Sanfic Lab Presents Fiction, Doc Projects from Both New and Seasoned Talent (EXCLUSIVE)

Holly Jones The lives of a self-obsessed film star and a struggling filmmaker collide in Brazilian director-producer Diogo Leite’s first feature, “Monstro,” set to screen as a pic-in-post at the Ibero-American Work in Progress strand of this week’s Sanfic Industria.“Monstro” follows Magaiver, a young filmmaker who moonlights as an Internet technician in order to survive. His life takes a bittersweet turn as he’s hired to film a retrospective on ageing cinema star Laura.

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.

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.

William Earl “War on the Diamond,” a feature documentary about the only baseball player to die directly of injuries sustained in a game, is set to premiere Nov. 15 on VOD platfoms including iTunes, YouTube, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Vudu.The doc tells the story of Raymond Chapman, a Cleveland Indians shortstop who was hit in the head by a pitch in a game against the New York Yankees.

Getting a tattoo on holiday can be a great memento of your time abroad. But its best to do some research into the artist and their work before committing to a design.

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.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentSpain’s Solita Films, the Madrid-based outfit of director-producer brothers José Esteban and César Esteban Alenda, has boarded “Her Ocean,” (“El Mar la Mar”), an addition to the growing canon of LGBTQ dramas now in Latin America. Written and directed by Julián Amaru Estrada and produced by María Paz Barragán at Lima-based Final Abierto, “Her Ocean” is one of the most memorable titles among seven works at this week’s Sanfic Industria Productoras Lab, a novel pitching program and training facility for emerging, first or second-feature women producers in Latin America.“Her Ocean” is also selected for this year’s LabGuion in Colombia and Sapcine in Cali.Now co-developed by Solita Films, the feature project is a LGBTQ coming-of-age drama which builds to a magic realist climax. It turns on Ray, 15, gay, who helps local fishermen in his small town on the coast of Perú until, drunk at a bonfire party on the beach, he kisses his friend Jesús.  Repudiated by his family and the townsfolk, Ray escapes to vibrant jungle city Iquitos, and there finds friends and even competes in the Miss Amazonas trans beauty pageant.

Always by his side. Justin Theroux and his dog, Kuma, have been best buds since the actor adopted the pit bull after Hurricane Harvey.

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.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Pietro Marcello’s sprawling post-WWI film “Scarlet,” which opened Cannes’ Directors Fortnight.Represented in international markets by Orange Studio, “Scarlet” will have its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival, before a theatrical release in 2023.A loose adaptation of Alexander Grin’s novel, “Scarlet” marks Kino’s second collaboration with Marcello. It follows “Martin Eden,” which competed at Venice, won best actor for Luca Marinelli and went on to play at Toronto.Marcello, who rose to prominence as a documentarian with his film “The Mouth of the Wolf,” penned the script for “Scarlet” with his regular screenwriting partner Maurizio Braucci (“Martin Eden”) and Maud Ameline, with the participation of novelist Geneviève Brisac.

Angelique Jackson Following news that the award-winning documentary “Descendant” will screen as an official selection at the 60th New York Film Festival, Variety can exclusively announce that the film will launch Oct. 21 on Netflix and in select theaters.Directed by Margaret Brown (“The Order of Myths,” “Be Here to Love Me: Townes Van Zandt,” “The Great Invisible”), the documentary follows members of Africatown, a small community in Alabama, as they share their personal stories and community history as descendants of the Clotilda, the last known ship illegally carrying enslaved Africans to the United States.

Beyoncé’s seventh album, ‘Renaissance’, a news anchor in Philadelphia snuck 15 of the R&B titan’s song titles into a live-broadcast traffic report.“Traffic is getting ‘Heated’ and it’s starting to ‘Break My Soul’ just a little bit,” NBC 10’s Sheila Watko said in her presentation last Tuesday (August 2), referencing two songs from ‘Renaissance’. She noted later in the broadcast – which earned the approval of Bey’s own mother, Tina Knowles – that she’d planned to do to a reference-laden report on the album’s release date (July 29), but couldn’t do so since there was a crash that day and she “had to be serious”.To the groans – and one emphatic “ooh!” – of her co-hosts, Watko continued in her report: “We’ve had a ‘Formation’ of traffic cones all morning … that’s still blocking two right lanes, you might want to move over ‘to the left, to the left’.”Celebrating her effort, co-host Keith Jones declared: “Sheila Watko, you ‘Run The World’.”Take a look at the full report below:Yesterday (August 8) saw ‘Renaissance’ debut at Number One on the US’ Billboard 200 chart.

Marta Balaga Tom Hardiman’s feature debut “Medusa Deluxe,” which premiered at Locarno on Saturday, has already seduced multiple international distributors with its mixture of humor, grief and competitive hairdressing.Now Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has sealed further deals for the unusual murder mystery in Spain (Elastica Films), Benelux (Filmfreak), Scandinavia and the Baltics (NonStop Entertainment), Variety has learnt in exclusivity.As previously reported, A24 has acquired North American rights to the film, produced by Emu Films with the support of BFI, BBC Films, and Time Based Arts.MUBI holds the rights to U.K./Ireland, France, Latin America, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, India and Southeast Asia. “The buyers are excited about ‘Medusa Deluxe’ because it’s a quirky, original piece of cinema which can appeal to younger audiences, especially since A24 and MUBI will lead the way on global marketing,” said New Europe Film Sales CEO, Jan Naszewski.Hardiman, a self-confessed hairdressing aficionado, has joined forces with celebrity hairstylist Eugene Souleiman in order to show a community struggling with tragic loss yet still striving for perfection.“There is this cathartic moment at one point, two people genuinely caring about each other, and you have this hairstyle with a boat on the top.

Manori Ravindran International EditorTransatlantic talent management company YMU Group has launched a U.S. literary division under the leadership of Aram Fox.The launch of a U.S.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentBuenos Aires-based Maravilla Cine, producer of 2018 Berlin Panorama player “Marilyn” and San Sebastian 2020 New Directors’ hit “That Weekend,” has boarded “Diamond” (“Diamante”), the first fiction feature from Bolivia’s Yashira Jordán which is shaping up as one of the standout titles at this year’s Locarno Open Doors.Maravilla Cine joins “Diamond” lead producer Empatia Cinema, rapidly consolidating as a production hub for Bolivian auteurs. Recent credits include Martín Boulocq’s “The Visitor” which premiered at June’s Tribeca Festival and Alejandro Quiroga’s Western “Los de abajo,” a Sanfic Industria pix-in-post winner in March 2021.Empatia Cinema and Maravilla Cine have jointly applied for a development grant from the Ibermedia regional film fund for Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is making changes in its feature documentary division.