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San Sebastian’s pix-in-post showcases have often launched standout movies, such as Sebastian Lelio’s “Gloria,” winner of the Films in Progress Award at the 2012 edition, plus notable directors, such as Jayro Bustamante, whose praised debut “Ixcanul” played at the festival in rough cut in 2015 before winning the Alfred Bauer prize for innovation at 2016’s Berlinale, breaking out handsome sales.

San Sebastian’s 2023 Co-Production Forum registers two trends: Films that are genre pics or enrol genre tropes or genre blend; an exploration of identity.

Thus year’s San Sebastian Wip Latam skews in another direction. “The films and stories are very grounded in reality, either by there hybrid formal move between fiction and non-fiction, their singular take on daily matters or the very social issues they address,” Javier Martín, San Sebastian Latin American delegate, told LatAmCinema.com.

Yet genre surfaces in disparate ways: the mix of coming of age, apocalypse...

The episode features:Rodrigo Sepúlveda (Chile), a writer, director and producer. Sepúlveda directed successful television productions in the ’80s and ’90s, but it wasn’t until 2002 that he made his feature-film debut. Since then, he has cultivated a humanist filmography that examines love and family ties, as well as the prejudices of Chilean society. In 2020, his film My Tender Matador (Tengo miedo, torero) premiered in Venice's parallel section, Giornate degli Autori. A successful adaptation of Pedro Lemebel's novel, the film stars Alfredo Castro in one of his most brilliant and memorable performances. Julieta Zylberberg (Argentina), an actress who has worked for over twenty years in film, series, television and theater. She made her film debut in The Holy Girl (La niña santa), Lucrecia Martel's second feature film.With sobriety and forcefulness, Zylberberg has played characters that reflect great ambiguity. She has starred in films such as Ana Katz...

The Disaster Artist is heading to San Sebastian Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival San Sebastian Film Festival announced a selection of the films that will compete at its 65th edition this September - including features from James Franco, Alexandros Avranas, Diego Lerman and Barbara Albert.

Other directors in contention for the Golden Shell include Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano Matt Porterfield and Ivana Mladenovic..

Franco puts himself in front of the camera for his latest film, comedy The Disaster Artist, starring as Tommy Wiseau, the director of the "Citizen Kane of bad movies" The Room. The film showed as a work in progress at SXSW with considerable success and will have its world premiere in Toronto.

Also heading to the festival after a premiere in Canada is Mademoiselle Paradis (Licht), a historical drama about a blind piano prodigy, directed by Austrian filmmaker Albert, who previously competed at the festival...

Bruno Dumont finds a special place on the croisette to premiere his latest work (his television mini-series Li’l Quinquin) and Frederick Wiseman makes another appearance in the section with London Museum bliss in National Gallery as the 2014 edition of the Directors’ Fortnight is low of first time works (only three) and filled with renowned auteurs. Rumored as a possible Main Comp entry, it is the hotly anticipated Bande De Files from Céline Sciamma that will open the section which will be book-ended by what could be a feel-good The Full Monty type in Matthew Warchus’ Pride. Starring Bill Nighy, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton, this 1984 Margaret Thatcher set drama sees gay and lesbian activists support the families of National Union of Mineworkers and thus form to a surprising partnership. Also on the English side, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh will have some company in John Boorman, Queen and Country...

Today starts the 16th edition of Ibero-Latin-American Film Festival of Montreal, Festivalissimo, with the Canadian premiere of La Vida De Los Peces (The Life of Fish), by Chilean filmmaker Matías Bize, presented tonight, at Cinema Impérial (1430 de Bleury Street, Montreal).

Right after its opening ceremony, the 16th edition of Festivalissimo will be continuing at Nfb Cinema (1564 St-Denis) with the presentation of major movie premieres of films that have participated to the most important film festivals in the world, such as Cannes, Venice, Locarno, Berlin, Guadalajara and San Sebastián.

During the first days of its new edition, Festivalissimo will therefore host the Canadian premieres of La Mirada Invisible (The Invisible Eye) of Argentinean filmmaker Diego Lerman, presented in 2010 at the Directors Fortnight.

There will also be a screening of Post Mortem, by Pablo Larraín, sacred Best Latin American film at the 2011 Guadalajara Film Festival for its daring and terrifying replay Chilean...

