Sanfic Highlights Chilean Talent, Unveils Features in Competition (EXCLUSIVE)

Holly Jones With a delicately morose charm, Spanish actress-turned-director Liz Lobato is presenting her debut feature project, “Tierra de Nuestras Madres” as part of the 11th Fanfic Industria’s Ibero-American Work In Progress strand.The farcical fable scrutinizing globalization takes place in the village of La Mancha, where residents know each other thoroughly and tend to their routines like clockwork. There, beloved curmudgeon and central protagonist Rosario makes the rounds selling drug-laced fig salt to her neighbors as the town’s unknowingly sold out from under them by a bankrupt mayor.Shot in black and white, the film gives far more than it takes and absurdly relays the somber tale of corruption and a community bound to its roots so tightly its willing to sacrifice a soul or two to stay put, as futile an endeavor  as that may be.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentFollowing on “Huesera,” a double Tribeca winner, Mexico’s Machete, headed by Edher Campos, is returning to female filmmaker social issue genre with “Cachorra,” a darkly humoured horror thriller set on the Mexico-U.S. desert border.The feature debut of Madrid-based genre scribe and consultant Elisa Puerto Aubel, who penned Sitges Audience Award winner.  “La venganza de Jairo,” “Cachorra” is one of the newest additions to a five movie 2002-23 slate at Machete, producer of Cannes Festival winners “Leap Year” and “La Jaula de Oro.” It forms part of a robust lineup at this week’s Sanfic-Mórbido Lab, which packs many of Sanfic Industria’s most commercial propositions, All of Machete’s films, three now in post-production, carry social point.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Camila José Donoso (“Naomi Campbel”) is gearing up to shoot her fourth pic, “Antitropical,” with Roberto Doveris’ Niña Niño Films producing. The docu-fiction hybrid will be filmed much like a documentary over various months, starting late October, that will stretch into the next year.

Anna Marie de la Fuente When Chile’s preeminent documentarian, Patricio Guzman, receives a lifetime achievement award at the Santiago Int’l Film Festival (Sanfic) on Aug. 16, he’ll also be marking his 81st birthday.Born on Aug. 11, 1941, Guzman has made more than 20 documentaries at an average of one every two to five years.

Anna Marie de la Fuente In one of the first deals struck at Chilean industry forum Sanfic Industria, local indie producers Matias de Bourguignon and Equeco have boarded the Venezuelan drama “I Will Mutate Like a Jungle Animal” (“Mutaré como animal del monte”), the feature debut of rising Venezuelan talent Hector Silva.Lead produced by Berlin-based Venezuelan producer Rodolfo Cova whose credits include Venice Golden Lion winner “From Afar” and Michel Franco’s Cannes Un Certain Regard winner “Las Hijas de Abril,” “I Will Mutate Like a Jungle Animal” is among the 28 titles in the Sanfic Industria Santiago Lab which supports Ibero-American projects in development.De Bourguignon and Equeco join international co-producers Pomme Hurlante Films (France), Artrupe Films (Brazil) and Abismo Cine (Ecuador) who were also drawn to the feature debut of Silva whose award-winning short films have played in prominent film festivals, including Cannes, Toronto and Tribeca. “Hector’s shorts deeply moved me.

Holly Jones Screenwriter and director Ignacio Pavez and the team at Chile’s Gallo Negro Producciones (“Intiwawa”)  are readying to produce Pavez’s next feature, “Un Amputado” (“An Amputee”).Creative director at Gallo Negro, Pavez bows his second feature, “Vieja Viejo,” at Sanfic 18, the Santiago International Film Festival, which runs through Aug. 21 as a hybrid event.

“Empire of Light,” the latest feature film from Oscar winner Sam Mendes, has locked its European premiere with a gala screening at the 66th annual BFI London Film Festival. Starring Olivia Colman, Michael Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones and others, the 1980s–set film “is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema,” distributor Searchlight Pictures said in a statement. The film’s stars – including Colman, Firth, and on-the-rise BAFTA winner Ward – are expected to be in attendance at the festival’s American Express Gala screening on Oct.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Chilean industry forum Sanfic Industria bows its 11th edition with the launch of new virtual reality and women producers lab sections. Running Aug 11-19, Sanfic Industria will also include its mainstays: WIP Ibero-American, Santiago Lab: Fiction and Documentary, Sanfic-Mórbido Lab, Series Lab, Sanfic Net and Sanfic Series.“By introducing a virtual reality section, we’re betting on new narrative formats,” said Sanfic Industria founder-director Gabriela Sandoval of the Sanfic XR showcase, which will be open to the public at the forum’s official headquarters, Matucana 100.“Making these films accessible to everyone creates a nexus between the public and the films’ creators,” she pointed out.

Anna Marie de la Fuente The 18th Santiago Int’l Film Festival (Sanfic) is paying tribute to Chile’s most internationally renowned and arguably hardest working actor, the peripatetic Alfredo Castro who will attend Sanfic’s inauguration Aug. 14 to receive his lifetime achievement award and kick off a retrospective of his films.Also a playwright and theater director, Castro has worked across Europe and Latin America, acting in French, Spanish, Portuguese and a number of accents and dialects from Latin America, including neutral Spanish.

