Pedagio
Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Markowicz surprised us last year when she pulled out an entire other feature film rabbit from her hat. Charcoal became her feature film debut and her sophomore film is poised to launch this year making for an intense back to back years of premieres. Pedagio (Toll) went into production in November of ’21 – re-teaming the filmmaker with actress Maeve Jinkings and Bionica Filmes’ producer Karen Castanho. Luis Armando Arteaga (Private Desert) is the cinematographer.
Gist: Suellen (Maeve Jinkings) is a toll booth attendant who starts using her job to help a gang of thieves steal watches from people driving to the coast.…...
Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Markowicz surprised us last year when she pulled out an entire other feature film rabbit from her hat. Charcoal became her feature film debut and her sophomore film is poised to launch this year making for an intense back to back years of premieres. Pedagio (Toll) went into production in November of ’21 – re-teaming the filmmaker with actress Maeve Jinkings and Bionica Filmes’ producer Karen Castanho. Luis Armando Arteaga (Private Desert) is the cinematographer.
Gist: Suellen (Maeve Jinkings) is a toll booth attendant who starts using her job to help a gang of thieves steal watches from people driving to the coast.…...
- 1/12/2023
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Part mystery, part passionate romance, Aly Muritiba’s queer drama Private Desert is striking in the unexpected avenues its narrative takes, as well as the surprising cinematography that immerses the viewer in its balmy Brazilian locale.
A favorite at last year’s Venice Film Festival and Brazil’s official submission to the 94th Academy Awards, the story follows a police officer placed on leave who searches for his online love, a genderfluid blue-collar worker who lives as her male birth identity by day, when she disappears.
As the film arrives in the U.S., I had the opportunity to speak with Muritiba about the intense physicality of the film, his character’s backstories, the toxic masculinity of Brazil, crafting a beautiful love story, the bifurcated narrative, and much more.
The Film Stage: There’s an intense physicality to the film, both in how your camera frames actors and in the blocking of scenes.
A favorite at last year’s Venice Film Festival and Brazil’s official submission to the 94th Academy Awards, the story follows a police officer placed on leave who searches for his online love, a genderfluid blue-collar worker who lives as her male birth identity by day, when she disappears.
As the film arrives in the U.S., I had the opportunity to speak with Muritiba about the intense physicality of the film, his character’s backstories, the toxic masculinity of Brazil, crafting a beautiful love story, the bifurcated narrative, and much more.
The Film Stage: There’s an intense physicality to the film, both in how your camera frames actors and in the blocking of scenes.
- 8/26/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
At the halfway mark, Aly Muritiba’s “Deserto Particular” clicks into high gear. There’s a change of scenery, yes; we move from the chilly South of Brazil to its arid Northeast. And there’s a change in point of view; we leave our protagonist behind and follow, instead, the person he was so intent on tracking down. More importantly, though, the film comes alive in its second half, which deepens and complicates the story we thought we were watching, about a disgraced cop trying to run away from the violence that’s set to cost him his job and his reputation. For some, the tender empathy that runs through the film’s latter half may not be enough to offset its choice of sympathetic leading man. Yet this Brazilian drama is a welcome and assured intervention into that country’s calcified ideals about desire and masculinity.
Daniel (Antonio Saboia) is spiraling.
Daniel (Antonio Saboia) is spiraling.
- 11/23/2021
- by Manuel Betancourt
- Variety Film + TV
After having swept San Sebastian’s Films in Progress with his second feature, “Rust” (2018) and quickly consolidated as one of the most talked-about of emerging talents in Brazil — a country of many talented young filmmakers — Aly Muritiba has come to Venice’s Biennale to screen his latest film, “Private Desert”(“Deserto Particular”), at its Giornate degli Autori.
It’s a heartwarming love story that reconfirms the director’s control over his craft. Co-produced by Grafo Audiovisual and Fado Filmes, the film follows Daniel, played energetically by Antonio Saboia. He’s a police man who, after being discharged due to violent behavior, crosses the country to find his online love who has suddenly vanished.
What follows is a delicate tale that widens Daniel’s horizons and those of his lover Sara under a scorching sun.
Aided by cinematographer Luis Armando Arteaga, Muritiba’s shimmering camerawork elegantly constructs the love story. The...
It’s a heartwarming love story that reconfirms the director’s control over his craft. Co-produced by Grafo Audiovisual and Fado Filmes, the film follows Daniel, played energetically by Antonio Saboia. He’s a police man who, after being discharged due to violent behavior, crosses the country to find his online love who has suddenly vanished.
What follows is a delicate tale that widens Daniel’s horizons and those of his lover Sara under a scorching sun.
Aided by cinematographer Luis Armando Arteaga, Muritiba’s shimmering camerawork elegantly constructs the love story. The...
- 9/9/2021
- by Emiliano Granada
- Variety Film + TV
Rites of passage, teenage girls in small towns, strict and uncomprehending parents: We know the drill, yet few films riffing on the subject get the mood and ambiguities as right as “Looking for Venera.” , ensuring the story is grounded in a particular place while making her protagonist a readily identifiable, highly sympathetic young woman. Impressively shot by fast-rising Dp Luis Armando Arteaga and anchored by richly multi-layered performances, the film deservedly won a special jury award in Rotterdam and should get significant attention throughout the coming year.
The town where Venera (Kosovare Krasniqi) lives is nothing special to look at, set among hills made bare by harsh winters, ugly substandard constructions and the recent war that decimated the adult male population. With no parks, internet or after-school activities, there’s not much to do, and tradition-bound customs continue to exert a stranglehold on adult social networks. Unlike many of her friends,...
The town where Venera (Kosovare Krasniqi) lives is nothing special to look at, set among hills made bare by harsh winters, ugly substandard constructions and the recent war that decimated the adult male population. With no parks, internet or after-school activities, there’s not much to do, and tradition-bound customs continue to exert a stranglehold on adult social networks. Unlike many of her friends,...
- 2/12/2021
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
Summoning nature’s earth-shaking forces — first volcanic eruptions, now earthquakes — to serve as resounding signifiers of instability, Guatemalan auteur Jayro Bustamante’s two features to date roar as sobering assessments of systematic marginalization in a society unwilling to broaden its viciously narrow status quo. First, “Ixcanul” objected to corrosive misogyny and racism; now homophobia is the target in his sophomore social drama “Tremors,” which had its North American premiere last March at the Miami Film Festival and opens theatrically Friday.
Bustamante’s social pariah, a white man from the upper crust of society, is far removed, at least in obvious parallels, from the teenage indigenous woman chastised by her community for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the director’s debut. Their personal hells, however, emanate from the same phallocentric well of hatred. In both instances, Bustamante lets his embattled protagonists unravel without the empty promise of a fortunate resolution.
A masculine fellow by all traditional parameters,...
Bustamante’s social pariah, a white man from the upper crust of society, is far removed, at least in obvious parallels, from the teenage indigenous woman chastised by her community for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the director’s debut. Their personal hells, however, emanate from the same phallocentric well of hatred. In both instances, Bustamante lets his embattled protagonists unravel without the empty promise of a fortunate resolution.
A masculine fellow by all traditional parameters,...
- 11/29/2019
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
Plenty as twenty-one Golden Lion hopefuls can offer, leaving the Venice Film Festival without having ventured beyond the fest’s official lineup and into its parallel sidebars would be a missed opportunity. Aside from the notorious Horizons (Orizzonti)—a competitive selection running parallel to the official lineup and designed to showcase new trends in cinema—the festival invites you to explore a panoply of other programs and events, including Out of Competition slots, a selection of restored masterworks (Venice Classics), a virtual reality section (Venice Vr), and independent sidebars such as the International Critics Week and Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori), an independent program modeled on Cannes’ Directors' Fortnight. Now at my fifth year here on the Lido, I must confess I am yet to step foot on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, home to the Venice Vr screenings—a trip that would be well worth the ticket, if anything...
- 9/2/2019
- MUBI
Colombian writer-director Franco Lolli wrongfoots us a little with the title of his sophomore feature “Litigante”: Unsuspecting audiences may go in expecting a courtroom drama, not least given that its protagonist is an embattled public-sector lawyer. As it turns out, for fortyish single mother Silvia — played with utterly credible, bone-deep weariness by the superb Carolina Sanin — family life provides most of her trials. As she shoulders the various, intermeshing stresses of caring for her cancer-stricken mother, handling an office corruption crisis and embarking on an awkwardly timed new romance, Silvia is pushed close to a breaking point that she impressively never quite reaches. In turn, “Litigante,” affecting and intelligently observed as it is, falls just short of a rewarding dramatic crescendo: It’s a film of small, precisely rendered moments rather than major emotional flourishes.
That should be enough for this small-scale Franco-Colombian production to build a case for...
That should be enough for this small-scale Franco-Colombian production to build a case for...