Director: Diego Lerman Writers: Diego Lerman, Maria Meira Starring: Julieta Zylberberg, Osmar Nuñez, Marta Lubos, Gaby Ferrero, Diego Veggezzi, Pablo Sigal Much of 20th century Latin American history is marred by viscous dictators who actively sought to repress any and all opposed to their regimes. The history of Argentina is no exception to this. The period between 1976 and 1983 is known as the Dirty War in Argentina when thousands of students, unionists, activists, journalists and anyone who sympathized with left-wing politics were “disappeared” by the military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and his ruthless entourage. This period of intense repression is artistically manifested in much of the art of Argentina from the latter part of the 20th century on. Diego Lerman’s allegorical film, La mirada invisible (The Invisible Eye), is set in a Buenos Aires high school in 1982. The world of the school starkly contrasts the world beyond its courtyard walls...

Producer Mariana Secco and writer-director Alvaro Brechner, two leads in Uruguay’s up and coming production scene, are collaborating on Kaplan, another Brechner quixotic movie.

Brechner, producer, director and writer of several shorts, starts new project that is followup to awarded Bad Day to Go Fishing, his debut feature length film. The story turns around a 70 year old Kaplan which attempts to bring to trial former Nazi who now runs a restaurant out of Montevideo.

Discussing at Mexico’s Guadalajara Film Festival, Secco said Kaplan turns on a quixotic man who wants to achieve something in his life. The feature was “a fable with dramatic and comic touches,” she added, quite like Bad Day.

Centered on his grandparents’ experiences, Kaplan is penned by Brechner with contribution from actor-writer Gary Piquer, who won best actor at the 2009 Mar del Plata festival for his role in Bad Day to Go Fishing.

Kaplan...

Pairon Talle

Sidharth Srinivasan’s Pairon Talle (Soul of Sand) will be a part of Global Lens 2011, the eighth annual touring film exhibition organized by MoMA (Museum of Modern Arts, New York City). The exhibition, in collaboration with the Global Film Initiative (Gfi) will be held from January 13–28, 2011.

The nine films to be presented in this exhibition have been developed with grants from Gfi.

“Accomplished, entertaining, and thought-provoking, the films are also deeply rooted in the social and political realities of the countries where their talented and resourceful makers live and set their stories”, as stated in a press release.

This year’s other selections are:

Federico Veiroj’s La Vida Útil (A Useful Life) (2010), Uruguay; Sérgio Bianchi’s Os Inquilinos (The Tenants) (2009), Brazil; Diego Lerman’s La Mirada Invisible (The Invisible Eye) (2010), Argentina; Aktan Arym Kubat’s Svet-Ake (The Light Thief) (2010), Kyrgyzstan; Mohammad Rasoulof’s Kestzar Haye Sepid (The...

As Toronto winds down, that other Tiff, the Tokyo International Film Festival, is prepping for its trip down the red carpet next month. Today, they announced eight new films for the competition section of the festival, including films from Romania, Iran, and Israel. Stand-outs include Beautiful Boy by American first-time writer-director Shawn Ku, which also screened at Toronto, and Rowan Joffe’s UK crime-thriller Brighton Rock. This brings the total to 12 of 15 films for the competition section of the fest; the full list is slated to be announced at the end of the month. The Tokyo International Film Festival kicks off October 23rd. Hit the jump for the full press release and Beautiful Boy trailer.

Beautiful Boy trailer:

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Further selections for the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival Competition section revealed:

The 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) has announced additional eight films for this year’s Competition section. The...

La Mirada invisible (The Invisible Eye) - Diego Lerman Winner of the Sundance/Nhk Int. Filmmakers Award and part of Cannes' Atelier de la Cinefondation, this is set in 1982's Buenos Aires, close to the end of the military dictatorship and focuses on the tensions between teachers and students. Picco - Philip KochGerman debut from Koch is actually based on true events, Picco is the first picture to shed light on the every-day life of youth prison inmates in Germany and shows in a gripping and merciless way that the contemporary judiciary system is by no means able to properly re-educate these lost youths... Pieds nus sur les limaces (Lily Sometimes) - Fabienne BerthaudCo-written by Berthaud and Pascal Arnold, this is based on Berthaud’s eponymous novel, and centres on Clara (Diane Kruger), who is happily married to a promising lawyer and lives in Paris. After the sudden death of their mother,...