Naman Ramachandran Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” starring Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward and Colin Firth, will be this year’s American Express Gala at the 66th BFI London Film Festival.Written, produced and directed by Oscar and BAFTA winning filmmaker Mendes, the film also stars Toby Jones, Tanya Moodie, Tom Brooke and Crystal Clarke. Set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, the film is about human connection and the magic of cinema. It marks Mendes’ first solo credit as screenwriter and reunites him with Oscar winning cinematographer Roger Deakins (“1917,” “Skyfall”).The film is produced by Mendes and Pippa Harris’ Neal Street Productions, in partnership with Searchlight Pictures.

Wu-Tang Clan’s 1992 hit ‘Protect Ya Neck’.According to Scottish outlet The National, 25-year-old Kyle Siegel, who is white, was ordered to pay the fine – as well as an additional £20 “victim surcharge” – last week after a hearing in Lerwick Sheriff Court, during which he took full responsibility for the offence.It’s reported that Siegel, admitted he’d been acting in “a disorderly manner” when the incident occurred around 1am on Sunday February 20. Siegel was attending a birthday party at the Scalloway Boating Club, and supposedly wound up inside a cubicle in the female restroom, where his lawyer, Tommy Allan, says Siegel was “singing along to a TikTok on a friend’s phone”.Unbeknownst to Siegel, a woman of mixed race was in the cubicle next to him.

EJ Panaligan editorColin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play lifelong friends, Pádraic and Colm, whose relationship reaches an abrupt impasse in the trailer for director Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin.”Set during the Irish Civil War in 1923 on the fictional island of Inisherin, the events of the film begin when Gleeson’s Colm seemingly cuts off Farrell’s Pádraic with minimal explanation, setting off an interpersonal dance between the two former friends.The upcoming film will mark the reunion of the three Irish creatives, who first worked together on the 2008 black comedy “In Bruges.” That film chronicled Farrell and Gleeson as two hitmen forced to go into hiding in Bruges, Belgium, away from their enraged boss, played by English actor Ralph Fiennes. Outside of 2017’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” McDonagh’s film efforts have included either Gleeson or Farrell, but “The Banshees of Inisherin” is the trio’s second collective collaboration.

Naman Ramachandran The Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) has chosen Colm Bairéad’s Irish-Language film “The Quiet Girl” (“An Cailín Ciúin”) as Ireland’s entry for the Oscars’ best international feature film category at the 95th Academy Awards.Set in rural Ireland in 1981, the coming-of-age film follows Cáit (Catherine Clinch) as she is sent from her overcrowded, dysfunctional household to live with distant relatives for the summer. It recently became the first Irish-language film to win the Irish Academy Award for best film and received seven awards including director, actress, cinematography, editing, production design and original score.The film was selected by IFTA’s 2023 Irish Selection Committee, which includes producer and Emmy-nominated actor Roma Downey (“Ben-Hur”), Oscar-nominated actor John C.

Coleen, 36, said she had carried out a "sting operation" and accused Rebekah's account of leaking "false stories" about her private life to the press in a now viral Instagram post. Mrs Vardy, who is married to Leicester striker Jamie Vardy, denied leaking stories to the media and sued her fellow footballer’s wife for libel, while Mrs Rooney defended the claim on the basis her post was “substantially true”.

Wagatha Christie court case after Coleen Rooney came out of the Wagatha Christie trial as victor. It is understood Jamie Vardy's wife will fork out around £3million to cover the costs of the case.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Chile’s Santiago Lab, the Santiago Film Festival’s industry initiative to support Ibero-American projects in development, has selected 28 titles, 14 fiction and 14 documentaries, culled out of hundreds of entries from across Latin America and Spain.Some of the titles were picked from other festivals’ industry events such as “Diamante,” from Malaga’s Mafiz; Constanza Figari’s “A Woman Wants to Die,” which Sanfic awarded at Industria Guadalajara this year, along with “MC Silencio,” a Colombian production from Medellin, an emerging audiovisual hub in Colombia, said Sanfic Industry head and festival co-founder, Gabriela Sandoval.The same goes for some of the documentaries such as “The Silence of a Patio” a gripping documentary about the dark history of the Casa de la Beneficencia of Castellón, Spain which was presented at Doc Valencia. Docu “Bloques Erraticos” is the first full-length feature doc of Thomas Woodroffe whose acclaimed shorts include “Austral Fever” and “Holding Desire.” Sanfic Industry leaned on its advisors for the selection.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“History of the Occult” director Cristian Ponce, “The Trace We Leave Behind” producer André Pereira and “Huesera” producer Edher Campos all have projects at the 3rd Sanfic Morbido Lab, Sanfic’s genre/fantastic film showcase which looks packed with riches.Also noticeable, three of the six projects are set to be directed by female genre auteurs –  Argentina’s Laura Sánchez Acosta, Spain’s Marta Medina del Valle and French-Spanish screenwriter Elisa Puerto Aubel – as women create an ever larger number of the most exciting elevated genre movies coming out of Spain and Latin America.Appropriately enough, given Sanfic takes place in Santiago de Chile, Chile accounts for two projects at the Lab, Daniel Aspillaga’s “Plasma,” a part body horror mockumentary, and Cristián Grez Donoso’s “Magic Word,” turning on an aged and crazed former amusement park actor. The potential impact of projects is underscored by recent events.

The bitter libel battle between two England footballer's wives has been settled in the High Court. Rebekah Vardy has lost her multi-million euro case against Coleen Rooney, bringing the so-called "Wagatha Christie" trial to an end.