Huelva’s main Competition titles, all premieres in Spain, pick up on big festival standouts that still merit further attention. Some brief details:
“Bionico’s Bachata” (Yoel Morales, Dominican Republic)
Bionico’s Bachata
“Bionico’s Bachata”
The film which won Morales, production house Mentes Fritas and producer and co-writer Cristián Monica a South by Southwest 2024 Audience Award. A mockumentary, shot in a box format, Biónico, an equally hopeless romantic and crack addict, battles to clean up his act and make some cash before his fiancée arrives back from rehab. A “romantic story in a hostile Caribbean city” about a “serious topic but handled via the absurd and dark comedy that we have in our culture,” Morales has told Variety.
“El Cuento del Lobo” (Norberto López Amado, Spain)
The latest from López Amado, a director on big Spanish TV series such as “El Principe” and “The Time In Between,” plus notable films from upscale supernatural thriller “Nos Miran” (2002), his first feature, to prized doc-feature “How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?” (2010). Here, Daniel Grao (“Julieta”) and Lucía Jiménez (“Desaparecidos”) play a middle-class couple who step in when the girl who comes to clean her house begins to receive threats. They soon face a seemingly irreconcilable ethical dilemma. Spain-U.S. studio Secuoya Studios produces with Álamo Producciones Audiovisuales and A Contracorriente Films.
“Don’t You Let Me Go” (Ana Guevara, Leticia Jorge, Uruguay)
Grieving the loss of her best friend, Elena, Adela summons a magical bus that takes her back in time to relive a carefree weekend of joy and laughter. Helmers Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge craft a poignant mix in this Bocacha Films-produced feature, which won the Noah Ephron Award at Tribeca. The film’s surreal elements – like a bird reciting Pessoa – reflect the fantastical within everyday grief. Chiara Hourcade, Vicky Jorge, and Eva Dans play the friends, and it is the celebration of friendship that sits at the film’s heart. Sold by Alpha Violet.
“Linda” (Mariana Wainstein, Argentina, Spain)
TIFF
A new housemaid’s head-turning beauty wreaks havoc in an ultra-rich Argentine family, exposing its fragility, hypocrisy, and bedrock bonds. Yet, though all four members get the hots for Linda, she remains an enigma, alluring but aloof, save with the mother, conscious their lives will never be hers. “First-time filmmaker Mariana Wainstein and actor Eugenia “China” Suárez superbly reveal the pathos behind an enigmatic and tantalizing lead character,” Variety wrote. Argentina’s Pampa Films (“Monzón”) and Spain’s Gloriamundi Producciones (“Chinese Takeaway”) turn out another polished production; Meikincine sells.
“Manas” (Marianna Brennand, Brazil, Portugal)
Courtesy Venice Days
A potential section standout, backed by Walter Salles and the Dardennes brothers and the Best Director winner at September’s Venice Days, reaping upbeat reviews. A brutal coming-of-age tale, the fruit of a decade-long research by first fiction director Brennand, “Manas” turns on Tielle, 13, who lives in an Amazonian forest, suffers sexual abuse at home, and determines that her little sister will escape a similar fate. “The narrative is both sensorial and emotional,” says Salles, “Manas” is produced by Brazil’s Inquietude with Globo Filmes, Canal Brasil, Pródigo and Portugal’s Fado Filmes. Bendita Film Sales once more handles international sales.
“Memories of a Burning Body” (“Memorias de un cuerpo que arde,” Antonella Sudasassi Furniss Costa Rica, Spain)
Memories of a Burning Body
A second Bendita Film Sales title and big winner at 2023’s Ventana Sur, where it swept multiple post-production awards and then at Berlin, where it scooped its 2024 Panorama Audience Award, a trophy trawl continuing from Antonella Sudasassi Furniss’ first feature, the critically acclaimed “The Awakening of the Ants,” which scored a Berlin berth and selection as Costa Rica’s Oscar entry. Channeling the remembered experiences of three women in a present-day 71-year-old composite figure who thinks back about her life, the film “is the conversation I never had with my grandmothers,” Sudasassi Furniss says in a pre-film intertitle.
