Colombian film “Chocó” by Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza complets Panorama Programme Berlinale 2012 (Making off video)

This year’s Panorama is presenting 53 feature films: 18 in the main programme, 15 in Panorama Special and 20 in Panorama Dokumente. A few of the topics explored in them will be examined again in four short supporting films.
34 productions from 37 countries are screening as world premieres. Seven fictional films are directorial debuts. There are 12 German productions, and 24 women filmmakers presenting 16 films.

Demián Bichir: Mexican Actor Nominated For An Academy Award For Best Actor In ‘A Better Life’ (Trailer)

Mexican actor Demian Bichir, who was nominated Tuesday morning for an Oscar in the Best Actor category for his role as a Mexican day laborer in the film “A Better Life,” has dedicated his nomination to the millions of undocumented immigrants in the nation.
The drama portrays the life of an undocumented gardener, Carlos Gallindo, in East L.A. The gardener struggles to keep his teenage son on the straight-and-narrow and give him a chance at “a better life” after his wife abandoned the two of them after crossing the border into the United States.
“A Better Life” is rather timely given the contentious national debate over immigration.
Bichir‘s nomination also comes at a time when people around the country are protesting controversial

GUNS, DRUGS, AND BEAUTY QUEENS: AN INTERVIEW WITH GERARDO NARANJO

Gerardo Naranjo’s third feature film, Miss Bala, dares to take on a very weighty subject—the pervasive violence perpetrated on ordinary citizens all over Mexico by drug cartels.  Set in Tijuana, newcomer Stephanie Sigman stars as Laura, a young woman trying to escape an impoverished existence by participating in a beauty pageant.  But Laura’s life takes a very different path when she unwittingly attracts the attention of gang-leader, Lino and becomes an unwilling participant in a war from which there is no escape.
On a sunny afternoon in January I got the chance to sit down at the Canana offices with director

Latino Themed Movies Take the Spotlight at Sundance Film Festival: Mosquita y Mari (Video)

It is undeniable that Latino voices are largely underrepresented and/or distressingly clichéd through the current perspective of American media, therefore it is rare that a filmmaker like Guerrero has the opportunity to share her voice through moviemaking, and perhaps more profound is that her voice is getting the recognition it deserves.
Sundance Institute strives to serve as the premiere forum for unique voices in independent film: “[A] discovery festival that is committed to representing the wide spectrum of independent cinematic work being made today.” The Institute’s featured event, the Sundance Film Festival, opens today in Park City, Utah, to an expected snow flurry of celebrities, filmmakers, filmgoers, industry professionals and more.

3 Latino Films selected: International Film Rotterdam announces final line-up for the Tiger Awards Competitions (full list)

Fifteen films have been selected for IFFR’s Tiger Awards Competition 2012. The complete lineup, comprising first or second feature films concurring for three equal Hivos Tiger Awards of each 15,000 euro, includes eight world premieres. Five competing films have received support from Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund. The Rotterdam Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films 2012 comprises twenty-one films, ranging in length from five to fifty-six minutes. Nine short films in competition will see their world premieres in Rotterdam.

Jury Tiger Awards Competition 2012

IndieWire’s The Playlist selects “No” (Pablo Larrain) and “Post Tenebras Lux” (Carlos Reygadas) as one of the Most Anticipated Foreign-Language Films Of 2012

Forget the multiplex, what’s going to be heating up the arthouse this year? 2011 saw some fantastic foreign flicks not only crowding top ten lists (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives,” “A Separation,” “Le Havre,” etc) but even some like the ode-to-silent-cinema “The Artist” entering serious Oscar chit chat. Nearly every weekend, smaller arthouses showcased exciting alternatives to the general empty-headed nonsense that fills the bigger arenas when it’s not October, November, and December. If you had the eyesight for subtitles and were willing to take a chance, there was a remedy for every

Benicio Del Toro Directs in Cuba: Watch Hutcherson and Del Toro talk about shooting Seven Days in Havana

Puerto Rican actor-turned-director Benicio Del Toro recently screened his latest film project in Cuba, Seven Days in Havana, a French-Spanish production made up of seven shorts. Del Toro directed the first short entitled To Yuma (The American), a story that follows a young American actor (Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson) trying to break into the film industry who travels to Cuba for a film festival.

Latino Film Series at LACMA: Contested Visions in Latin America Through Film (full programme)

A special program organized in conjunction with the exhibition Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World. Hosted by Edward James Olmos, actor, producer, director and community activist, and curated by Marlene Dermer, co-director of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), this two-day film program, explores themes from the exhibition through

Good year for Cuban Cinema: Six Cuban Film Premiers Scheduled for 2012

The first film by director Eduardo del Llano –Vinci- will be premiered on January 13. The movie by the screenwriter of La vida es silbar (Life is Wistling) tells the story of young Leonardo, the painter of La Gioconda, to make a reflection on arts and its inerasable trace on human beings. The director only uses four actors, a single location and paintings by Cuban artist Roberto Fabelo.

February will bring the movie Verde Verde to the island’s theaters, the most recent feature film by 2006 National Film Award laureate, Enrique Pineda Barnet.  The Director of La bella del Alhambra or The Beauty of Alambra uses works of art by Rocío García to sew the threads of a seduction game whose

Latin American Films selected for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2012

Latin America film is happy to announce that several latino film productions have been selected for this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Colombian film The Blue of The Sky (Lo Azul Del Cielo) by Juan Alfredo Uribe will have it’s World Premiere whereas Argentinean co-production Another Silence by Sigal Emanuel will have its US Premiere together with Cuban film El Medico: The Cubaton Story by Daniel Fridell, Brazilian film Found Memories by Julia Murat and Mexican film The Last Christeros (Los Ultimos Cristeros) by Matias Meyer.
In the International Features Competition we have again Argentinean co-production film Another