PANAMÁ IFF—THE LINE-UP: First Time Directors and IberoAmerican Panorama

The first public announcement of the lineup for the Panama International Film Festival (Panamá IFF) was held March 8, 2012 at Casco Viejo's National Theater and included a rich program of films grouped into nine wide-ranging sidebars. The following program capsules are adapted from Panama IFF's website.

FIRST TIME DIRECTORS

Distancia / Distance, dir. Sergio Ramírez (Guatemala, 2010)—With over 150,000 killed, 45,000 disappeared, and a million people internally displaced over 30 years of ruthless war, the statistics of horror are even more harrowing when put in the context of a small country such as Guatemala, which didn't surpass 10 million inhabitants during the time of these events. A delicate and moving fiction portrait with an almost documentary precision and aching honesty, Distance tells the story of Tomás Choc, an older man who learns that his three-year-old daughter—who was taken from him during a military incursion on their K'iche' community—is still alive. Tomás decides to take a long trip to finally meet her after 20 years of separation.

Fecha de caducidad / Expiration Date, dir. Kenya Márquez (Mexico, 2011)—Ramona is a widow whose whole world changed when her only child disappeared. The only clue she has to find him is a minor cut she caused him when clipping his toenails. While looking for her son in desperation she meets the enigmatic Mariana, and at the morgue, the pathetic good-for-nothing Genaro. Expiration Date won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Miami International Film Festival. IMDb. Facebook.

Las Acacias, dir. Pablo Giorgelli (Argentina, 2011)—Rubén drives his truck from Asunción, Paraguay to Buenos Aires, Argentina. In this journey of 1,500 kilometers, he must take Jacinta and her five-month-old daughter, Anahí. The result of this trip turns out to be a triumph of the heart. It's clear to me why, at this point, Argentine filmmaker Pablo Giorgelli's debut feature Las Acacias has won 20+ awards on the festival circuit, including the Camera D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Las Acacias tells a spare but resonant story, hewing away all excess to reveal perfect sentiment. A film about fathers and loneliness and transformation; it is everything I love about Latin American cinema. Most audiences watching Las Acacias will presume it was easily made with a handheld camera, a couple of actors and a truck; but, this is the elegance of Pablo Giorgelli's artistry: he is a master at complicated simplicity. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

 Octubre / October, dir. Diego Vega & Daniel Vega (Peru, 2010)—This award-winning film centers on Clemente, a middle aged loner who has made a living for years as a moneylender, a job that suits his almost neurotic, selfish way of seeing life. A master in taking advantage of people going through rough patches, Clemente is about to face a challenge for which he is clearly unprepared when he is entrusted with a baby girl. Enter Sofía, a devoted neighbor who can't help but care. As she becomes involved in Clemente's life, she will open a window for him to see beyond his own immediate needs, and maybe even start sharing other people's hopes and small joys. My interview with Diego Vega at October's North American premiere at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was published earlier on The Evening Class. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

Rompecabezas / Puzzle, dir. Natalia Smirnoff (Argentina, 2010)—Puzzle tells the story of María del Carmen (María Onetto), a woman whose main purpose in life is taking care of her husband and children. Her routine has a drastic change when she receives a puzzle as a present on her 50th birthday. She's as surprised as everybody in her home with the natural talent she shows at solving puzzles, and begins to work towards winning an important national tournament. Puzzle won Best First Film at the 2011 Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards and Best Screenplay at the 2011 Cartagena Film Festival. IMDb. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Jay Weissberg described "this femme-skewed chamber piece [as] a low-key charmer for auds open to its honest subtleties, boosted in no small part by María Onetto's beautifully modulated performance." At The Flickering Wall, Jorge Mourinha concurred that Puzzle is a "sensible, charming character study that effortlessly overcomes its slight narrative through attentive performances and handling." At Slant, Nick Schager concluded that "the film ultimately recognizes that liberating escape—or others' acceptance of new social-order dynamics—is usually the stuff of daydreams, and that the best subjugated individuals can often hope for is simply an opportunity to carve out a small, personal nook for themselves."

Ruta de la luna / Route of the Moon, dir. Juan Sebastian Jacome (Panama / Ecuador, 2012)—Tito, an introverted bowling champion must, suddenly and against his will, travel from his native Panama to San José in Costa Rica to take care of Cesar, his father who has fallen ill. They have a disaffected relationship. Cesar and Tito barely know each other. Tito's only wish is to go back to Panama as soon as possible to be able to participate in a Bowling Tournament, but Cesar has different plans for him. Route of the Moon boasts its world premiere at Panama IFF. Official site. IMDb. Facebook.

Las malas intenciones / The Bad Intentions, dir. Rosario García Montero (Peru / Germany, 2011)—Only Cayetana knows what is going on inside her head. It's not just anger at her absent father or her pretentious high-class stepfather and mom, for whom she seems almost invisible. There is also her obsession with painful death, with the gruesome battles, the heroes of the independence wars, and the experiments with physical suffering and furtive stealing, that have consequences she doesn't seem willing to understand. In her loneliness, the intelligent and gloomy 8-year-old decides her life will end as soon as her little brother is born. As this happens, her family also remains oblivious to the change that's breeding in the mountains, where guerrilla forces prepare to take on the establishment for its disregard of the poor. A trip to the beach might be the beginning of a true journey for Cayetana. This offbeat drama tackles the tumultuous Peru of the early '80s through the point of view of a kid in need of a real connection and a new outlook on the life that surrounds her. It won amongst others the best Latin American Feature Film Award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival. Official site [Spanish]. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Alissa Simon describes The Bad Intentions as "atmospheric" and "death-haunted" but claims the film offers more to admire than engage, bearing seemingly stylistic leanings towards Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel "with realist, claustrophobic slice-of-life visuals that offer viewers only sparse background information and few emotional hooks." At The House Next Door / Slant, Oscar Moralde praises Montero's "nuanced portrait of childhood, clear-eyed yet sympathetic" that uses the terrible violence of The Shining Path as "the backdrop for a darkly comic portrait of Cayetana's morbid childhood." At Smells Like Screen Spirit, Don Simpson writes: "Garcia-Montero's film functions as an absurd allegory for bourgeois feelings of ambivalence towards an uncertain future."

