view, unfolding in an atmosphere of mystery and trepidation.
TIKKUN (Israel)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Avishai Sivan
Haim-Aron (Aharon Traitel) is considered an illui (a prodigy) at his Yeshiva. He is absorbed in his studies to such a degree that he completely isolates himself from the outside world, going days without eating or sleeping. When a near death experience changes his perspective on life, he starts to slowly explore life outside of his secluded ultra-orthodox community and begins to doubt his faith. Seeing Haim-Aron’s transformation torments his father (Khalifa Natour) with nightmares in which he is instructed to perform Tikkun (rectification). With its riveting performances and the arrestingly beautiful black and white cinematography, Avishai Sivan’s haunting film is sure to linger long in your imagination.
FRENCH BLOOD (France) (pictured in main image above)
US Premiere
Director: Diastème
Marco (Alban Lenoir) is a young Neo-Nazi and skinhead who, along with his friends, terrorizes the lower-class suburbs of Paris hoping to clear out the “scum” that is polluting the pure, white landscape of their beloved country. Spanning almost 3 decades in Marco’s life as he struggles to understand his own anger and brutal actions, this evocative and moving portrait—the sophomore effort from writer-director Diastème—offers a rare and unsettling look into the rise of xenophobia in France. With a brilliant performance by Lenoir, this poignant drama distinguishes itself as a unique and powerful work by an emerging talent.
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Colombian Film EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT Looking at 2016 Release Date in US | TRAILER
EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (El abrazo de la serpiente) by Colombian director Ciro Guerra, and winner of the Art Cinema award in Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival will be released in the US via Oscilloscope Laboratories. The film is scheduled for an early 2016 theatrical release.
Filmed in black and white, and starring Jan Bijvoet, Brionne Davis, Nilbio Torres Antonio Bolivar, Yauenkü Migue, EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT tells the epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-trascending friendship, between Karamakate, an amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.
Ciro Guerra (b. 1981, Río de Oro, Colombia) studied film and television at the National University of Colombia. He made several award-winning shorts and, aged 21, debuted with the feature film The Wandering Shadows (La sombra del caminante, 2004), which won an award at the San Sebastián IFF. He followed this up with The Wind Journeys (Los viajes del viento), which was premiered at Cannes in 2009 in the Directors’ Fortnight section. Both films were subsequently screened at numerous IFFs (including Cannes, Toronto, Rotterdam, Tribeca and Locarno), winning 40 international awards; they were also chosen as Colombia’s Academy Award submissions and have been distributed in twenty countries. The Wind Journeys was selected by critics as one of the top ten most important works in Colombian film history. Embrace of the Serpent is the director’s third film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ff7TcnqHUc
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14 Latin American Films on Horizontes Latinos Program at 63rd San Sebastian Festival
The Horizontes Latinos program of the 63rd San Sebastian Festival will include fourteen films from Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Films that have competed or premiered at important international festivals, but which have not yet been screened at a Spanish festival or had their commercial release in Spain.
The Horizontes Latinos program will open with Pablo Larraín’s El club, Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the last Berlin Festival. The film tells the tale of four men who share a secluded house in a small beach town, sent there to purge the sins they have committed in the past.
The selected films compete for the Horizontes Award, decided by a specific jury and coming with €35,000, of which €10,000 will go to the director of the winning film, and the remaining €25,000 to its distributor in Spain.
EL CLUB (THE CLUB) (pictured in main image above)
PABLO LARRAÍN (CHILE)
Opening Night Film
Pablo Larraín won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the last Berlin Festival with this film. Four men share a secluded house in a small beach town, sent there to purge the sins they have committed in the past.
600 MILLAS (600 MILES)
GABRIEL RIPSTEIN (MEXICO)
Arnulfo Rubio, a young gun trafficker between the United States and Mexico, is being followed by ATF agent Hank Harris. After a risky mistake by Harris, Rubio makes a desperate decision: he smuggles the agent to Mexico. Best First Feature Award in the Panorama section of the Berlin Festival.
EL ABRAZO DE LA SERPIENTE (EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT)
CIRO GUERRA (COLOMBIA – ARGENTINA – VENEZUELA)
Premiered at the Cannes Festival Directors’ Fortnight, the latest film from Ciro Guerra tells the epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between an Amazonian shaman and two Western explorers.