You can say that there'll be plenty of virgins in this year's Director's Fortnight section. Quickly looking at the list of 22 feature films, Frédéric Boyer's very first edition appears to be heavy on first time works - exactly half of the section are newbies. In the list we find three items on my "Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of the Year in: Fabienne Berthaud's Pieds nus sur les limaces (see pic of Diane Kruger above), Cam Archer's Shit Year and Alistair Banks Griffin's debut film, Two Gates Of Sleep. Also included in the section is a doc-essay film from Michelangelo Frammartino that I'll be itching to see as well. Of the veteran auteurs, we have works from Christoffer Boe, Jean-Paul Civeyrac, old school High School doc filmmaker Frederik Wiseman and look for the Rolling Stones to be on hand for Stephen Kijak's Stones In Exile. Here are...

Rumours are circulating in Paris two weeks ahead of the press conference at which the official selection for the 63rd Cannes Film Festival (May 12-23, 2010) will be unveiled. And uncertainty will reign until April 15 for this year many films are apparently caught up in a race against time to be ready for Cannes.

According to our sources, the race for the Palme d’Or will almost certainly include Tree of Life by Us director Terrence Malick; Biutiful by Mexico’s Alejandro González Inárritu; Tamara Drewe by UK director Stephen Frears; Another Year by fellow Brit Mike Leigh; and two Korean films: Poetry by Lee Chang-dong and The Housemaid by Im Sang-soo.

The competition line-up may also include Us director Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Miral by fellow Us filmmaker Julian Schnabel, Outrage by Japan’s Takeshi Kitano, and two Argentinean features: Pablo Trapero’s Carancho and Diego Lerman’s Moral Sciences.

It's fun tracking down Cannes titles. Ion Cinema has a bead on the Director's Fortnight line-up, including filmmakers Denis Villeneuve, Tran Anh Hung, Gilles Marchand, Lodge Kerrigan, Pernilla August, Marian Crisan, Gregg Araki, Lola Doillon, Agnes Kocsis and Julie Bertucelli. Ion also predicts for the official selection, Brazilian and Cannes vet Andrucha Waddington's Lope, "a chronicle of the life of Lope de Vega" with Sonia Braga and Alberto Ammann in the title role, and Gael García Bernal in Icíar Bollaín's Even the Rain, from Spain. Meanwhile the French-language Cine Europa lists two Cannes-bound Korean films, Poetry, from Lee Chang-dong and The Housemaid from Im Sang-soo, and from Japan, Takeshi Kitano's Outrage, from Argentina, Carancho, from Pablo Trapero, and Ciencias Morales, from Diego Lerman, as well as ...

• Caran Hartfield's Bury Me Standing and Jake Mahaffy's Free in Deed are two in development projects looking for funding among the 15 selected by Cannes' Atelier de la Cinéfondation. As explained to me by some Sundance directors who had a chance to have their projects take part in the Cannes' The Atelier, in a nutshell, it acts as one extra way to meet with other producers in an attempt to get some coin (mostly foreign) prior to production. Mostly reserved to first, second and third time directors, this year selection includes two U.S. based projects. The directors and producers meet with industry people during the festival's hustle and bustle. Supported by indie producers Effie Brown (Real Women Have Curves) and Gina Kwon (Me and You and Everyone We Know), Bury Me Standing already has three players attached to the project (Mos Def, Kerry Washington and Alfre Woodard) and

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Chicago – The 2009 Sundance Film Festival Awards were announced on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 and Lee Daniels’ examination of parental abuse and self-redemption in Harlem in the 1980s, “Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire,” won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the U.S. dramatic competition.

“Push” tells the story of an embattled teenageer living in 1980s Harlem.

Photo credit: Sundance/Variety “We Live in Public” won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary. The Chilean film “The Maid” by Sebastian Silva, won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema. The audience award in World Cinema went to “An Education” by Lone Scherfig. The film recounts a 16-year-old girl’s adventures in early ’60s London.

Other winning documentaries besides Ondi Timoner’s look at Internet pioneer Josh Harris were “Rough Aunties” by Kim Longinotto, which won the World Cinema docu grand jury prize. The doc focuses on...