- 5/16/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
As was widely anticipated, Alfonso Cuaron’s triple Oscar-winning “Roma” dominated the 6th Premios Platino nominations, unveiled Thursday at Hollywood’s legendary Roosevelt Hotel, the site of the very first Oscars. It snagged a total of nine nominations, including best film, director, art direction, cinematography, and acting for its two Oscar-nominated actresses, Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira.
“Roma,” which won Mexico’s first best foreign-language film Oscar, is up against pics that were also submitted for their respective countries in the Academy Awards’ foreign-language category: Colombia’s “Pajaros de Verano,” Uruguay’s “La Noche de 12 Años,” and Spain’s “Campeones.” The first two titles nabbed six Premios Platino noms each while “Campeones” took five. Paraguay’s Oscar submission “Las Herederas” took five nominations.
The ceremony streamed live on Facebook with Premios Platino ambassador and CNN Español journalist Juan Carlos Arciniegas hosting the event alongside actors Joaquin Cosio, Angie Cepeda,...
“Roma,” which won Mexico’s first best foreign-language film Oscar, is up against pics that were also submitted for their respective countries in the Academy Awards’ foreign-language category: Colombia’s “Pajaros de Verano,” Uruguay’s “La Noche de 12 Años,” and Spain’s “Campeones.” The first two titles nabbed six Premios Platino noms each while “Campeones” took five. Paraguay’s Oscar submission “Las Herederas” took five nominations.
The ceremony streamed live on Facebook with Premios Platino ambassador and CNN Español journalist Juan Carlos Arciniegas hosting the event alongside actors Joaquin Cosio, Angie Cepeda,...
- 3/21/2019
- by Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
“Love knows nothing improper,” chides a zealous preacher in “Tremors.” Ostensibly, she says it to an entire rapt church; more pointedly, she’s addressing mild-mannered family man Pablo, as he’s dragged through a terrestrial hell for the cardinal sin of falling in love with another man. What’s the greater impropriety, then: same-sex love or the victimization of its practitioners, to the point of denying them jobs or access to their children? As the latest in a long line of films to examine the hypocrisy-laden clash between gay rights and evangelical Christian ethos — including the recent U.S. double bill of “Boy Erased” and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” — this strong second feature from Guatemalan talent Jayro Bustamante doesn’t ask new questions, but its sensuous, reverberating atmospherics find fresh, angry ways to answer them.
Premiering in Berlin’s Panorama strand, “Tremors” is a weighty, promise-fulfilling follow-up to a dream debut.
Premiering in Berlin’s Panorama strand, “Tremors” is a weighty, promise-fulfilling follow-up to a dream debut.
- 2/15/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
There are any number of movies about gay men trying to liberate themselves from the long shadow of heteronormative oppression — a regrettably, enduringly relevant premise — but few have been told with the extraordinary nuance or compassion of Jayro Bustamante’s “Tremors.”
The Guatemalan drama begins where a previous iteration of this drama might have left off. Rather than argue for the hero’s basic humanity, Bustamante moves the goalposts forward by reframing the stakes. There’s never any doubt that Pablo has the right to be with the man he loves, the question is whether the happiness that would bring is worth the hurt that would come with it. And it’s a question that only Pablo can answer for himself.
From its rain-drenched prologue to its pensive final shot, “Tremors” explores whether self-identity is more legibly defined by what people are, or what they are not. Must we shed...
The Guatemalan drama begins where a previous iteration of this drama might have left off. Rather than argue for the hero’s basic humanity, Bustamante moves the goalposts forward by reframing the stakes. There’s never any doubt that Pablo has the right to be with the man he loves, the question is whether the happiness that would bring is worth the hurt that would come with it. And it’s a question that only Pablo can answer for himself.
From its rain-drenched prologue to its pensive final shot, “Tremors” explores whether self-identity is more legibly defined by what people are, or what they are not. Must we shed...
- 2/12/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Tremors (Temblores)
Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante (under his label La Casa de Producción) reteams with France’s Tu Vas Voir and Spain’s Film Factory Entertainment for his sophomore film Tremors (Temblores), including producers Gerard Lacroix, De Jesus Peralta Orellana Marina, Nicolas Steil, Edgard Tenenbaum and co-producer Olivier Pere through Arte France Cinema (with France’s Memento Films and Luxembourg’s Iris Prods also on board). Leaving behind the rural isolation of 2015’s Ixcanul for the religious bigotry of the urban center in Guatemala City, Tremors stars Juan Pablo Olyslager, Maria Telon, Diane Bathan, Pedro Javier Silva Lira, and Mauricio Armas and features the cinematography of Luis Armando Arteaga (of Ixcanul and the 2018 Paraguayan hit The Heiresses).…...
Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante (under his label La Casa de Producción) reteams with France’s Tu Vas Voir and Spain’s Film Factory Entertainment for his sophomore film Tremors (Temblores), including producers Gerard Lacroix, De Jesus Peralta Orellana Marina, Nicolas Steil, Edgard Tenenbaum and co-producer Olivier Pere through Arte France Cinema (with France’s Memento Films and Luxembourg’s Iris Prods also on board). Leaving behind the rural isolation of 2015’s Ixcanul for the religious bigotry of the urban center in Guatemala City, Tremors stars Juan Pablo Olyslager, Maria Telon, Diane Bathan, Pedro Javier Silva Lira, and Mauricio Armas and features the cinematography of Luis Armando Arteaga (of Ixcanul and the 2018 Paraguayan hit The Heiresses).…...
- 1/4/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
The HeiressesThe first few days of the Berlin International Film Festival have provided the kind of bounty of compelling premieres—whether just intriguingly idiosyncratic or genuinely good—that makes a festival an experience of rejuvenation, even amid grim or difficult subjects. A great example of the latter is Kazuhiro Soda's Inland Sea, a bountifully patient portrait of the dying margins of the old Japanese fishing town of Ushimado. It paints a humane but forlorn portrait of a town seemingly populated almost exclusively by the elderly and a cast of beautiful stray cats. The filmmaker and his wife interject themselves into the proceedings of this compassionate documentary often, so the presence of the camera soon becomes not ambivalent and analytic but rather a sweet-natured, deeply-interested observer. Invited along with his characters as they go about their often-lonely work of diminishing returns or show him the local sights, Soda creates a transitory...
- 2/18/2018
- MUBI
The first domestic trailer has arrived for Ixcanul, the feature directorial debut of Jayro Bustamante, which has earned acclaimed from film festivals across the globe and will arrive in theaters in next week. Recently listed as one of our 15 must see films of August, Ixcanul film is set in the hills of Gutaemala, where an active volcano resides at the top, and concerns 17-year-old Maria (María Mercedes Coroy) who has had a marriage arranged for her on a coffee plantation resting at the bottom. The trailer boasts some stunning cinematography by Luis Armando Arteaga, lensing his first narrative feature, and what looks to be a fascinating performance from Coroy.
We said in our review: “Yet Bustamante, who grew up in the Kaqchikel region, clearly sympathises with the people’s sincere ways of life. But this courageously feminist film also attacks its simplistic, reductive vision of women’s life by showing...
We said in our review: “Yet Bustamante, who grew up in the Kaqchikel region, clearly sympathises with the people’s sincere ways of life. But this courageously feminist film also attacks its simplistic, reductive vision of women’s life by showing...
- 8/12/2016
- by Mike Mazzanti
- The Film Stage
It's a well-known fact that Iberoamerican cinema, which includes Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese productions, has had a prominent presence at the most important international film festivals for several years now and several films have been recognized at some of the most important film awards around the world. Colombia's "Embrace of the Serpent" earning the country's first-ever Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category and Argentina's "Wild Tales" taking home the 2016 BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in English Language are juts two examples of recent victories.
Acknowledging the need for a unified industry in the region and a platform for the Iberoamerican industry to honor and support its own productions, the Premios Platino of Iberoamerican Cinema were born three years ago. Each year the organizing committee selects a diverse group of nominees and invites members of the industry across the American continent and the Iberian peninsula to vote in order to select the winners. The ceremony takes place in a different country every year as a way to include all of the varied industries in the process and execution of the event.
This morning, after considering more than 150 films from a pool of over 800 theatrically releases productions, the final nominees were announced by a group of talented actors, including legendary Mexican-American thespian Edward James Olmos, and filmmakers led by CNN en Español's journalist Juan Carlos Arciniegas. Guatemala's Berlin-winning gem "Ixcanul" received 8 nominations, just as Colombia's Oscar-nominated "Embrace of the Serpent" did. These two gorgeously executed works center on indigenous stories and highlight the rich cultural heritage of Latin America. It's a pleasant surprise to see these two fantastic films get the most love.
Chile's "The Club" and Argentina's "The Clan," films by the two most prolific Pablos working in South America, Pablo Larrain and Pablo Trapero, received 6 nominations each. Larrain's dark tale about Catholic priests with questionable pasts was also nominated this year for a Golden Globe in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Perhaps one of the most surprising, yet well-deserved nominations, was the inclusion of Alonso Ruizpalacios among the Best Director nominees for his brilliant debut "Güeros."