Los colores de la montaña / The Colors of the Mountain, dir. Carlos César Arbeláez (Colombia / Panama, 2011)—Manuel is a nine-year-old boy who dreams of becoming a great goalkeeper. Ernesto, his father, gets him a new ball for his birthday; but the ball falls in a mined field that same day. Manuel convinces his two best friends, Julián and Poca Luz, to help him recover the ball: an adventure for these kids that live amidst the armed conflict in Colombia. Arbeláez was given the New Director's award at the 2010 San Sebastian Film Festival. The Colors of the Mountain also won Best Colombian Feature at the 2011 Bogota Film Festival and Best Screenplay at the 2011 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

At Eye For Film, Amber Wilkinson writes: "Shot almost entirely from the children's perspective, Arbeláez tackles universal themes of conflict and its impact on ordinary people without getting mired in specific politics. He deftly shows how quickly normality can disintegrate when conflict appears on the horizon. And despite having serious subject matter, he has a lightness of touch, an avoidance of outright displays of violence and an eye for the comedic that means older children could enjoy this as much as adults." At Film Lounge, Neil Young praises the "outstandingly fresh child-performance in the central role by pint-sized newcomer Hernán Mauricio Ocampo (a real find)" and claims that Ocampo's work was as good as anything he saw from an adult actor at the San Sebastian Film Festival. At Slant, Chuck Bowen describes The Colors of the Mountain as "a poetic and striking experience" and praises Arbeláez's understanding of "the succinct power of images."

El Estudiante / The Student, dir. Santiago Mitre (Argentina, 2011)—Upon arriving in Buenos Aires from a small Argentinean town to attend university, Roque Espinosa soon gets involved in the political moves that are quietly shaking his faculty. He proves himself worthy of the trust but will face further ethical questions surrounding his militancy. My TIFF 2011 interview with Santiago Mitre was previously published at MUBI. IMDb. Facebook.

IBEROAMERICAN PANORAMA

Sangue do meu Sangue / Blood of My Blood, dir. João Canijo (Portugal, 2011)—This is a story of passion, adultery, incest and drugs from the reknown Portuguese director João Canijo. In Blood of my Blood, Marcia is a single mother of two, who works as a cook and shares her house with her sister Ivette. Claudia, Marcia's daughter falls in love with a married man, many years her senior; an affair that leads to disaster. Winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the 2011 San Sebastián International Film Festival. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

As Diana Sanchez synopsized for TIFF 2011: "Magnificently acted and orchestrated, João Canijo's family saga, Blood of my Blood, depicts the harshness of life in inner city Lisbon and the sacrifices that two women are willing to make for their family. Marcia is determined to end the cycle of poverty for her family and when she discovers that her daughter is dating an older professor, she will stop at nothing to end this unwelcome relationship." At Variety, Robert Koehler concedes the acting is "gifted" but, otherwise, finds Blood of My Blood to be "an overlong portrait of a family living in one of Lisbon's rougher districts" whose "actual material consists of little more than the customary tropes found in many urban melodramas." His final impression is that Blood of My Blood "is, fundamentally, a high-class telenovela." At The Flickering Wall, Jorge Mourinha counters: "Contemporary Portuguese cinema finds another potential breakout film in João Canijo's eighth theatrical feature—a remarkable dive into a struggling working-class family that extends the director's fascination with the structure of classical tragedy into what is possibly his masterpiece. Undoubtedly, some will look at the convoluted comings and goings of this family drama as high-end soap-opera miserablism with a side order of voyeurism; but that doesn't take into account both Mr. Canijo's poised handling of the scenes (mostly captured in long takes unfolding before a discreetly moving camera), and the astoundingly naturalistic performances of the ensemble cast, who had a hand in structuring and developing the shooting script through a series of workshopped improvisations à la Mike Leigh."

After watching the U.S. premiere of Blood of My Blood at the 2012 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), film companion Frako Loden turned to me and quipped, "What's a mother to do?" I responded by quoting Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion In Winter: "Ah well, what family doesn't have its ups and downs?" As prurient as a telenovela, Canijo's sprawling overblown family narrative is redeemed by an effectively claustrophobic sound score and visual stylistics that overlap frames as near approximations of split screen, creating a tense soap opera dense with texture. With so much going on—drug crimes, sibling rivalries, incest, teenage pregnancy, you name it—the family unit becomes a site of exposure and suppression. There's no privacy to be had within this family.

Bonsái, dir. Cristián Jiménez (Chile / France / Argentina / Portugal, 2011)—Julio’s story might not be that common. Out of his fear of sharing with his partner Blanca the fact that he didn't get the job he was counting on as a typist for a famous author's new manuscript, he starts writing his own novel, in which he recounts the relationship he had with Emilia, a fellow literature student eight years before. His memories set off a soul-searching process, as Julio realizes that he might just still have to find that woman he hasn’t heard of in ages. Director Cristián Jiménez treats the original novel by Alejandro Zambra in a careful manner, visible in the detailed cinematography and thoughtful use of literary devices for pacing. Going from adult, present-time Julio who is probably facing disenchantment, while taking care of the title's delicate plant, to the intense feelings and the awkwardness of youthful romance, the story builds on the apparent need for petty white lies to be part of growing old. The solid performances from the three leads anchor a well-executed drama that will surely gain notoriety for Jiménez, after the film premiered in Cannes and won Best Ibero-American Feature at the Miami Film Festival, 2012. IMDb. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Robert Koehler characterizes Bonsái as "one of the finest accomplishments from the freewheeling new generation of Chilean filmmakers", adding that by turns it is "gentle, deadpan, droll and sarcastic." At The House Next Door / Slant, Oscar Moralde writes that Bonsái "throws out suspense as one of its tools with a flourish that makes it obvious it has far more at its disposal." Finessing the film's title, Moralde adds: "It may come as no surprise that the titular tree is used as a metaphor for Julio's writing; he's told that the goal of bonsai is to 'reproduce the effects of nature on the tree,' a process which aptly describes what the film accomplishes as well." At Eye For Film, Amber Wilkinson considers Jiménez "an imaginative—if occasionally unruly—talent to watch" and states "the film still has considerable humor and charm, particularly in its portrayal of the fumblings, posturings and overexuberance of student love."

