San Sebastian unveils Latin line-up

The programme of Horizontes Latinos at the 61st San Sebastian Festival has been revealed, including 11 productions from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay. All have either competed or been presented at major international festivals, but have not yet been screened released in Spain.

Diego Quemada-Díez’s La Jaula De Oro will open the section.

The selected films will compete for the Horizontes Award, to be decided by a specific jury and carrying $47,000 (€35,000), of which $13,000 (€10,000) will go to the director of the winning film and the remaining amount to the distributor in Spain.

Horizontes Latinos

Anina
Alfredo Soderguit (Uruguay-Colombia)

First work from the illustrator and animator Alfredo Soderguit, starring the 10-year-old Anina, whose palindromic name brings mockery from her schoolmates, and particularly Yisel, a girl she calls “the elephant”. Anina loses her patience and the two get into a fight. The incident ends with an unusual sanction for both girls. They are each given a black envelope that contains their punishment and told not to open it for a week. Without realising it, for Anina, understanding the content of the envelope means understanding the world and her place in it.

De Menor (Underage)
Caru Alves De Souza (Brazil)

The story of Helena, a recently graduated attorney who works as a public defender of children and adolescents in the courts of the city of Santos, Brazil, and her brother, the teenager Caio, who will commit a serious crime. De Menor participated in Films in Progress at last year’s San Sebastian Festival.

Heli
Amat Escalante (Mexico)

The Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante carried off the Best Director Award at the Festival de Cannes thanks to this film starring Heli, a police academy cadet in a small Mexican city. He loves Estela, aged 12. The two dream of running away and living together, but to do it they need money they don’t have. When a drug haul is decommissioned, Heli pockets a bag of coke. Unfortunately, he soon finds out what happens to people who play with traffickers and corrupt cops.

La Jaula De Oro
Diego Quemada-Díez (Mexico-Spain)

A Mexico-Spain co-production directed by Diego Quemada-Díez and premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the last Festival de Cannes. Juan, Sara and Samuel, a group of 15 year olds, flee Guatemala in an attempt to make it to the USA. The youngsters hope to find a better world beyond the Mexican border, but they soon have to face up to a very different reality.

O Lobo Atrás Da Porta (A Wolf At The Door)
Fernando Coimbra (Brazil)

The first film from the Brazilian Fernanco is programmed for presentation at the Toronto Festival. A child is kidnapped. At the police station, Sylvia and Bernardo, the victim´s parents, and Rosa, the main suspect and Bernardo´s lover, give contradictory evidence which will take us to the gloomiest corners of desires, lies, needs and wickedness in the relationship of these three characters.

Pensé Que Iba A Haber Fiesta (I Thought It Was A Party)
Victoria Galardi (Argentina-Spain)

The Argentinian filmmaker Victoria Galardi presents her new work, presented in the Co-production Forum at the 60th edition of the Festival. This Argentina-Spain co-production tells the tale of Ana, a woman who has a love affair with her best friend’s ex-husband. A film about the search for love, friendship, loneliness, fear, guilt, the world of women… Starring Elena Anaya and Valeria Bertucelli.

Raíz (Root)
Matías Rojas Valencia (Chile)

The first work from the Chilean director Matías Rojas Valencia tells the tale of Amalia, 26, who sets out on a voyage with nine-year-old Cristóbal through the remote landscapes of southern Chile with the intention of finding the boy´s father. The search will turn into a journey through each of their personal histories.

Tanta Agua (So Much Water)
Ana Guevara, Leticia Jorge (Uruguay-Mexico-The Netherlands-Germany)

After participating in Films in Progress at San Sebastian in 2012, this film was presented in the Panorama section of the Berlin Festival and won the Best First Film Award at Guadalajara. Since his divorce Alberto spends little time with Lucía and Federico. The three of them set off for the hot springs one stormy morning; it’s going to be a short vacation so they want to make the most of it. Always enthusiastic, Alberto does not want anything to ruin his plans. But the pools are closed until further notice and his children look at him with reproachful eyes so he flies off the handle. Soon, everyone gets oversensitive as the weather gets stickier. Meanwhile, the rain keeps falling and the house Alberto rented seems to get smaller by the hour.

Wakolda
Lucía Puenzo (Argentina-Spain-France-Norway)

Premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the last Festival de Cannes, the latest film from Lucía Puenzo, is the true story of an Argentinian family who lived with one of the biggest criminals in history without realising his true identity.

Who Is Dayani Cristal?
Marc Silver (UK-Mexico)

Premiered at Sundance Film Festival, this documentary assembles the questions brought when the border police discover in the Sonoma desert a decomposing male body with a tattoo that reads “Dayani Cristal”. Who is this person? What brought him here? How did he die? And who -or what- is Dayani Cristal? Actor Gael García Bernal and director Marc Silver reconstruct this John Doe, denied an identity at his point of death, into a living and breathing human being with a full and deeply engaging life story.

Workers
José Luis Valle (Mexico-Germany)

Presented in the Panorama section of the Berlin Festival and winner of the Best Mexican Feature Film Award in Guadalajara, this is the second film by José Luis Valle. Having worked all their lives in Tijuana, Rafael and Lidia are the victims of injustice towards their life and their dignity. Rafael finds out that an error in the paperwork has left him without a pension. Lidia is one of seven people who keep house for a rich Mexican woman in a wheelchair who has dedicated her life to her whippet “Princess”, who eats from a gold bowl and sleeps on a silk cushion. When Lidia’s employer dies and leaves her fortune to her dog, Lydia has to ask herself what it means to have a dog as an employer…