Larrain's Post Mortem wins best film at Cartagena

Pablo Larrain’s Post Mortem from Chile won the prize for best film in official competition at the 51st annual Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI) which ended last night. The film, which had its world premiere at Venice last year, stars Alfredo Castro as a civil servant who works writing up autopsies in a military hospital during the Pinochet coup in 1973.

Octubre, the feature debut of Daniel and Diego Vega from Peru, won the prize for best director; Natalia Smirnoff won the prize for best screenplay for Puzzle from Argentina; Gabino Rodriguez won a prize for actor for The Cinema Hold-Up from Mexico and Claudia Celedon for actress for Old Cats (Chile).

The jury consisted of Mexican film-maker Arturo Ripstein, Sundance Film Festival senior programmer Caroline Libresco and Screen editor Mike Goodridge.

The FIPRESCI prize for the best film in competition went to Federico Veiroj from Uruguay for A Useful Life (La Vida Util).

Best documentary prize went to Jairo Carrillo and Oscar Andrade’s Little Voices from Colombia, a 3D animated film about children displaced by the civil war.

Producers Martha Sosa from Mexico and Diego Ramirez from Colombia and Swedish film-maker Frederik Gertten were on the jury which also gave special prizes to Macarena Aguilo, the director of The Chilean Building (Chile) and Jesus Romero, the person whose story informs Mexico’s Agnus Dei, Lamb Of God.

The best film prize for a Colombian film in the Colombia Al 100% section went to Ruben Mendoza’s The Stoplight Society, with special prizes going to Apaporis In Search Of One River directed by Antonio Dorado and All The Dead Ones from Carlos Moreno.

Geraldine Chaplin, Senel Paz and Fabio Zapata were the members of the jury.