Chico & Rita, dir. Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, Toño Errando (Spain / United Kingdom, 2010)—Oscar® winner Fernando Trueba, who put together the now classic music documentary Calle 54 in 2000, has a history with Latin Jazz and its diverse roots. It comes as no surprise that he went all the way with the bold idea of producing an animated feature set mainly in Cuba in the 1940s and '50s. Chico & Rita is one of Panama IFF's Red Carpet galas. It won Spain's Goya Award in 2011 for best animated feature film. Official site. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Peter DeBruge is troubled by Chico & Rita's "real 'good tunes / bad toons' quandary" and claims its screenplay "would have made a perfectly charming live-action movie", especially without what he considers "lousy" animation. Roger Ebert likewise suggests that the reason for Chico & Rita's 2012 Oscar® nomination for Best Animated Feature "is the story and the music ... not the animation." At Popcorn Reel, by contrast, Omar Moore is uninhibited in his enthusiasm. He describes Chico & Rita as "incredibly rich in detail and teaming with passion and emotion" and "a beautiful, vibrant love story that pulses with energy and wonderful music." As for its animation? Moore describes it as "a gorgeous, eye-popping spectacle of color and sparkle that pays great tribute to Cuban music and artists, to 1940s and 50s Hollywood, Las Vegas and the glamour and electricity of New York City."

Un cuento chino / Chinese Take-Away, dir. Sebastián Borensztein (Argentina / Spain, 2011)—Roberto, the bad-tempered owner of a hardware store, whose life is cold and monotonous, meets Jun, a Chinese citizen who is thrown out of a taxi near the Buenos Aires airport. The man, who only speaks Mandarin, is picked up by the bitter Roberto, and together they live through unimaginable events which characterize the bizarre relationship between these two characters. The absolute lack of communication between the Chinese and the Argentinean in this comedy keeps the audience drawn in, leading it to discover details about the lives of these two characters. It is a universal story that narrates the encounter between two people of different cultures who come together with feelings of solidarity and justice. Sebastián Borenztein brings out the best of the recognized Argentinean actor Ricardo Darín in this film seen by more than 900,000 people in Argentina. It was the winner of the Goya Prize for Best Iberoamerican Picture and the Marco Aurelio Prize for Best Picture at the International Rome Film Festival. It is one of IFF Panama's red carpet galas. Official site [Spanish]. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Jonathan Holland praises Chinese Take-Away's "warm heart, affecting final act and a gold-plated perf by the reliable Ricardo Darín", despite other noted reservations. At Eye For Film, Jennie Kermode writes: "Beautfully shot and benefitting from sumptuously detailed set design, Chinese Take-Away is a tragicomic tale that mixes traditional narrative with magical realist vignettes. Darín is superb in the leading role, sympathetic even at his most misanthropic. [Darín]'s meanness is often delightful to watch as a dry humor undercuts the most poignant of scenes."

También la lluvia / Even the Rain, dir. Icíar Bollaín (Spain / Bolivia, 2010)—Even the Rain deals with the relationship between a skeptic film director and an idealist filmmaker as they work together on a project about the conquest of the American continent. While shooting in their main locations in Bolivia, they find themselves in the middle of the indigenous struggle known as the Water Wars. My interview with Icíar Bollaín from the 2011 PSIFF was previously published on The Evening Class. Official site. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

Habana Eva, dir. Fina Torres (Cuba / Venezuela / France, 2010)—Out of necessity, Eva works in an industrial sewing shop even though what she enjoys doing is putting together more creative models instead of assembly line confections. Her dream: to have money for getting married and design models which will make the people who wear them feel good about themselves. Habana Eva has been one of the great surprises of film festivals in the United States and Latin America. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

Heleno, dir. José Henrique Fonseca (Brazil, 2011)—José Henrique Fonseca crafts an ambitious and long overdue homage to a central icon in Brazil's 20th century history. Reminiscent of film noir classics, the biopic tells the story of soccer player Heleno de Freitas, following the dramatic arc of rise and fall in a fashion that has gamered the film comparisons to cult film Raging Bull. Just as in Jake LaMotta's story, Heleno suffers his own punishing temperament and erratic love life, which will ultimately get him out of the game forever (an untreated syphilis and the abuse of ether make him an old and sick man who ends his days alone). The sumptuous black and white cinematography presents the chic life of Rio de Janeiro, a jewel city in the 1940's that fell under the spell of sports-royalty. Heleno was no doubt one of the most popular players for his bravura in the field leading the Botafogo team to the top. But the player's story is also that of the world at the time, and WWII kept him from playing in the two world cups he should have won for his century. IMDb. Facebook.

Juan de los muertos / Juan of the Dead, dir. Alejandro Brugues (Cuba / Spain, 2011)—On the day of the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution a mysterious plague unleashes on the streets of Havana, with zombies starting to be seen and multiplying exponentially by the minute. The authorities blame imperialistic maneuvers from the North on the vicious takeover, and are soon overwhelmed by the mounting chaos. The apocalypse seems irreversible. But before all hope is lost an unlikely team is formed that can possibly defeat the odds: Juan, a middle-aged man of unspecific occupation and his pal Lázaro are luckily on a fishing excursion at the beginning of the outbreak. The two men quickly realize there is a business opportunity if they stay alive, and start offering their zombie extermination and removal service to the living that can afford it. "Juan of the Dead, we kill your loved ones" is their slogan. Official site. IMDb.

At Twitch, Josh Hurtado writes: "The film is filled with clever dialogue, plenty of solid gore, the blackest of black humor, and geek humor for miles. There are very inventive zombie kills, including one in particular that involves a truck, a wire, and about three hundred of the undead that it really the piece de resistance of Juan of the Dead." Quiet Earth declares "how much fun it is to see the zombie apocalypse in yet another new locale, and the Havana alleyways, rooftops, tenement buildings, and beachfronts are consistently lush and brim with detail and character."