Two films distributed by Pantelion received nomations: "600 Miles" and "Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos." Oscilloscope earned 10 mentions with properties "Ma Ma" and "Embrace of the Serpent." Kino Lorber's "Ixcanul, ""Güeros," and "The Pearl Button" also earned the art house distributor 10 nominations.
Regarding the quality of the films being produced in Iberoamerica Egeda's Elvi Cano said, “This has been an exceptional year for Iberoamerican Cinema, with 826 qualifying releases. Iberoamerican Cinema is alive, growing and stronger then ever.” Renowned journalist and host Juan Carlos Arciniegas added," These awards are starting a revolution and it's my dream, as an ambassador for Premios Platino, that these magnificent films that got nominated today to be seen by all our Iberoamerican audiences. I can't be more proud of what our filmmakers are doing today and if the public don't get to enjoy them, we won't be doing our job"
The 3rd Annual Premios Platino of Iberoamerican Cinema will take place on July 24th in Punta del Este, Uruguay
Here is the full list of nominees:
Premio Platino for Best Iberoamerican Picture
-"Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente), by Ciro Guerra (Ciudad Lunar Producciones, Caracol Cine, Dago García Producciones, Nortesur Producciones S.A., Mc Producciones, Buffalo Films) (Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina).
-"The Clan" (El clan), by Pablo Trapero (Kramer & Sigman Films, Matanza Cine S.R.L., El Deseo, P.C., S.A.) (Argentina, Spain).
-"The Club" (El club), by Pablo Larraín (Fabula Producciones) (Chile).
-"Ixcanul," by Jayro Bustamante (La Casa de Producción, Tu vas voir Productions) (Guatemala).
-"Truman," by Cesc Gay (Imposible Films S.L., Truman Film A.I.E., Bd Cine S.R.L) (Spain, Argentina).
Premio Platino for Best Director
-Alonso Ruizpalacios, for "Güeros."
-Cesc Gay, for "Truman."
-Ciro Guerra, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
Pablo Larraín, for "The Club" (El club).
Pablo Trapero, for "The Clan" (El clan).
Premio Platino for Best Actor
-Alfredo Castro, for "The Club" (El club).
-Damián Alcázar, for "Magallanes."
-Guillermo Francella, for "The Clan" (El clan).
-Javier Cámara, for "Truman."
-Ricardo Darín, for "Truman."
Premio Platino for Best Actress
-Antonia Zegers, for "The Club" (El club).
-Dolores Fonzi, for "Paulina."
-Elena Anaya, for "The Memory of Water" (La memoria del agua).
-Inma Cuesta, for "The Bride" (La novia).
-Penélope Cruz, for "Ma Ma."
Premio Platino for Best Original Score
-Alberto Iglesias, for "Ma Ma."
-Federico Jusid, for "Magallanes."
-Lucas Vidal, for "Nobody Wants the Night" (Nadie quiere la noche).
-Nascuy Linares, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Pascual Reyes, for "Ixcanul."
Premio Platino for Best Animated Feature Film
-"Capture the Flag" (Atrapa la bandera), by Enrique Gato (Telecinco Cinema S.A., Los Rockets La Película A.I.E., Telefónica Studios S.L.U., 4 Cats Pictures S.L., Ikiru Films S.L., Lightbox Animation Studios S.L.) (Spain).
-"Top Cat Begins" (Don Gato 2: El inicio de la pandilla), by Andrés Couturier (Anima Estudios) (Mexico).
-"El Americano", by Ricardo Arnaiz, Mike Kunkel (Olmos Productions, Phil Roman Entertainment, Animex) (Mexico).
-"Amila's Secret" (El secreto de Amila), by Gorka Vázquez (Baleuko, S.L., Talape Animazioa, Draftoon Animation) (Spain, Argentina).
-"Huevos: Little Rooster's Egg-Cellent Adventure" (Un gallo con muchos huevos), by Gabriel Riva Palacio Alatriste, Rodolfo Riva Palacio Alatriste (Huevocartoon Producciones) (Mexico).
Premio Platino for Best Documentary Feature Film
-"Beyond My Grandfather Allende" (Allende mi abuelo Allende), by Marcia Tambutti Allende (Errante Producciones Ltda, Martfilms) (Chile, Mexico).
-"New Girls 24 Hours" (Chicas nuevas 24 horas), by Mabel Lozano (Mafalda Entertainment, S.L., Aleph Media S.A., Puatarará Films, Hangar Films, Arte Vital) (Spain, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, Peru).
-"The Pearl Button" (El botón de nácar), by Patricio Guzmán (Atacama Productions, Valdivia Film, France 3 Cinema, Mediaproduccion, S.L.) (Chile, Spain).
-"Tea Time" (La once), by Maite Alberdi (Micromundo Producciones) (Chile).
-"The Propaganda Game," by Álvaro Longoria (Morena Films S. L.) (Spain).
Premio Platino for Best Screenplay
-Cesc Gay, Tomás Aragay, for "Truman."
-Ciro Guerra, Jacques Toulemonde, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Jayro Bustamante, for "Ixcanul."
-Pablo Larraín, Guillermo Calderón, Daniel Villalobos; for "The Club" (El club).
-Salvador del Solar, for "Magallanes."
Premio Platino for Best Iberoamerican Debut Feature Film
-"600 Miles" (600 Millas), by Gabriel Ripstein (Lucia Films) (Mexico).
- "Retribution" (El desconocido), by Dani de la Torre (Atresmedia Cine S. L., Vaca Films Studio, S.L.) (Spain).
-"The Boss, Anatomy of a Crime" (El patrón: radiografía de un crimen), by Sebastián Schindel (Magoya Films S.A., Estrella Films) (Argentina, Venezuela).
-"Ixcanul," by Jayro Bustamante (La Casa de Producción, Tu vas voir Productions) (Guatemala).
-"Magallanes," by Salvador del Solar (Péndulo Films, Tondero Producciones, Cepa Audiovisual S.R.L., Proyectil, Cinemara, Nephilim Producciones, S.L.) (Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Spain).
Premio Platino for Best Film Editing
-César Díaz, for "Ixcanul."
-Eric Williams, for "Magallanes."
-Etienne Boussac, Cristina Gallego, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Jorge Coira, for "Retribution" (El desconocido).
-Pablo Trapero, Alejandro Carrillo Penovi, for "The Clan" (El clan).
Premio Platino for Best Art Direction
-Angélica Perea, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Bruno Duarte, Artur Pinheiro, for "Arabian Nights: Vol.2 - The Desolate One" (As mil e uma noites: Volume 2, O desolado).
-Jesús Bosqued Maté, Pilar Quintana, for "The Bride" (La novia).
-Pilar Peredo, for "Ixcanul."
-Sebastián Orgambide, for "The Clan" (El clan).
Premio Platino for Best Cinematography
-Arnaldo Rodríguez, for "The Memory of Water" (La memoria del agua).
-David Gallego, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Luis Armando Arteaga, for "Ixcanul."
-Miguel Ángel Amoedo, for "The Bride" (La novia).
-Sergio Armstrong, for "The Club" (El club).
Premio Platino for Best Sound Direction
-Carlos García, Marco Salavarría, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-David Machado, Jaime Fernández, Nacho Arenas, for "Retribution" (El desconocido).
-Eduardo Cáceres, Julien Cloquet, for "Ixcanul."
-Federico Esquerro, Santiago Fumagalli, Edson Secco, for "Paulina."
-Vicente D’Elía, Leandro de Loredo, for "The Clan" (El clan).
Acknowledging the need for a unified industry in the region and a platform for the Iberoamerican industry to honor and support its own productions, the Premios Platino of Iberoamerican Cinema were born three years ago. Each year the organizing committee selects a diverse group of nominees and invites members of the industry across the American continent and the Iberian peninsula to vote in order to select the winners. The ceremony takes place in a different country every year as a way to include all of the varied industries in the process and execution of the event.
This morning, after considering more than 150 films from a pool of over 800 theatrically releases productions, the final nominees were announced by a group of talented actors, including legendary Mexican-American thespian Edward James Olmos, and filmmakers led by CNN en Español's journalist Juan Carlos Arciniegas. Guatemala's Berlin-winning gem "Ixcanul" received 8 nominations, just as Colombia's Oscar-nominated "Embrace of the Serpent" did. These two gorgeously executed works center on indigenous stories and highlight the rich cultural heritage of Latin America. It's a pleasant surprise to see these two fantastic films get the most love.
Chile's "The Club" and Argentina's "The Clan," films by the two most prolific Pablos working in South America, Pablo Larrain and Pablo Trapero, received 6 nominations each. Larrain's dark tale about Catholic priests with questionable pasts was also nominated this year for a Golden Globe in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Perhaps one of the most surprising, yet well-deserved nominations, was the inclusion of Alonso Ruizpalacios among the Best Director nominees for his brilliant debut "Güeros."
