Colombia in Europa

Pantalla Colombia No.: 083
noviembre 01 - 30 / 2018

Somos Calentura: We Are The Heat and Coffee Break were part of the Official Selection of the Warsaw International Film Festival, while Tropical Virus, The Sacrifice (Siete cabezas), and El mito de los caídos were screened at Sitges Film Festival.

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The Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is known for showing the best new genre films from around the world. This year it held its fifty-first edition.
 
The Sacrifice (Siete cabezas) was part of the Official Fantastic Competition. It is a psychological suspense film based on the Book of Revelations sure to rattle  some people in Spain. It had its world premiere at the Warsaw International Film Festival. The film is a co-production by Burning Blue, Fast Producciones, and Dead Hamster VFX, with the participation of Dynamo, in association with Caracol Cine and Rhayuela Cine and financial support from Cine Colombia.
 
In The Sacrifice, Marcos, a retired park ranger, sees the fragile inner equilibrium he had managed in the isolation of a national park collapse when a pair of biologists arrive to investigate a strange wave of deaths among the local animals population. When his desire for the woman becomes incontrollable and the death toll continues to rise, the seven-headed monster that Marcos had been attempting to control awakes again and the Biblical apocalypse becomes real.
 
Tropical Virus was one of 20 projects selected in the Noves vision section at Sitges this year. Timbo Estudio's film tells the story of Paola, born to a traditional Colombian family, or at least that is how they try to seem. The father is a priest, the mother is clairvoyant, and the sisters are not exactly what their parents expected. The film tells the story of a young woman who fights for her independence in an environment full of stereotypes and a bias towards appearances, the story of a Latin American woman that does not respond to received categories and learns the ropes of life as she goes. With a feminine vision of the world, this girl witnesses a series of small crises that shape her personality.
 
The Colombian horror feature film project El mito de los caidos was pitched in the Sitges Coming Soon section, followed by the presentation of its teaser to an audience of 400 people. The film is produced by Cuevasfilm Cine Entretenimiento S.A.S. in association with Tonal Entertainment and tells the story in a remote Colombian locale. A violent episode during the war gives rise to a myth that turns its inhabitants into religious fanatics capable of committing the most heinous acts of barbarism. They call themselves The Peacemakers. The leadership of a CIA agent will test the beliefs of these local residents, who will try by every means possible to prevent life from reproducing in the region.


Another important festival in Europe is the Warsaw Film Festival, which this year celebrated its thirty-fourth edition. It is one of the world’s few elite film festivals as listed by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) on its A list. This festival—one of the world’s biggest film events along with Cannes, Berlin, Venice, San Sebastian, Locarno, and others—has welcomed the likes of Michael Haneke, Cristian Mungiu, Paweł Pawlikowski, Ari Folman, Ashgar Farhadi, Lenny Abrahamson, and others before they enjoyed international recognition. Every year it screens films from over 50 countries, mostly from Eastern European directors who have not yet achieved fame, but who will very likely go on to win awards at the Oscars or at Cannes.
 
Coffee Break participated in the festival’s short film competition. It tells the story of a deer who works at an office and oscillates between hope and disappointment as he spends the day drinking coffee. Mauricio Cuervo wrote the script, and well as producing and editing. He co-directed with María Cristina Pérez, the film’s production designer and animator.


Somos Calentura: We Are The Heat participated in the International Competition, the third Colombian film in the history of the event to be selected for its most important section. This is one of the first films to benefit from a Comprehensive Grant from the Colombian Film Fund (FDC) in 2014. To complete post-production, in 2017 it received the NMF and Color Front Prize and the HD Argentina Award in the First Cut section of Ventana Sur, the most important film market in Latin America, where it closed an international distribution deal with Epic Pictures from the United States, thus opening doors for the film’s international distribution.
 
As a transmedia project, it received the Reed MIDEM Award as the best transmedia multiplatform project in Latin America at the second RioContentMarket Lab and was part of Best Digital Cases from Around the Globe by MIP CUBE & MIP TV at Cannes 2012. It was also a finalist for the Pixel Pitch Competition at the BFI London Film Fest in 2012.


Somos Calentura: We Are The Heat takes place in the port city of Buenaventura, where wealth and misery cross paths without mingling and criminal gangs condemn young people to a life outside the law. In the midst of this situation, Harvey and his three friends—local dance champions—survive the hustle while looking for a way to escape their harsh reality. During the national urban dance championship that takes place in the city, they make a bet on their destiny, coming back as warriors, finding their value in the sounds of the Pacific, the beats of the salsa choke, and Latin hip-hop. However, their life at the margins of society will be their biggest obstacle. They will have to decide whether to trade violence for dance and bullets for verse.

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Rubén Mendoza Wandering Girl in Tallinn

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