Lope, dir. Andrucha Waddington (Spain / Brazil, 2010)—Lope is a Spanish production that reenacts the life and works of one of the most important authors of the XVI Century, Félix Lope de Vega Carpio. In the film, Lope de Vega (Alberto Ammann, who also starred in the successful Celda 211) arrives in Madrid, looking to set free his art, the written word. This biopic is narrated with the dynamism of a film super production. With a budget of over thirteen million Euros, it is one of the best of the Spanish film industry. Described as a historical adventure, passionate and exciting—as are the texts of Lope de Vega's feverish imagination—the movie presents his constant struggle to satisfy his desires while love crosses his path. And so this writer's life is presented. The film makes the audience a witness of how Lope learns about love, how he is sought out by officials, jailed, threatened by hit men, and how he triumphs, leaving as legacy the most prolific works of the Golden Century in Spanish Literature. Official website [Spanish]. IMDb. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Jonathan Holland writes, "Wisely playing to its limitations, pic is compact and efficient rather than grand and sweeping, with little adventure but many striking setpieces and a clutch of fine perfs." At The Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Young characterizes Lope as "a classy production that rises above the swashbuckling television costumer it could have been."

Nostalgia de la Luz / Nostalgia For the Light, dir. Patricio Guzmán (Chile / Germany / France, 2010)—This documentary by Patricio Guzmán takes place in Chile's Atacama Desert. It makes a parallel comparison between the exploration of the ends of the galaxy by a group of astronomers through the translucent desert sky and the relentless search by a group of women for the remains of their relatives who disappeared during the dictatorship. My 2010 TIFF interview with Patricio Guzmán has been previously published on MUBI. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

El gato desaparece / The Cat Vanishes, dir. Carlos Sorin (Argentina, 2011)—Luis, a renowned academic, comes back home after spending time in a psychiatric ward due to a psychotic crisis. His wife Beatriz is happy to have him back, but after their cat Donatello fails to recognize the man and goes missing, the question of whether Luis is completely cured will take life-threatening dimensions. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Rob Nelson writes: "Playing with '40s-era Hitchcock as a cat would toy with a mouse, Argentine writer-director Carlos Sorin's The Cat Vanishes cleverly updates the likes of Spellbound and Suspicion with its slow-burning tale of a Buenos Aires woman (Beatriz Spelzini) whose fear of her psychologically recovering hubby (Luis Luque) gradually drives her as crazy as he was—and maybe still is. Subtly and acerbically funny, Sorin's pic also works as a dead-serious study of marital mistrust and potentially murderous impulses. This Cat might not have nine lives at the international B.O., but fests far and wide will undoubtedly want to pounce." At The House Next Door / Slant, Joseph Jon Lanthier dubbed The Cat Vanishes as the "first great movie" he'd seen at TIFF 2011. "The film's ambiguity eventually and icily topples over into a definitive reference point of danger," Lanthier writes, "but the action is ruthlessly internalized within Beatriz's shadow of a doubt throughout the most nail-biting sequences."

Las razones del corazón / The Reasons of the Heart, dir. Arturo Ripstein (Mexico / Spain, 2011)—Overwhelmed by monotony and the sense of meaninglessness, Emilia retreats steadily further away from her role as a mother and housewife. She regrets the life she has lived, which she finds as a contrived mise-en-scène of a well to do family that keeps them continuously in the red with creditors, and that has estranged their own disaffected daughter. The joy and hope brought to Emilia by her secret lover are fading as well. The scenery to all this couldn't be more telling: she suffocates in a cold, rundown apartment she never liked but is unable to leave (the almost theatrical setting and tension are masterfully rendered by cinematographer Alejandro Cantú in a stark black and white palette). The day comes when Emilia can't take it anymore: her lover leaves her and the bank takes action on the unpaid debts. It is time for a decision she has been considering for a while; one that can put an end to it all. Veteran Mexican author Arturo Ripstein tries his hand with the timeless question posed by French classic Madame Bovary: How much can we take or do for love? IMDb. Facebook.

La voz dormida / The Sleeping Voice, dir. Benito Zambrano (Spain, 2011)—Pepita (María León) is a young girl from Córdoba, Spain, who leaves her town and goes to Madrid in order to be near her pregnant sister Hortensia (Inma Cuesta), who is in jail during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Hortensia is condemned to death, but her sentencing will take place after she gives birth. Therefore, Pepita moves heaven and earth to receive pardoning for her sister's crime, and to get custody of her baby, instead of having it sent to an orphanage or put up for adoption. Adapted from a novel by Dulce Chacón, this Spanish drama recreates the horrors of the Francoist era. Inma Cuesta, the popular actress from Andalucía, heads the cast of The Sleeping Voice, which was awarded three Goyas for Best Leading Actress, Best Upcoming Actress and Best Song. Official site [Spanish]. IMDb. Facebook.

At Variety, Jonathan Holland observes: "A harrowing drama that transforms the sorry plight of female prisoners in post-Civil War Spain into a bleak examination of man's inhumanity to women, The Sleeping Voice magnificently tells a tale that needs to be told and retold. Shrewdly remaining mainstream while plumbing the depths of grief and violence, this engrossing pic is often unbearably intense in its depiction of atrocities, and affecting in its portrayal of its protags' doomed fight against politics and patriarchy." At The Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Young stages complaints about the film, but admits the "vivid performances by attractive leads María León, who won Best Actress kudos at the San Sebastian festival, and the fiery Inma Cuesta do add interest."

Violeta se fue a los cielos / Violeta Went to Heaven, dir. Andrés Wood (Chile, 2011)—This ambitious portrait of a complex and central figure in last century's Chilean and Latin American popular song and culture threads different timelines and aspects of the multifaceted artist's life, without a linear structure but like the lively quilts (arpilleras) she so loved and got to show to the world. Based on the biography written by her son Angel, the mesmerizing narrative covers Violeta Parra's modest upbringing and the trips she made to the heart of Chile's countryside to research and preserve autochthonous songs that were vanishing from the memory of elder peasants. It follows her on the tour as part of a small circus troupe that performed for miners, the time she spent in communist Poland, her residence in France, and her return home to build the tent where she devoted herself to showcasing and fostering the folkloric arts and national identity. Her contradictions and shortcomings, her romantic life, fears and dreams are all fundamental to complete a poignant and passionate life-story. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at the Sundance Film Festival, 2012. Official site. IMDb. Facebook. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Jonathan Holland writes: "The intense, remarkable life of the Chilean singer-songwriter Violeta Parra is explored with sensitivity and exquisite lightness of touch in Andrés Wood's Violeta Went to Heaven. Featuring a searching central perf from Francisca Gavilan, this beautifully lensed portrait moves elegantly back and forth in time to limn the life of a woman who perpetually struggled to find her place."