Two films distributed by Pantelion received nomations: "600 Miles" and "Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos." Oscilloscope earned 10 mentions with properties "Ma Ma" and "Embrace of the Serpent." Kino Lorber's "Ixcanul, ""Güeros," and "The Pearl Button" also earned the art house distributor 10 nominations.
Regarding the quality of the films being produced in Iberoamerica Egeda's Elvi Cano said, “This has been an exceptional year for Iberoamerican Cinema, with 826 qualifying releases. Iberoamerican Cinema is alive, growing and stronger then ever.” Renowned journalist and host Juan Carlos Arciniegas added," These awards are starting a revolution and it's my dream, as an ambassador for Premios Platino, that these magnificent films that got nominated today to be seen by all our Iberoamerican audiences. I can't be more proud of what our filmmakers are doing today and if the public don't get to enjoy them, we won't be doing our job"
The 3rd Annual Premios Platino of Iberoamerican Cinema will take place on July 24th in Punta del Este, Uruguay
Here is the full list of nominees:
Premio Platino for Best Iberoamerican Picture
-"Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente), by Ciro Guerra (Ciudad Lunar Producciones, Caracol Cine, Dago García Producciones, Nortesur Producciones S.A., Mc Producciones, Buffalo Films) (Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina).
-"The Clan" (El clan), by Pablo Trapero (Kramer & Sigman Films, Matanza Cine S.R.L., El Deseo, P.C., S.A.) (Argentina, Spain).
-"The Club" (El club), by Pablo Larraín (Fabula Producciones) (Chile).
-"Ixcanul," by Jayro Bustamante (La Casa de Producción, Tu vas voir Productions) (Guatemala).
-"Truman," by Cesc Gay (Imposible Films S.L., Truman Film A.I.E., Bd Cine S.R.L) (Spain, Argentina).
Premio Platino for Best Director
-Alonso Ruizpalacios, for "Güeros."
-Cesc Gay, for "Truman."
-Ciro Guerra, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
Pablo Larraín, for "The Club" (El club).
Pablo Trapero, for "The Clan" (El clan).
Premio Platino for Best Actor
-Alfredo Castro, for "The Club" (El club).
-Damián Alcázar, for "Magallanes."
-Guillermo Francella, for "The Clan" (El clan).
-Javier Cámara, for "Truman."
-Ricardo Darín, for "Truman."
Premio Platino for Best Actress
-Antonia Zegers, for "The Club" (El club).
-Dolores Fonzi, for "Paulina."
-Elena Anaya, for "The Memory of Water" (La memoria del agua).
-Inma Cuesta, for "The Bride" (La novia).
-Penélope Cruz, for "Ma Ma."
Premio Platino for Best Original Score
-Alberto Iglesias, for "Ma Ma."
-Federico Jusid, for "Magallanes."
-Lucas Vidal, for "Nobody Wants the Night" (Nadie quiere la noche).
-Nascuy Linares, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Pascual Reyes, for "Ixcanul."
Premio Platino for Best Animated Feature Film
-"Capture the Flag" (Atrapa la bandera), by Enrique Gato (Telecinco Cinema S.A., Los Rockets La Película A.I.E., Telefónica Studios S.L.U., 4 Cats Pictures S.L., Ikiru Films S.L., Lightbox Animation Studios S.L.) (Spain).
-"Top Cat Begins" (Don Gato 2: El inicio de la pandilla), by Andrés Couturier (Anima Estudios) (Mexico).
-"El Americano", by Ricardo Arnaiz, Mike Kunkel (Olmos Productions, Phil Roman Entertainment, Animex) (Mexico).
-"Amila's Secret" (El secreto de Amila), by Gorka Vázquez (Baleuko, S.L., Talape Animazioa, Draftoon Animation) (Spain, Argentina).
-"Huevos: Little Rooster's Egg-Cellent Adventure" (Un gallo con muchos huevos), by Gabriel Riva Palacio Alatriste, Rodolfo Riva Palacio Alatriste (Huevocartoon Producciones) (Mexico).
Premio Platino for Best Documentary Feature Film
-"Beyond My Grandfather Allende" (Allende mi abuelo Allende), by Marcia Tambutti Allende (Errante Producciones Ltda, Martfilms) (Chile, Mexico).
-"New Girls 24 Hours" (Chicas nuevas 24 horas), by Mabel Lozano (Mafalda Entertainment, S.L., Aleph Media S.A., Puatarará Films, Hangar Films, Arte Vital) (Spain, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, Peru).
-"The Pearl Button" (El botón de nácar), by Patricio Guzmán (Atacama Productions, Valdivia Film, France 3 Cinema, Mediaproduccion, S.L.) (Chile, Spain).
-"Tea Time" (La once), by Maite Alberdi (Micromundo Producciones) (Chile).
-"The Propaganda Game," by Álvaro Longoria (Morena Films S. L.) (Spain).
Premio Platino for Best Screenplay
-Cesc Gay, Tomás Aragay, for "Truman."
-Ciro Guerra, Jacques Toulemonde, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Jayro Bustamante, for "Ixcanul."
-Pablo Larraín, Guillermo Calderón, Daniel Villalobos; for "The Club" (El club).
-Salvador del Solar, for "Magallanes."
Premio Platino for Best Iberoamerican Debut Feature Film
-"600 Miles" (600 Millas), by Gabriel Ripstein (Lucia Films) (Mexico).
- "Retribution" (El desconocido), by Dani de la Torre (Atresmedia Cine S. L., Vaca Films Studio, S.L.) (Spain).
-"The Boss, Anatomy of a Crime" (El patrón: radiografía de un crimen), by Sebastián Schindel (Magoya Films S.A., Estrella Films) (Argentina, Venezuela).
-"Ixcanul," by Jayro Bustamante (La Casa de Producción, Tu vas voir Productions) (Guatemala).
-"Magallanes," by Salvador del Solar (Péndulo Films, Tondero Producciones, Cepa Audiovisual S.R.L., Proyectil, Cinemara, Nephilim Producciones, S.L.) (Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Spain).
Premio Platino for Best Film Editing
-César Díaz, for "Ixcanul."
-Eric Williams, for "Magallanes."
-Etienne Boussac, Cristina Gallego, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Jorge Coira, for "Retribution" (El desconocido).
-Pablo Trapero, Alejandro Carrillo Penovi, for "The Clan" (El clan).
Premio Platino for Best Art Direction
-Angélica Perea, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Bruno Duarte, Artur Pinheiro, for "Arabian Nights: Vol.2 - The Desolate One" (As mil e uma noites: Volume 2, O desolado).
-Jesús Bosqued Maté, Pilar Quintana, for "The Bride" (La novia).
-Pilar Peredo, for "Ixcanul."
-Sebastián Orgambide, for "The Clan" (El clan).
Premio Platino for Best Cinematography
-Arnaldo Rodríguez, for "The Memory of Water" (La memoria del agua).
-David Gallego, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-Luis Armando Arteaga, for "Ixcanul."
-Miguel Ángel Amoedo, for "The Bride" (La novia).
-Sergio Armstrong, for "The Club" (El club).
Premio Platino for Best Sound Direction
-Carlos García, Marco Salavarría, for "Embrace of the Serpent" (El abrazo de la serpiente).
-David Machado, Jaime Fernández, Nacho Arenas, for "Retribution" (El desconocido).
-Eduardo Cáceres, Julien Cloquet, for "Ixcanul."
-Federico Esquerro, Santiago Fumagalli, Edson Secco, for "Paulina."
-Vicente D’Elía, Leandro de Loredo, for "The Clan" (El clan).
- 5/27/2016
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
"Ixcanul" is Guatemala's Official Submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 88th Academy Awards. Isa: Film Factory Entertainment. U.S. Distributor: Kino Lorber
Ingrained millenary practices and forbidding modern concerns unfold simultaneously against the backdrop of dark volcanic stone, colorful attires, rural duties, and perpetual mysticism, in a film that’s as aesthetically exquisite as it’s gruelingly bold in its quest to be fueled by unrestrained reality. Jayro Bustamante’s “Ixcanul” is an ethereal masterpiece whose breathtaking beauty is layered with sociopolitical undertones while always honoring the indigenous people at its center and, more specifically, its women's unwavering and restrained strength waiting to be unleashed.
This profoundly affecting story follows Maria (María Mercedes Coroy), a Kaqchikel Mayan young woman, who lives with her parents near in the outskirts of a volcano near a coffee plantation. This land, its scent, its colors, and its people are all she’s ever known and all she’s ever wanted until now. When an arranged marriage threatens to put an end to her apparent freedom, Maria considers the possibility of venturing far from home and seeing what’s beyond the mountains, but her naïve eagerness to escape will place her in the crossfire between romantic betrayal, dangerous rituals, and the unwelcoming urban world.