EL BOTÓN DE NÁCAR (THE PEARL BUTTON)
PATRICIO GUZMÁN (FRANCE – CHILE – SPAIN )
Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán talks to us in his latest documentary about water, the cosmos and ourselves, human beings. It all begins with the discovery of two mysterious buttons in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile.
CHRONIC
MICHEL FRANCO (MEXICO – FRANCE)
David is a nurse who works with terminally ill patients. Efficient and dedicated to his profession, he develops strong and even intimate relationships with each person he cares for. But outside of his work David is ineffectual, awkward, and reserved. Best Screenplay Award-winner at the Cannes Festival.
DESDE ALLÁ (FROM AFAR)
LORENZO VIGAS (VENEZUELA)
Armando, aged 50, looks for young men in the streets of Caracas and pays them to come back to his house with him. He also regularly spies on an older man with whom he seems to have ties from the past. One day he meets Elder, aged 17, leader of a small band of thugs. Competitor in the Official Selection of the Venice Festival.
LAS ELEGIDAS (THE CHOSEN ONES)
DAVID PABLOS (MEXICO – FRANCE)
David Pablos’s second film took part at the San Sebastian Co-production Forum in 2014 and premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Festival. Sofia, 14 years old, is in love with Ulises. Because of him, in spite of him, she is forced into a prostitution ring in Mexico. To set her free, Ulises will have to find another girl to replace her.
IXCANUL
JAYRO BUSTAMANTE (GUATEMALA – FRANCE)
María, a 17 year-old Mayan girl, lives and works with her family in a plantation on the Guatemalan plateau. Her days go by uneventfully until her parents arrange her marriage to the estate foreman, Ignacio. A film that landed a special mention at the last edition of Films in Progress and competed at the Berlin Festival, where it won the Alfred Bauer Award.
MAGALLANES
SALVADOR DEL SOLAR (PERU – ARGENTINA – COLOMBIA – SPAIN)
Winner of Films in Progress at last year’s Festival. Magallanes recognises a woman getting into a taxi. It’s Celina, the young peasant girl he randomly arrested more than twenty years ago, when he was a soldier. They both have unfinished business. And for Magallanes, this is an opportunity to redeem himself. Damián Alcázar, Magaly Solier and Federico Luppi play the leading parts.
LA OBRA DEL SIGLO (THE PROJECT OF THE CENTURY)
CARLOS M. QUINTELA (CUBA – ARGENTINA – GERMANY -SWITZERLAND)
Amidst a mosquito plague, Leonardo, struggling with the breakdown of his relationship, moves back to live with a grandfather who fights with everyone and everything, and a father living with the melancholy of the unfinished. Tiger Award-winner at the last Rotterdam Festival.
PAULINA
SANTIAGO MITRE (ARGENTINA – BRAZIL – FRANCE)
Paulina decides to leave her brilliant law career to teach in a downtrodden Argentinian region. In a hostile atmosphere, she will set about her pedagogical mission, even if it means losing her boyfriend and confrontation with her father. Fipresci Prize-winner at the last Cannes Festival Critics’ Week.
PARA MINHA AMADA MORTA (TO MY BELOVED)
ALY MURITIBA (BRAZIL)
Fernando is a good man who takes care of his only child, Daniel, a shy and sensitive boy. Following the death of his wife Ana, every night Fernando recalls their love as he sorts out his beloved dead spouse’s belongings. One day he finds a VHS tape that will change everything. This movie participated in the Films in Progress section at the last Festival. The film took part at the Co-Production Forum in 2014.
TE PROMETO ANARQUÍA (I PROMISE YOU ANARCHY)
JULIO HERNÁNDEZ CORDÓN (MEXICO – GERMANY)
Julio Hernández Cordón’s new film was selected for the Locarno Festival Competition. Miguel and Johnny have known each other since childhood. They spend their time skateboarding and having fun. To make easy money and continue skateboarding, they sell their own blood clandestinely. They turn the ploy into a business, until a major transaction doesn’t turn out as they’d expected.
LA TIERRA Y LA SOMBRA / LAND AND SHADE
CÉSAR AUGUSTO ACEVEDO (COLOMBIA – CHILE – BRAZIL – NETHERLANDS – FRANCE)
Winner of the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Festival, after having participated at the San Sebastian Co-Production Forum in 2013, this film portrays a family as they try to repair the fragile ties that bind them in the face of their imminent disappearance, brought about by the overwhelming power of progress.