“Mexico 86” (César Díaz, Belgium, France)
Mexico 86
Locarno Festival
Maria, a Guatemalan Revolutionary Army militant exiled in Mexico, is reunited with her son, putting his life in mortal danger. A portrait of activism, its toll on self and family starring Oscar-nominated Bérénice Béjo (“The Artist”) in a tense personal political thriller on juggling political conscience and maternal love under brutal dictatorship. There are no easy answers. After Díaz’s “Our Mothers,” a Cannes first feature winner, a significant step up in scale, backed by Bac Films and Goodfellas and Huelva’s biggest 2024 Competition title. 85
“Portrait of a Certain Orient” (“Retrato de Um Certo Oriente,” Marcelo Gomes, Brazil, Italy, Lebanon)
“Portrait of a Certain Orient”
O2 Play
Shot in black-and-white and a box format, and picked up for world sales by o2 Play just ahead of its Jan 2024 Rotterdam world premiere. A withering view of religious and cultural fanaticism wrapped in a 1940s parable of two Catholic Lebanese siblings, bound by boat for Brazil, riven by the brother’s bigoted opposition to his sister’s suitor, a Muslim emigré. The latest from the director of 2017 Berlinale competitor “Joaquim” and breakout debut “Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures,” a standout in Cannes’ 2005 Un Certain Regard. Produced among others by Gullane and sold by O2 Play. “In my film, I try to show that the only way to deconstruct prejudices is by viewing the world through the eyes of others,” Gomes says.
“Sariri” (Laura Donoso, Chile)
Sariri
Courtesy of Ventana Sur
Dina, 16, falls pregnant in her staunchly patriarchal home mining town of La Lágrima, prompting her to attempt to flee across its surrounding desert, perhaps with sister Sariri, 11, who has just had her first menstruation, which locals deem malignant. Also co-written by Donoso, her graduate feature at Chile’s Cine UDD and a Ventana Sur winner, which topped Films in Progress at the Toulouse Latin American Festival in 2023, world premiering there a year later.
“Igualada” (Juan Mejia Botero, Colombia)
Igualada by Juan Mejia Boterlo
Courtesy of Darwin Torres
This biographical documentary tells the story of Black Colombian activist Francia Márquez, whose presidential campaign inspired the country to imagine a more equitable future for all its citizens. A Variety review called the film “rousing and intimate, making for an often moving, sometimes nerve-wracking ride.” The doc, which impressed at Sundance, is a Human Pictures production in co-production with No Ficción.
“Betania” (Marcelo Botta, Brazil)
Betania
Credit: Arozza
A debut feature starring mostly debut actors, Marcelo Botta’s “Betina” premiered in the Panorama section at this year’s Berlinale back in February. Inspired by the story of real-life community leader Maria do Celso, the film turns on 65-year-old Betania, who is forced to move away from her agrarian village after becoming a widow. Clashes with society at large and within the protagonist’s own family highlight contemporary issues faced in Brazil, such as over-tourism, sustainability, queerness and identity.
“Baby” (Marcelo Caetano, Brazil)
Courtesy of M-Appeal
Based on a screenplay by Caetano and Gabriel Domingues, the film turns on 18-year-old Wellington, who was recently released from a juvenile detention center. The young man finds himself alone and aimless in a packed São Paulo, having no contact with his family since release. There, he meets Ronaldo, a mature man who teaches him how to get by in a world where resources are scarce. Gradually, their relationship turns into a conflicting passion. A Critics’ Week world premiere, the film is produced by Cup Filmes, Desbun Filmes and Plateau Produções in Brazil, Still Moving in France, and Circe Films and Kaap Holland in the Netherlands.
“No Nos Moverán” (Pierre Saint-Martin, Mexico)
Another black-and-white drama, this Toulouse Latin America Film Festival and Guadalajara prize-winner tells the story of Socorro, a woman driven to track down the person who, in the 1968’s Tlatelolco massacre, murdered her brother. After receiving a clue, she puts everything on the line to avenge her long-deceased sibling. Varios Lobos produces this debut feature from celebrated shorts director and editor Pierre Saint-Martin.
Callum McLennan contributed to this article.