Bustamante juxtaposes Maria’s unnerving coming of age story with her mother Juana’s (María Telón) efforts to salvage the family’s future by abiding by tradition. Within these two parallel experiences there is an urgency to bring attention to the vulnerability of Guatemala’s Mayan population who are rarely given a voice.“Ixcanul” is a fierce artistic triumph coated with complexity, subtle poetry, and a delicate ability for capturing its characters’ introspective dilemmas through its imagery. Such showcase of attuned sensibilities is expected from a seasoned auteur at the peak of his creative powers, but Jayro Bustamante has accomplished just that with his astonishing debut feature. No wonder “Ixcanul” is Guatemala’s most acclaimed film ever and the winner of numerous international awards including the Alfred Bauer Award at the Berlin International Film festival.
We talked to Bustamante about the his relationship to the Mayan community where the film was shot, the male chauvinist societies that hinder women’s growth, his homeland’s institutionalize discrimination against indigenous people, and the incomparable visual allure of “Ixcanul.”
Kino Lorber will release "Ixcanul" in early 2016.
Carlos Aguilar: The film focuses on these two women who are every strong in distinct ways; however, they are faced with extraordinary circumstances that test that strength. How did the idea to write a story about these two connected characters come about?
Jayro Bustamante: The idea was born from a real story, the story of a real Maria. What’s really inspired in her life is the third act, the problematic situation with the baby. Based on that I started to create this fictional screenplay but always grounded on real things that I had seen in Guatemala. I grew up in that region and I asked myself, “How does one become the perfect victim?” just as Maria is in the film. That’s how I started building this story. I had two very clear themes I wanted to work on: one was loss and the other maternity. In order for the loss and that sort of prohibition to become a mother that is imposed on Maria to feel as powerful as they do in the movie, I needed to construct a kind of maternity that was beautiful, without idealizing it but highlighting it. That’s why I created the relationship between these two women. Throughout the process I always worked with the actresses as if the two characters were one. We always thought that Maria, if she had been given the chance, would have become Juana. She would have been just as strong as her. That’s how we worked on these two characters.
While Juana is the matriarch and often appears to be charge, she still lives in a male-driven society where her needs and desires are secondary to those of the men around. Was it important for you to depict the internal strength of these Mayan women while also being honest about the world they live in?
Jayro Bustamante: From the beginning my intention was to adhere to reality, except for the magical realist touches that I also wanted the film to have because they were very important. Magical realism doesn’t work if the real reality doesn’t exist. There is a great contradiction in male chauvinist societies, and that is that they are usually composed of matriarchal groups. A woman reigns but she always reigns in a small space that the man left for her. She reigns when the man needs someone to be in charge of things that he doesn’t want to take care of. For me that matriarchy is till is part of this male chauvinism or "machismo" and that matriarchy continues to feed it. If I’m against male chauvinism, I should also be against matriarchy because both extremes are bad and one is derived from the other.
What I really wanted to demonstrate was that there is a waste of feminine energy that happens in male chauvinist societies.To get from point A to point B, a woman has to embark on an incredible journey through everything that’s in between these two points and have a great strategy to be able to get there. This journey would be so much easier if we would let her take those steps and then with her own strength she can get wherever she wants to go. I wanted to talk about that strength and that’s why there is that parallel relationship between Maria and the volcano. There is something symbolic about it. For me, Mayan women in Guatemala today are like that volcano that rumbles and resounds but hasn’t yet erupted. Real change will happen when these women erupt and release what they have inside. That’s the metaphor we wanted to convey, the connection between these women and the volcano.
One of the greatest achievements of the film is that it refrains from observing the characters from an ethnographic perspective or with an air of exoticism. These are people. Yes, people with different traditions and experiences from what many consider normal, but they are still as human as anybody else.
Jayro Bustamante: Definitely. I never had that temptation or that perspective because I grew up there, so for me there is no difference between us. I wouldn’t do it with any other culture. That’s something I can’t understand, to think there are people that one can observe like if they were in a zoo. I don’t think that’s right. Rich cultural differences show us the diversity that exists in the world, but if you explore any of these differences you’ll see that we all have the same human feelings. That’s what allowed me to make a story that was very local but that at the same time could have certain international repercussion. I wrote a film about a woman whose problems take us into the problems of a family and that in turn takes us into the larger social problems. That’s what we wanted to do from the beginnings. That can’t be done if the feelings that belong to the universal language are not present.
Indigenous languages are rarely used in modern cinema and because of this indigenous people have in a sense become both faceless and voiceless. How crucial was it for you to make the film in the Mayan language?
Jayro Bustamante: It was very important. Perhaps there is a bit of melancholy because as I said I grew up there. I had a nanny that taught me a lot of things, a lot of traditional stories, and who also taught me that language when I was a young child. Maybe this melancholy is there, but above all this, language is the clearest example to demonstrate how a large portion of the country lives without the tools to grow and evolve in its own country. They are foreigners in their own country, but they are the majority. Today statistics say that these people represent only 40% of the Guatemalan population, but that’s a lie. Discrimination is so strong that if you are Mayan and during the census or on a survey they ask you, “Are you Mayan?” you prefer to say that you are mestizo or mixed because you are ashamed to say who you really are. The social fracture is so big that in Guatemala the worse insult you can tell somebody is calling him or her an “Indian.”
Something similar happens in Mexico, where I'm from. People tend to associate indigenous languages, features, or traditions with negative ideas or as something that's less sophisticated or worthy, which is terrible.
Jayro Bustamante: When you think about it, if the worse insult is to be who you are, even if you are the majority in a country, it means that the majority of the country has a terrible complex regarding their identity. If you are trying to improve yourself or overcome this circumstances, these ideas make very complicated emotionally. There are many themes that we touch on in the film that are derived from discrimination. When I travel abroad I get asked a lot, “Why does Pepe want to go to the Us?” Maybe you and I can understand why this young man wants to leave. The reason why he wants to leave is obvious to those of us who are from countries like Mexico and Guatemala. He earns one dollar a day in Guatemala and in the U.S. he could earn, let’s say, $15 an hour. It’s true that in the U.S. he could be discriminated for being Latino, but he is already being discriminated in Guatemala, his own country, because his Mayan. He has a lot more to win than to lose by leaving. That’s very sad.
Tell me about the process of finding your actors and how challenging this was. You evidently needed people who were Mayan and who spoke the language, but also that could pull off the intricate performances the film required.
Jayro Bustamante: That was the most beautiful part of the process, to work with the actors. I started hosting workshops, more regarding social issues, in the place were I grew up. I grew up in the outskirts of the Atitlán Lake in the highlands, which is a volcanic lake. It’s about two hours away from the location where we were going to shoot. I was accompanied by a social worker. The idea was to open spaces to discuss the problems facing the Mayan community so that the social worker could hear their concerns and follow up. This would help me enrich the screenplay and find the actresses there.
In a way this also reflected the reality of the country, although there were many women that were interested in working with me, there were also many of them that didn’t want to be part of the project. I thought all of them would want to, but I was wrong, a lot of them didn’t. Those that I wanted to work with and that wanted to work with me had another problem. Their husbands, their brother, their sons, or any other male in charge wouldn’t give them permissions to participate. They couldn’t come be part of the project because they had to stay home to serve them.
While this was happening and we were trying to figure things out, I met Maria Telón, who plays Juana. She is part of a street theater group. It’s a militant theater group that advocates for indigenous rights and women rights. They were putting on a play at that time, and I started following her performances from town to town. When we finally got to her community, I discovered that this community is very prosperous and very curious about the arts. I decided to stay there to do the casting. We held auditions at the local market. We set up our own stand among fruits and vegetable stands and we put up a sign that said, “Casting.” We had a camera and a notepad. Nobody came.
The next day we change the sign to, “Help Wanted,” and the entire town came. Thanks to that we were able to meet everyone in town and that’s where we cast the actors. We worked with them for threes months before filming the first scene. It was a very enriching process because besides the fact that they were Kaqchikel Mayans they had nothing in common with the characters. They live in a very prosperous society with all the basic services. Maria Mercedes is a student and Maria Telón is an actress and a saleswoman. She has a very different life form the character of the mother. Manuel Antún, the man who played Maria’s father, is a dentist, and Marvin Coroy, the guy who plays El Pepe, is a poet. We really did a lot of work to characterize this family so they could really look like a family and like they live in this very different situation.
Once you had cast them, what was your approach to eliciting the emotions you wanted from the actors. María Mercedes Coroy's performance in particular is very quiet but marvelously moving.