PANAMÁ IFF—The Founding Of A Film Festival

Recent articles in Forbes and The New York Times have spotlighted Panama City as an up and coming travel destination, kickstarted—no doubt—by the $5.25 billion Panama Canal expansion that's underway and scheduled for completion in 2014, the canal's centenary anniversary. The Republic of Panama regained control of the historic canal situated at the slender waist of the Americas some 12 years ago and the expansion project will not only widen and deepen the existing canal but add two locks, doubling the canal's cargo capacity, and allowing a greater volume and size of ships to pass through the 50-mile long waterway. As underscored by The Times, "those who want to see the waterway as it was originally designed, now is the time."

A further boost to accelerated growth in the region came last October with the passage of the United States-Panama free trade agreement. As noted by The Times: "Other high-profile projects include the construction of three firsts: The Panamera, the first Waldorf Astoria hotel in Latin America (set to open in June 2012); the Trump Ocean Club, the region's tallest building, which opened last summer; and Frank Gehry's first Latin American design, the BioMuseo, a natural history museum scheduled to open in early 2013. Even Panama City's famously dilapidated historic quarter, Casco Viejo, has been transformed. The neighborhood, a tangle of narrow streets, centuries-old houses and neo-colonial government buildings, was designated a Unesco World Heritage site in 1997 and is now a trendy arts district with galleries, coffeehouses, street musicians and some of the city's most stylish restaurants and boutique hotels."

The role of film festivals in advancing and influencing the tourist initiatives of civic and national governments is a vein of film festival studies richly mined by such scholars as Thomas Elsaesser, Marikje de Valck, Dina Iordanova and Regan Rhyne who see the study of film festivals to be "central to understanding the socio-cultural dynamics of global cinema and international cultural exchanges at large" (Iordanova & Rhyne, 2009, Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, "Introduction", p. 1) and "city marketing" as an essential activity for cities that want to compete in the global arena, with the construction of a positive image becoming one of the key elements in promotional strategies for attracting investment and tourism (de Valck, 2007, Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia, p. 75).

The inaugural Panama International Film Festival (Panamá IFF) [Facebook] will take place in the Capital City from April 26 through May 2, 2012. The event is sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of Panama, Tourism Authority of Panama, Panama Film Commission, and private companies. During its week-long run, Panamá IFF will screen more than 50 award-winning films gleaned from prestige festivals around the world, including Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, and San Sebastian, with many of the films' directors converging at the festival to engage audiences in Q&A sessions intent on promoting dialogue and understanding between cultures.

Co-founded by Canadian businessman Rob Brown and his father-in-law Henk Van der Kolk, Panamá IFF seeks to support the promotion of culture in the country, foster the development of local industries, and promote film education. One of its long-range objectives is to build a Festival Center to house both the Festival and an international film school. Such hefty ambitions are not unfamiliar to Van der Kolk who co-founded the Toronto International Film Festival 38 years ago and watched it grow into one of the world's most prestigious film events, bringing millions of dollars into the local economy. Van der Kolk serves as Panamá IFF's Executive Director and has chosen Diana Sanchez as the festival's Artistic Director.

As reported to Screen Daily, the Dutch-born, Panama-based Canadian Van der Kolk "hopes to attract 'culture travelers', a new breed of international festival-goers who have the capital to travel the world enjoying the seventh art, amongst others." Van der Kolk recalled that Canada in 1976 was considered part of the American domestic market with most Canadians accustomed to American film. "In '76," Van der Kolk remembered, "our press had no interest in us as Canadian filmmakers. So we held a film festival to bring the world to us." Currrently, the Panamanian market is composed of 97% American pictures; but, Panamá IFF seeks to spotlight and advance regional filmmaking, not only through local voices but foreign investment. Panama has long held a reputation as a fine place to shoot films, with the The Tailor of Panama (2001) and Quantum of Solace (2008) being two recent films shot on location in Panama's historic Casco Viejo. Hollywood producer Raffaella De Laurentiis, daughter of Dino De Laurentiis, concurs that Panama is an ideal venue for filmmaking, which she believes is destined to become a cultural junction in the region and a platform for new offerings to the world of cinema.

Panamá IFF consists of a number of board members—including De Laurentiis—and creative advisors including Panamanian filmmakers and local entertainment industry representatives, among them Pituka Ortega Heilbron (who has been appointed Co-Director of the festival), Abner Benaim, Luis Pacheco and actor / songwriter Rubén Blades.

SFIFF55—Michael Hawley Previews the Line-Up: Part Two

In my initial post at film-415 for the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF55), I gathered up early announcements of the festival's special awards and programs made before the official press conference. Then in the first part of my lineup preview, I took a look at SFIFF55's offerings from Europe. Now in Part Two, we'll zero in on what the fest has in store from Asia/Pacific, Middle East/Africa, Latin America and the USA.

Asia / Pacific

The SF International Asian American Film Festival has all but ceased programming new works by Asia's established auteurs. Fortunately, SFIFF has not. South Korea's Hong Sang-soo checks in with The Day He Arrives, the latest addition to his well-established, drunken-artists-behaving-badly oeuvre. The story sounds like typical Hong, with the added new spark of B&W cinematography and a wintry Seoul backdrop. Last year the fest screened Hahaha, the first Hong film I truly liked, so I'm hoping he and I are now on a roll. Hirokazu Kore-eda has had six prior films play in this festival and in I Wish, he returns to the world of children last explored in 2004's Nobody Knows. The revered Japanese director made personal appearances at SFIFF in 2009 and 2010, but isn't expected to attend this time out. Those with festival scheduling conflicts should know that The Day He Arrives opens for a one-week run at the SF Film Society Cinema on May 4 and I Wish is tentatively slotted for a local Landmark Theatre opening on May 18.