Jayro Bustamante: We didn’t have a particular technique. We worked a lot on trusting one another. With Maria Mercedes we worked on her confidence as a woman. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a confident woman, but we talked a lot about the strength that she had within herself. She was worried about playing a character that might falsely seem passive. It’s not that the character is passive, but on paper it might seem that way because everything is internalized. I believe this is one of the hardest types of characters to bring to life. We also worked on the power of her gaze. She allowed me to explore her personal life and her past in order to find in her own experiences emotions she could use while we were shooting. One week we decided to kiss tress. We went to a forest and we decided to kiss trees. She started kissing tress on one side of the forest and I did it in the other. In the end we ended up kissing the same one [Laughs]. It was about earning each other trust and losing all shame.
Visually the film is absolutely breathtaking. There is the natural beauty of the locations and a very evocative atmosphere throughout the entire film. How did you and your Dp, Luis Armando Arteaga, approach to the cinematography and minimalist aesthetic of the story, which is definitely a fantastic element of "Ixcanul"?
Jayro Bustamante: We’ve known each other for along time. We worked together on my last short film and we have developed other projects together. He is someone who has a vision of cinema that goes beyond that of a Dp. We did something very interesting, which was to go to a festival that’s sort of like the Cannes Film Festival for short films. It’s called Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival. We were there for a week watching all the short films. Our interest was to watch as many as possible because filmmakers are more daring when making short films. There are new technologies that they are willing to try on short films and there is less financial risk. You can watch a lot of them in a short period of time. A big part of our job was watching these short films.
After that we talked a lot about the trap that this location could be because it’s a really beautiful location. You can drop your camera by accident and the photo that’s taken is already a postcard. Of course, I’m exaggerating but it’s really that beautiful. We talked about finding that postcard-like image and getting as far away from it as possible. We wanted to stay within the characters’ intimacy. We both really wanted to shoot it on 16mm, and we couldn’t because of financial constraints, so we shot it on a digital camera. Since we shot on digital, we did a lot of work to create that grainy quality that film gives you. We used the volcano’s dust and a lot of smoke. We had someone who would create smoke for every scene. Every single scene you see in the film had smoke, in varying densities, but they all had smoke. Then we were able to do the post-production in France in one of the best studios, which was amazing.
There is a certain mysticism to the story that we see through several rituals and this community's connection to nature, and the volcano in particular. Tell me about including these otherworldly beliefs and spiritual offerings in the narrative. Why did you feel they were an important characteristic of this society?
Jayro Bustamante: All of these elements are things that I’ve seen myself or that still exist. In terms of the mysticism, for me, instead of trying to tell a spiritual story I wanted to tell a purely religious story. There is a Mayan religion today that’s a mix between Catholicism and the Mayan beliefs that remained after the Spanish empire fell. My characters live in a grave situation, one in which the only thing they do is try resolve their multiple problems. That’s why whenever a new problem arrives they act in such a tolerant manner, because they can’t add fuel to the fire. What they have to do is put it out. When you are in situations like these, normally human beings have the tendency to seek answers and hope in something bigger than them. If they were a Catholic family I would have focused on the Catholic religion. I wanted to also talk about the problem with religions. Religions are dogmas and rules represented by a leader that could lead you into the wrong path. This was the message. It was more of a religious message than a spiritual or Mayan message.
Regarding the rituals you see in the film, they are all based on rituals that are still being practiced today. Even us, before shooting we would lit a sacred fire to ask the volcano for permission. When we shot in the coffee plantation we also had a sacred fire there. It’s a very nice thing because you lit a fire and the ceremony lasts till the fire extinguishes by itself. It’s the fire that tells you when the ceremony is over. In the meantime you are sharing energy with the people around you. You tell the earth what you are going to be doing there. It’s about communicating and about the energy flow. When the fire is out you end up way too relaxed, so we started substituting the sacred fires for the yoga exercises. [Laughs]. It’s very interesting and it’s something that’s still done all the time.
In the final act you take your characters out of their community and expose them to urban Guatemala. In that moment these two worlds seem to clash and how little their know about each other.
Jayro Bustamante: The film was constructed in crescendo from the beginning. I was lucky enough to conceive the ending very early on in the process and because of this I started working backwards towards the beginning of the story. Instead of wanting to say, “Oh poor indigenous people” or “Wow these westerners are terrible,” what I wanted to talk about was the lack of social tools they have and how in this country a large segment of the population is left without basic services. Well, in Guatemala today even people who have all the tools and resources can still be left without the basic services because politicians stole all the money and nothing is working. But for indigenous people things are even worse. They are even lower in the list of the government’s priorities. That was the intention behind taking the characters out of their environment and into the city.
Has the film started a conversation or a dialogue regarding about discrimination and other issues currently affecting this segment of the population and Guatemala in general?
Jayro Bustamante: Yes, I’m really amazed about it. When I started speaking to the press in Guatemala about the film, I said that Guatemalans needed to learn how to watch films because it appeared to me that people were unable to analyze films. When “Ixcanul” opened in movie theaters it became a small success considering that it’s an art house film. We were in theaters for 7 weeks, which was great. After that, I found a lot reviews and articles about the film written by Guatemalans. These were profound analyzes and very well written.
Some were very self-critical regarding the country’s situation. I realized that I was wrong, Guatemalans are able to do these analyzes, but they get to see very few films that warrant it. You are not going to write a profound analysis about “Fast and Furious,” there is not much to analyze there. You watch it and you talk about it candidly, but you don’t spend much time thinking about an American blockbuster. That was very surprising and very gratifying for me, to see that people in Guatemala wrote criticism and self-analyze the country through the film. Soon after the film’s premier one of the most important newspapers in Guatemala published an article entitled, Ixcanul is a Slap on Guatemala’s Face. The journalist wrote about the country’s current social situation in relation to the film.
When you are in another country does it surprise you that perhaps your film is the first contact people abroad have with Guatemala as a country and even more so with its cinema? "Ixcanul" is by far the most talked about and the most internationally acclaimed Guatemalan film ever.
Jayro Bustamante: No, it doesn’t surprise me that we are not a very well known country or that we are country only known because of the difficult political situations we are going through. It doesn’t surprise me because we as a country haven’t done anything for this to be different. Everything we’ve done prompted people outside to see us just the way they see us. It’s what we deserve in a sense. We are also a very small country. When it comes to tourism we are very interesting country, but we are very small country that has been in an arm conflict for so long that obviously tourists don’t come. Then there are all the problems with the gangs, cartels, kidnappings, and all the other bad things you can think of.
It’s understandable that we are not well known. At first I believed that the point of entry could be the Mayan civilization because I thought that would be well known abroad, and I’ve realized that not so much. There is still a lot to teach and share about Guatemala with the world, which is good. Something that I still find especially surprising is this idea that the Mayans disappeared or vanished. It’s crazy to me that people still believe that, but I can understand why. It’s very interesting to me that people around world, even in places as far as Japan, connect with the emotions that the film exudes. That’s the nicest compliment. I’ve also had people in other countries tell me, “You are the firs Guatemalan I’ve ever seen.” I tell them, “Touch me! I’m real” [Laughs].
Kino Lorber will release "Ixcanul" in early 2016.
Ingrained millenary practices and forbidding modern concerns unfold simultaneously against the backdrop of dark volcanic stone, colorful attires, rural duties, and perpetual mysticism, in a film that’s as aesthetically exquisite as it’s gruelingly bold in its quest to be fueled by unrestrained reality. Jayro Bustamante’s “Ixcanul” is an ethereal masterpiece whose breathtaking beauty is layered with sociopolitical undertones while always honoring the indigenous people at its center and, more specifically, its women's unwavering and restrained strength waiting to be unleashed.
This profoundly affecting story follows Maria (María Mercedes Coroy), a Kaqchikel Mayan young woman, who lives with her parents near in the outskirts of a volcano near a coffee plantation. This land, its scent, its colors, and its people are all she’s ever known and all she’s ever wanted until now. When an arranged marriage threatens to put an end to her apparent freedom, Maria considers the possibility of venturing far from home and seeing what’s beyond the mountains, but her naïve eagerness to escape will place her in the crossfire between romantic betrayal, dangerous rituals, and the unwelcoming urban world.
Bustamante juxtaposes Maria’s unnerving coming of age story with her mother Juana’s (María Telón) efforts to salvage the family’s future by abiding by tradition. Within these two parallel experiences there is an urgency to bring attention to the vulnerability of Guatemala’s Mayan population who are rarely given a voice.“Ixcanul” is a fierce artistic triumph coated with complexity, subtle poetry, and a delicate ability for capturing its characters’ introspective dilemmas through its imagery. Such showcase of attuned sensibilities is expected from a seasoned auteur at the peak of his creative powers, but Jayro Bustamante has accomplished just that with his astonishing debut feature. No wonder “Ixcanul” is Guatemala’s most acclaimed film ever and the winner of numerous international awards including the Alfred Bauer Award at the Berlin International Film festival.
We talked to Bustamante about the his relationship to the Mayan community where the film was shot, the male chauvinist societies that hinder women’s growth, his homeland’s institutionalize discrimination against indigenous people, and the incomparable visual allure of “Ixcanul.”
Kino Lorber will release "Ixcanul" in early 2016.
Carlos Aguilar: The film focuses on these two women who are every strong in distinct ways; however, they are faced with extraordinary circumstances that test that strength. How did the idea to write a story about these two connected characters come about?
Jayro Bustamante: The idea was born from a real story, the story of a real Maria. What’s really inspired in her life is the third act, the problematic situation with the baby. Based on that I started to create this fictional screenplay but always grounded on real things that I had seen in Guatemala. I grew up in that region and I asked myself, “How does one become the perfect victim?” just as Maria is in the film. That’s how I started building this story. I had two very clear themes I wanted to work on: one was loss and the other maternity. In order for the loss and that sort of prohibition to become a mother that is imposed on Maria to feel as powerful as they do in the movie, I needed to construct a kind of maternity that was beautiful, without idealizing it but highlighting it. That’s why I created the relationship between these two women. Throughout the process I always worked with the actresses as if the two characters were one. We always thought that Maria, if she had been given the chance, would have become Juana. She would have been just as strong as her. That’s how we worked on these two characters.
While Juana is the matriarch and often appears to be charge, she still lives in a male-driven society where her needs and desires are secondary to those of the men around. Was it important for you to depict the internal strength of these Mayan women while also being honest about the world they live in?
Jayro Bustamante: From the beginning my intention was to adhere to reality, except for the magical realist touches that I also wanted the film to have because they were very important. Magical realism doesn’t work if the real reality doesn’t exist. There is a great contradiction in male chauvinist societies, and that is that they are usually composed of matriarchal groups. A woman reigns but she always reigns in a small space that the man left for her. She reigns when the man needs someone to be in charge of things that he doesn’t want to take care of. For me that matriarchy is till is part of this male chauvinism or "machismo" and that matriarchy continues to feed it. If I’m against male chauvinism, I should also be against matriarchy because both extremes are bad and one is derived from the other.
What I really wanted to demonstrate was that there is a waste of feminine energy that happens in male chauvinist societies.To get from point A to point B, a woman has to embark on an incredible journey through everything that’s in between these two points and have a great strategy to be able to get there. This journey would be so much easier if we would let her take those steps and then with her own strength she can get wherever she wants to go. I wanted to talk about that strength and that’s why there is that parallel relationship between Maria and the volcano. There is something symbolic about it. For me, Mayan women in Guatemala today are like that volcano that rumbles and resounds but hasn’t yet erupted. Real change will happen when these women erupt and release what they have inside. That’s the metaphor we wanted to convey, the connection between these women and the volcano.
One of the greatest achievements of the film is that it refrains from observing the characters from an ethnographic perspective or with an air of exoticism. These are people. Yes, people with different traditions and experiences from what many consider normal, but they are still as human as anybody else.
Jayro Bustamante: Definitely. I never had that temptation or that perspective because I grew up there, so for me there is no difference between us. I wouldn’t do it with any other culture. That’s something I can’t understand, to think there are people that one can observe like if they were in a zoo. I don’t think that’s right. Rich cultural differences show us the diversity that exists in the world, but if you explore any of these differences you’ll see that we all have the same human feelings. That’s what allowed me to make a story that was very local but that at the same time could have certain international repercussion. I wrote a film about a woman whose problems take us into the problems of a family and that in turn takes us into the larger social problems. That’s what we wanted to do from the beginnings. That can’t be done if the feelings that belong to the universal language are not present.
Indigenous languages are rarely used in modern cinema and because of this indigenous people have in a sense become both faceless and voiceless. How crucial was it for you to make the film in the Mayan language?
Jayro Bustamante: It was very important. Perhaps there is a bit of melancholy because as I said I grew up there. I had a nanny that taught me a lot of things, a lot of traditional stories, and who also taught me that language when I was a young child. Maybe this melancholy is there, but above all this, language is the clearest example to demonstrate how a large portion of the country lives without the tools to grow and evolve in its own country. They are foreigners in their own country, but they are the majority. Today statistics say that these people represent only 40% of the Guatemalan population, but that’s a lie. Discrimination is so strong that if you are Mayan and during the census or on a survey they ask you, “Are you Mayan?” you prefer to say that you are mestizo or mixed because you are ashamed to say who you really are. The social fracture is so big that in Guatemala the worse insult you can tell somebody is calling him or her an “Indian.”
Something similar happens in Mexico, where I'm from. People tend to associate indigenous languages, features, or traditions with negative ideas or as something that's less sophisticated or worthy, which is terrible.
Jayro Bustamante: When you think about it, if the worse insult is to be who you are, even if you are the majority in a country, it means that the majority of the country has a terrible complex regarding their identity. If you are trying to improve yourself or overcome this circumstances, these ideas make very complicated emotionally. There are many themes that we touch on in the film that are derived from discrimination. When I travel abroad I get asked a lot, “Why does Pepe want to go to the Us?” Maybe you and I can understand why this young man wants to leave. The reason why he wants to leave is obvious to those of us who are from countries like Mexico and Guatemala. He earns one dollar a day in Guatemala and in the U.S. he could earn, let’s say, $15 an hour. It’s true that in the U.S. he could be discriminated for being Latino, but he is already being discriminated in Guatemala, his own country, because his Mayan. He has a lot more to win than to lose by leaving. That’s very sad.
Tell me about the process of finding your actors and how challenging this was. You evidently needed people who were Mayan and who spoke the language, but also that could pull off the intricate performances the film required.
Jayro Bustamante: That was the most beautiful part of the process, to work with the actors. I started hosting workshops, more regarding social issues, in the place were I grew up. I grew up in the outskirts of the Atitlán Lake in the highlands, which is a volcanic lake. It’s about two hours away from the location where we were going to shoot. I was accompanied by a social worker. The idea was to open spaces to discuss the problems facing the Mayan community so that the social worker could hear their concerns and follow up. This would help me enrich the screenplay and find the actresses there.
In a way this also reflected the reality of the country, although there were many women that were interested in working with me, there were also many of them that didn’t want to be part of the project. I thought all of them would want to, but I was wrong, a lot of them didn’t. Those that I wanted to work with and that wanted to work with me had another problem. Their husbands, their brother, their sons, or any other male in charge wouldn’t give them permissions to participate. They couldn’t come be part of the project because they had to stay home to serve them.
While this was happening and we were trying to figure things out, I met Maria Telón, who plays Juana. She is part of a street theater group. It’s a militant theater group that advocates for indigenous rights and women rights. They were putting on a play at that time, and I started following her performances from town to town. When we finally got to her community, I discovered that this community is very prosperous and very curious about the arts. I decided to stay there to do the casting. We held auditions at the local market. We set up our own stand among fruits and vegetable stands and we put up a sign that said, “Casting.” We had a camera and a notepad. Nobody came.
The next day we change the sign to, “Help Wanted,” and the entire town came. Thanks to that we were able to meet everyone in town and that’s where we cast the actors. We worked with them for threes months before filming the first scene. It was a very enriching process because besides the fact that they were Kaqchikel Mayans they had nothing in common with the characters. They live in a very prosperous society with all the basic services. Maria Mercedes is a student and Maria Telón is an actress and a saleswoman. She has a very different life form the character of the mother. Manuel Antún, the man who played Maria’s father, is a dentist, and Marvin Coroy, the guy who plays El Pepe, is a poet. We really did a lot of work to characterize this family so they could really look like a family and like they live in this very different situation.
Once you had cast them, what was your approach to eliciting the emotions you wanted from the actors. María Mercedes Coroy's performance in particular is very quiet but marvelously moving.
Jayro Bustamante: We didn’t have a particular technique. We worked a lot on trusting one another. With Maria Mercedes we worked on her confidence as a woman. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a confident woman, but we talked a lot about the strength that she had within herself. She was worried about playing a character that might falsely seem passive. It’s not that the character is passive, but on paper it might seem that way because everything is internalized. I believe this is one of the hardest types of characters to bring to life. We also worked on the power of her gaze. She allowed me to explore her personal life and her past in order to find in her own experiences emotions she could use while we were shooting. One week we decided to kiss tress. We went to a forest and we decided to kiss trees. She started kissing tress on one side of the forest and I did it in the other. In the end we ended up kissing the same one [Laughs]. It was about earning each other trust and losing all shame.
Visually the film is absolutely breathtaking. There is the natural beauty of the locations and a very evocative atmosphere throughout the entire film. How did you and your Dp, Luis Armando Arteaga, approach to the cinematography and minimalist aesthetic of the story, which is definitely a fantastic element of "Ixcanul"?