Not coming to a theater near you anytime soon is Johnnie To's Life Without Principle. This is said to be a departure for the prolific Hong Kong action director and is set in the avaricious world of investment banking. I'm scheduled to see it the same day as the Dreileben trilogy, so I hope my stamina holds up. The other Asian narrative feature I've prioritized is People Mountain, People Sea, a formalist, contemporary Chinese revenge tale that won its director, Cai Shangjun, a Venice Silver Lion. Also of possible interest: the world's first Samoan language film (The Orator), a movie from Tibet (Old Dog) and Peter Chan's martial arts blockbuster Wu Xia, starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Donnie Yen.

Three documentaries relating to the region have also caught my eye. Davy Chou's Golden Slumbers reminisces on the Golden Age of Cambodian cinema (1960 -1975), during which time over 400 local films were made. The Khmer Rouge destroyed nearly all of them, as well as the artists who produced them. In his rave review for Variety, Richard Kuipers calls the film "inventively directed" and "pure poetry." Carrying the distinction of the longest-titled film in SFIFF55 is French artist / filmmaker Eric Beaudlaire's The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images. I recently became interested in Japan's 1970s radical terrorist organization, the Japanese Red Army, after watching Kôji Wakamatsu's brutally fascinating United Red Army, and am hoping for some illumination on the group's years of exile in Lebanon. Finally, there's Alison Klayman's Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which profiles the ubiquitous Chinese artist/dissident.

Latin America

The past year has been a bit of an off-time for Latin American cinema, with a number of established directors (Carlos Sorin, Arturo Ripstein, Karim Ainouz and others) releasing new works to modest reception. One film that's been an uncontested critical success, Pablo Giorgelli's Cannes Camera d'or-winning Las Acacias, is oddly missing from the SFIFF55 line-up. Of the half dozen features that did make the cut, I'm especially excited about two. Milagros Mumenthaler's Back to Stay is the story of three college-age sisters who return to the Buenos Aires home of their recently deceased grandmother. It won the top prize at last summer's Locarno Film Festival. Winning the FIPRESCI prize at Rotterdam this year was Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighboring Sounds, a mosaic of life on an upscale street in Recife, Brazil. Calling the film "a powerful, yet subtle X-ray of contempo Brazilian society" in his rave review for Variety, Jay Weissberg went on to praise Neighboring Sounds for being "superbly constructed, skillfully acted and beautifully lensed."

Another film being celebrated on the fest circuit is Cristián Jiménez' Bonsái, which is based on a seminal Chilean novella. I confess this time-bending "existential romance" had me nodding off to sleep when I watched it on DVD screener several months back. I plan to give it another chance. Also from Chile comes Alejandro Fernández Almendras' By the Fire, which I missed at the Palm Springs festival and am happy to find here. The two remaining Latin American narrative features are Found Memories and A Secret World, from Brazil and Mexico respectively. While there are surprisingly no Latin American documentaries in this year's festival, one comes awfully close. Russian director Victor Kossakovsky's ¡Vivan las antipodas! lyrically muses upon four sets of antipodes, with the greatest amount of screen time being devoted to a remote homestead in Entre Rios, Argentina.

Middle East / Africa

My top anticipated pick from this region is easily Mohammad Rasoulof's Goodbye, as I loved his two previous films, Iron Island and The White Meadows (both seen at previous editions of SFIFF). Whereas those two films were fanciful allegories, I understand this new work is a despairingly realist account of a female lawyer struggling to leave Iran, which the director shot clandestinely while awaiting appeal of his own six-year prison sentence. I'm equally excited by two Israeli films that have generated acclaim on the festival circuit. Policeman promises an inspired and provocative take on Israeli machismo and The Law in These Parts, a documentary about the Israeli legal system governing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary in World Cinema at this year's Sundance.

Israeli director Eran Kolirin's The Exchange received mixed reviews when it premiered at Venice, but I'm giving it a shot based on my admiration for his 2007 crowd-pleasing The Band's Visit. Speaking of crowd-pleasing, Lebanon's Nadine Labaki follows up her popular 2007 film Caramel with Where Do We Go Now?, which won the Toronto Film Festival audience award and was Lebanon's most recent Oscar® submission. This yarn about village women diffusing religious violence opens at a local Landmark Theatre on May 18. Also from Lebanon comes OK, Enough, Goodbye, a deadpan comedy about a schlubby shopkeeper who's abandoned by his put-upon mother. Rounding out selections from the region are Iraqi orphanage doc In My Mother's Arms, and the chick flicky-sounding A Cube of Sugar from Iran.

SFIFF's African programming has been a decided weak spot in recent years. This year's line-up contains no films from North Africa—surprising in light of recent events—and the festival's three films set in sub-Saharan Africa are all by non-African filmmakers. That said, I'm really looking forward to Isaki Lacuesta's The Double Steps, a fantastical-looking fever dream that appears of be about, among other things, a search for hidden frescoes in the Malian desert. The film took the top prize at last year's San Sebastian Film Festival. I'm also likely to have a look at Ulrich Köhler's Sleeping Sickness, a meditation on post-colonial relations which won a Silver Bear for Best Director at 2011's Berlin Film Festival.

USA

Domestic films are generally not where I focus my attention at this festival, but there are some enticing entries this year. Eclipsing them all is Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt, which seven months after its Toronto world premiere still doesn't appear to have U.S. distribution. This darkly comic mystery about a small town serial killer stars Val Kilmer and Bruce Dern, and will be screened twice—in 3-D at the Castro (!!!) and 2-D at the Kabuki. Another one I won't be missing is The Fourth Dimension, a trio of short films for which the directors—Harmony Korine (Mister Lonely), Alexsei Fedorchenko (last year's Silent Souls) and Jan Kwiecinski—were given a set of Dogma-like strictures to adhere to. This could be disastrously pretentious or friggin' fabulous. Either way, it's a world premiere and all three directors are expected to attend. Val Kilmer fans take note: he's the star of Korine's segment.

If SFIFF55 is in need of a poster boy, director / actor Mark Duplass is the one to recruit, as he appears in both Lawrence "The Big Chill" Kasdan's Darling Companion and Lynn "Humpday" Shelton's Your Sister's Sister (the latter being SFIFF55's Centerpiece Film). Although I'll probably give those movies a pass, I am dying to see Mark and Jay Duplass' The Do-Deca Pentathlon, a hilarious-sounding comedy the brothers shot in between Baghead and Cyrus, which recently premiered to acclaim at SXSW. The Grand Jury Prize winner at that festival was Adam Leon's Gimme the Loot, in which two NYC graffiti artists scramble to set up their biggest "bombing" to date. At the SFIFF55 press conference, it was stressed that Gimme the Loot had been programmed into the fest long before its significant SXSW win. Two other U.S. narrative features I'm aiming to see are Compliance by Craig Zobel (Great World of Sound), reportedly the most divisive film at Sundance 2012, and Julia Loktev's The Loneliest Planet. Gael Garcia Bernal stars here as one half of a couple whose relationship is thrown off course during a backpacking trek through the Caucasus Mountains. Loktev's 2006 breakthrough film Day Night, Day Night, never screened in the Bay Area, so it was especially nice to find The Loneliest Planet in the SFIFF55 line-up.

My enthusiasm for this year's U.S. narrative features carries over to the fest's documentary selections as well, with some of America's best known non-fiction filmmakers represented. The name Alex Gibney (Enron, Taxi to the Dark Side, Magic Trip) is almost enough to make me want to watch ice hockey doc The Last Gladiators. Last Call at the Oasis is Jessica Yu's (In the Realms of the Unreal, Protagonist) take on the global water crisis. Kirby Dick (Sick, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Outrage) is no stranger to controversy and takes on the subject of rape in the U.S. military with his latest, The Invisible War. Then ex-Bay Area gadfly Caveh Zahedi (I Am a Sex Addict), stirs up plenty of debate in The Sheik and I, in which he goads his way through a commissioned film project in the United Arab Emirates.

Elsewhere on the domestic doc front, I'm debating whether to subject myself to The Queen of Versailles, Lauren Greenfield's portrait of a repellent family of American one-percenters getting their comeuppance. A queenly portrait of another sort is Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, granddaughter-in-law Lisa Immordino Vreeland's film about the greatest fashion maven of all time. I saw this at Palm Springs and it's enormous fun, especially when viewed with an audience that's almost all well-to-do ladies of a certain age. Another documentary about a famous woman directed by a relative is Ethel, by Ethel and Robert Kennedy's youngest daughter, Rory. For more hard-hitting subject matter, I'm hoping to check out Peter Nicks' The Waiting Room, which surveys a day in the life of Oakland's Highland Hospital, and David France's history of AIDS activism, How to Survive a Plague.

Cross-published on film-415.

SFIFF55—Michael Hawley Previews the Line-Up: Part One

The Bay Area's press corps gathered at the Fairmont Hotel's breathtaking Crown Room last week for the unveiling of the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF55)'s full line-up. SF Film Society (SFFS) Board President Pat McBain, himself pinch-hitting for acting Executive Director Melanie Blum, spoke about the "unbelievably sad and challenging past year" and revealed plans to honor former Executive Directors Graham Leggat and Bingham Ray during the festival. Opening Night on April 19 will be dedicated to Leggat, "who led us with his passion and leadership and vision for 5½ years." Bingham Ray, who succeeded Leggat for a brief two months, will be honored at the Castro Theatre on April 28 with a screening of Carol Reed's The Third Man, his all-time favorite film. Prior to turning the press conference over to Director of Programming Rachel Rosen and her team, McBain stressed that the search for a new Executive Director was well under way and would go "full throttle" once this year's festival wrapped.

Before diving into the nitty gritty of this year's line-up, Rosen prefaced that "our best revenge against what life has handed us this year is to put on the best, most celebratory festival that we could in honor of Graham and Bingham and to all of you who support us." Indeed, it appears they've done just that. In a previous post at film-415 I gathered up all the early announcements of SFIFF55's special awards and programs, to which we can now add the following: The festival will close on May 3 with Ramona Diaz' documentary Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey, the story of a Journey cover band singer from the Philippines who became a member of the actual group. The Kanbar Award for screenwriting will go to David Webb Peoples, who penned such films as Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys and Unforgiven (the latter of which will be shown at the awards presentation). And while the Peter J. Owens Award for acting wasn't ready to be announced at the press conference, it has just been revealed that Australian actress Judy Davis will be the recipient, a choice certainly as inspired as last year's selection of Terence Stamp. Following an on-stage interview and clips reel, the festival will show Fred Schepisi's new film The Eye of the Storm, in which Davis stars with Geoffrey Rush and Charlotte Rampling.

I've attended SFIFF every year since 1976 and this will be my sixth year writing about it as accredited press. As has become tradition, I kick off my coverage with a broad overview of the line-up, which contains over 100 narrative and documentary features. I'll touch upon the ones I'm dying to see as well as those that have piqued my interest, all loosely organized under geographic headings.

Europe

French language films are always my top priority, so that's where we'll begin. While it was disappointing not to find the new films of such SFIFF alumni as Bruno Dumont, Christophe Honoré, André Téchiné, Chantal Akerman, Philippe Garrel and Lucas Belvaux in SFIFF55, I'm more than pleased by the selections on hand. First, a big thumbs up for Robert Guédiguian's The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which sees the prolific director return to the working class milieu of Marseilles that marked his 1997 breakthrough hit, Marius and Jeanette. Guédiguian is one of my favorite filmmakers and I've always been grateful that this festival has consistently supported his work. I caught this one at Palm Springs and am likely to see it again.

Also high on my must-see list are three films by directors best known for their acting careers. In Bouli Lanners' The Giants, three teenage boys are left to fend for themselves in rural Belgium. The festival mini-guide incorrectly lists this as Lanners' feature directorial debut (his last film Eldorado played the SFFS Kabuki screen in 2009). The Giants won several awards in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar at Cannes last year. Mathieu Kassovitz is probably best known in this country for playing Amélie Poulain's object of desire. He both directs and stars in Rebellion, based on a bloody 1988 insurgency in the French Pacific island territory of New Caledonia. Mono-monikered actress Maïwenn won Cannes' Jury Prize for her third feature directorial effort, Polisse. This drama about a Parisian Child Protective Custody unit was perhaps the most divisive film in competition at Cannes last year. While some critics found it brilliant, others dismissed it as a shallow TV cop show on steroids.

Nearly all of this year's French language selections were already on my radar—the two which were not sound like potential winners. Vincent Garenq's Guilty is the true story of a husband and wife wrongly imprisoned for pedophilia. In his favorable review for Variety, Boyd Van Hoeij says this "stomach-churning thriller-drama hybrid … dissects one of Gaul's most famous miscarriages of justice with chilling precision." Van Hoeij was somewhat less enthusiastic about Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche's 18th century historical drama, Smuggler's Songs. This represents a new direction for the director, whose other three films explored issues surrounding contemporary French-Arab immigration (SFFS screened Adhen at 2009's French Cinema Now, and Wesh Wesh and Bled Number One played our 2006 Arab Film Festival). Smuggler's Songs co-stars (along with Ameur-Zaïmeche) the always interesting actor/director Jacques Nolot (Before I Forget).

Amongst the remaining French films, I'm sure everyone is looking forward to Chicken with Plums, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's follow-up to the wildly successful Persepolis. Again working from one of her graphic novels, this is the story of Satrapi's Iranian musician great-uncle, who's played by Mathieu Amalric. Two French selections are competing for SFIFF55's New Directors Prize. Delphine and Muriel Coulin's 17 Girls concerns the circumstances surrounding a port town's massive outbreak of teen pregnancy and John Shenk's Last Winter explores the struggles of a young farmer. The latter stars Vincent Rottiers, who made such a strong impression in last year's I'm Glad My Mother is Alive. Anyone desiring a look at populist French cinema won't want to miss The Intouchables, which is now France's second most popular film of all time in terms of domestic admissions (the first being Welcome to the Sticks, which played French Cinema Now in 2008). At this year's Cesar Awards, Intouchables co-star Omar Sy bested The Artist's Jean Dujardin for meilleur acteur. For a taste of French horror from the festival's The Late Show sidebar, there's Last Screening, a shocker about a psychopathic cinema projectionist. Finally, whether you love him or hate him, there's no denying that SF Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle is a passionate and knowledgeable advocate of French cinema. That's why I plan to sit in on his master class, Mick LaSalle: The Beauty of the Real, based on his new book about contemporary French actresses.

At the festival press conference, SFFS programmer Rod Armstrong revealed that he had long suggested Ken Russell for the Founder's Directing Award, an idea Graham Leggat nixed as "crazy." Alas, Russell passed away in November and the festival now honors him posthumously, in raucous Peaches Christ-style, with a Late Show screening of 1975's Tommy. Equally exciting, SFIFF55 will present the other filmic adaptation of a rock opera by The Who, Franc Roddam's 1979 Quadrophenia, in a rare 35mm print at the Castro. A pair of contemporary UK films programmed in the festival finds two acclaimed British directors reimagining works of classic 19th century literature. Ultra-versatile Michael Winterbottom transports Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles to modern day India in Trishna, which stars Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto. Then in Andrea Arnold's follow-up to Fish Tank, the character of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is recast as a former Afro-Caribbean slave. Both films were well received at their respective Toronto and Venice premieres. The fest will also be screening Tanya Wexler's Hysteria, a romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator (opening May 25 at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema).

Shifting back to (non-French speaking) continental Europe, I spy five films I'm especially hot to see. When local festivals Berlin & Beyond and German Gems both passed on screening the Dreileben Trilogy following its 2011 Berlin Film Festival premiere, I feared it had forever passed us by. Characteristically, SFIFF55 has now stepped up to the plate. Dreileben (meaning "three lives") consists of three loosely interlocking films about the manhunt for an escaped murderer. Each is told from a different point of view, in radically different filmmaking styles, by three of Germany's most important contemporary directors: Christian Petzold (Beats Being Dead), Dominik Graf (Don't Follow Me Around) and Christoph Hochhäusler (One Minute of Darkness). Petzold is certainly the most renowned of the three (Yella, Jerichow) and Hochhäusler's unsettling The City Below was in last year's festival. SFIFF55 presents three opportunities to view the trilogy; twice as an all-day marathon and once spread over three consecutive days. My two remaining compulsory European films are Norway's Oslo, August 31, Joachim Trier's follow-up to his astonishing 2006 debut, Reprise, and what is possibly my most anticipated film of the entire festival, Yorgos Lanthimos' ALPS. It's been two years since Greece's Dogtooth became the most transgressive film ever nominated for an Oscar® and I'm ready to be shocked silly all over again.

Finally, here are a few remaining European films of potential interest. There's a second Greek film in the fest, Filippos Tsitos' Unfair World, which took prizes for best director and actor at San Sebastian last year. The trailer for Morten Tyldum's Norwegian genre thriller Headhunters looks like a real kick in the head. It screens in the festival's The Late Show sidebar and will open theatrically at a Landmark Theatre on May 4. Russia is represented at SFIFF55 with two films, Alexander Zeldovich's futuristic epic Target, and Michale Boganim's post-Chernobyl drama Land of Oblivion (which is technically from the Ukraine). Italian director Emanuele Crialese's Golden Door opened the festival in 2007 and I caught his latest, Terraferma at Palm Springs. What's important to know is that the film's ubiquitous poster / still of young hotties diving off the sides of a fishing boat has virtually nothing to do with the movie itself. Another Italy-set film, Rolando Colla's Summer Games, was Switzerland's 2011 Oscar® submission. Those disappointed that the festival didn't program Tabu, Miguel Gomes' follow-up to Our Beloved Month of August (the big discovery of SFIFF52), might console themselves with Gonçalo Tocha's three-hour plus Portuguese doc, It's the Earth Not the Moon, about the remote Azores island of Corvo. Lastly, and for me personally, leastly, those who can't get enough of farm animal documentaries should find pleasure in Winter Nomads and Women with Cows.

Click here for Part Two, where I discuss SFIFF55's line-up of films from Asia/Pacific, Middle East/Africa, Latin America and the USA.

Cross-published on film-415.