Jayro Bustamante: We’ve known each other for along time. We worked together on my last short film and we have developed other projects together. He is someone who has a vision of cinema that goes beyond that of a Dp. We did something very interesting, which was to go to a festival that’s sort of like the Cannes Film Festival for short films. It’s called Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival. We were there for a week watching all the short films. Our interest was to watch as many as possible because filmmakers are more daring when making short films. There are new technologies that they are willing to try on short films and there is less financial risk. You can watch a lot of them in a short period of time. A big part of our job was watching these short films.
After that we talked a lot about the trap that this location could be because it’s a really beautiful location. You can drop your camera by accident and the photo that’s taken is already a postcard. Of course, I’m exaggerating but it’s really that beautiful. We talked about finding that postcard-like image and getting as far away from it as possible. We wanted to stay within the characters’ intimacy. We both really wanted to shoot it on 16mm, and we couldn’t because of financial constraints, so we shot it on a digital camera. Since we shot on digital, we did a lot of work to create that grainy quality that film gives you. We used the volcano’s dust and a lot of smoke. We had someone who would create smoke for every scene. Every single scene you see in the film had smoke, in varying densities, but they all had smoke. Then we were able to do the post-production in France in one of the best studios, which was amazing.
There is a certain mysticism to the story that we see through several rituals and this community's connection to nature, and the volcano in particular. Tell me about including these otherworldly beliefs and spiritual offerings in the narrative. Why did you feel they were an important characteristic of this society?
Jayro Bustamante: All of these elements are things that I’ve seen myself or that still exist. In terms of the mysticism, for me, instead of trying to tell a spiritual story I wanted to tell a purely religious story. There is a Mayan religion today that’s a mix between Catholicism and the Mayan beliefs that remained after the Spanish empire fell. My characters live in a grave situation, one in which the only thing they do is try resolve their multiple problems. That’s why whenever a new problem arrives they act in such a tolerant manner, because they can’t add fuel to the fire. What they have to do is put it out. When you are in situations like these, normally human beings have the tendency to seek answers and hope in something bigger than them. If they were a Catholic family I would have focused on the Catholic religion. I wanted to also talk about the problem with religions. Religions are dogmas and rules represented by a leader that could lead you into the wrong path. This was the message. It was more of a religious message than a spiritual or Mayan message.
Regarding the rituals you see in the film, they are all based on rituals that are still being practiced today. Even us, before shooting we would lit a sacred fire to ask the volcano for permission. When we shot in the coffee plantation we also had a sacred fire there. It’s a very nice thing because you lit a fire and the ceremony lasts till the fire extinguishes by itself. It’s the fire that tells you when the ceremony is over. In the meantime you are sharing energy with the people around you. You tell the earth what you are going to be doing there. It’s about communicating and about the energy flow. When the fire is out you end up way too relaxed, so we started substituting the sacred fires for the yoga exercises. [Laughs]. It’s very interesting and it’s something that’s still done all the time.
In the final act you take your characters out of their community and expose them to urban Guatemala. In that moment these two worlds seem to clash and how little their know about each other.
Jayro Bustamante: The film was constructed in crescendo from the beginning. I was lucky enough to conceive the ending very early on in the process and because of this I started working backwards towards the beginning of the story. Instead of wanting to say, “Oh poor indigenous people” or “Wow these westerners are terrible,” what I wanted to talk about was the lack of social tools they have and how in this country a large segment of the population is left without basic services. Well, in Guatemala today even people who have all the tools and resources can still be left without the basic services because politicians stole all the money and nothing is working. But for indigenous people things are even worse. They are even lower in the list of the government’s priorities. That was the intention behind taking the characters out of their environment and into the city.
Has the film started a conversation or a dialogue regarding about discrimination and other issues currently affecting this segment of the population and Guatemala in general?
Jayro Bustamante: Yes, I’m really amazed about it. When I started speaking to the press in Guatemala about the film, I said that Guatemalans needed to learn how to watch films because it appeared to me that people were unable to analyze films. When “Ixcanul” opened in movie theaters it became a small success considering that it’s an art house film. We were in theaters for 7 weeks, which was great. After that, I found a lot reviews and articles about the film written by Guatemalans. These were profound analyzes and very well written.
Some were very self-critical regarding the country’s situation. I realized that I was wrong, Guatemalans are able to do these analyzes, but they get to see very few films that warrant it. You are not going to write a profound analysis about “Fast and Furious,” there is not much to analyze there. You watch it and you talk about it candidly, but you don’t spend much time thinking about an American blockbuster. That was very surprising and very gratifying for me, to see that people in Guatemala wrote criticism and self-analyze the country through the film. Soon after the film’s premier one of the most important newspapers in Guatemala published an article entitled, Ixcanul is a Slap on Guatemala’s Face. The journalist wrote about the country’s current social situation in relation to the film.
When you are in another country does it surprise you that perhaps your film is the first contact people abroad have with Guatemala as a country and even more so with its cinema? "Ixcanul" is by far the most talked about and the most internationally acclaimed Guatemalan film ever.
Jayro Bustamante: No, it doesn’t surprise me that we are not a very well known country or that we are country only known because of the difficult political situations we are going through. It doesn’t surprise me because we as a country haven’t done anything for this to be different. Everything we’ve done prompted people outside to see us just the way they see us. It’s what we deserve in a sense. We are also a very small country. When it comes to tourism we are very interesting country, but we are very small country that has been in an arm conflict for so long that obviously tourists don’t come. Then there are all the problems with the gangs, cartels, kidnappings, and all the other bad things you can think of.
It’s understandable that we are not well known. At first I believed that the point of entry could be the Mayan civilization because I thought that would be well known abroad, and I’ve realized that not so much. There is still a lot to teach and share about Guatemala with the world, which is good. Something that I still find especially surprising is this idea that the Mayans disappeared or vanished. It’s crazy to me that people still believe that, but I can understand why. It’s very interesting to me that people around world, even in places as far as Japan, connect with the emotions that the film exudes. That’s the nicest compliment. I’ve also had people in other countries tell me, “You are the firs Guatemalan I’ve ever seen.” I tell them, “Touch me! I’m real” [Laughs].
Kino Lorber will release "Ixcanul" in early 2016.
- 12/1/2015
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
Guatemala’s first-ever entry for the foreign language Oscar is an absorbing, beautifully-shot drama of cultural ritual and the drive of one young woman to escape a rudimentary social system. Set in a small coffee plantation village under the shadow of a giant volcano (the Ixcanul of the title), we follow Maria (Maria Mercedes Coroy), a quiet, introvert teenager who nonetheless dreams of shaping her own destiny.
Maria wants to join her on-off boyfriend Pepe (Marvin Coroy) as he contemplates a trip to the United States, “somewhere on the other side of the mountain,” he contends, where “the electricity always works.” Her family, however, has other plans as they set her up to be married to their boss Ignacio (Justo Lorenzo), the plantation foreman, a union that might rectify years of strife of having only one daughter as their offspring.
In an effort to untangle herself from the forced marriage,...
Maria wants to join her on-off boyfriend Pepe (Marvin Coroy) as he contemplates a trip to the United States, “somewhere on the other side of the mountain,” he contends, where “the electricity always works.” Her family, however, has other plans as they set her up to be married to their boss Ignacio (Justo Lorenzo), the plantation foreman, a union that might rectify years of strife of having only one daughter as their offspring.
In an effort to untangle herself from the forced marriage,...
- 10/22/2015
- by Ed Frankl
- The Film Stage
Jayro Bustamante's debut feature "Ixcanul" generates its power from an intimate observance of the quotidian. As such, its titular volcano — the translation of Ixcanul in the Mayan K'iche' dialect spoken in Guatemala — is the least volcanic thing in it. Steeped in a culture rarely observed on screen, Bustamante's film has the airs of a documentary. Its ensemble cast of local actors have zero trace of affectation in their performances. The director's original screenplay is beholden to none of the format's rules that so often shackle stories with predictability. It's as much of a striking initiation for cinematographer Luis Armando Arteaga as it is for Bustamante, for the film feels so confident with its movement, lighting, and composition. Its cast and crew may be young in terms of film experience, but "Ixcanul" is very much an old soul. On the Guatemalan highlands overseen by the active Pacaya volcano rests a coffee planation,...
- 9/21/2015
- by Nikola Grozdanovic
- The Playlist
Jayro Bustamante discusses his Guatemalan story sold by Film Factory.
Berlin competition entry Ixcanul (Volcano) charts the haunting story of a 17-year-old Mayan woman who lives on the slopes of an active volcano in Guatemala but dreams of seeing ‘the city’.
However, her status as an indigenous woman does not allow her to go out into that ‘modern world’. Later, during a pregnancy complication, this modern world will save her life, but at a price.
For 37-year old Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante his debut feature is very much a personal story.
“I grew up in a Mayan community in a village that was 80 percent Mayan, 20 percent ‘mixed’”, he says.
“My mother was a doctor. She met a woman who told her the story I tell in the film. I wrote it down at the time but had to wait a while before coming to the screenplay. It’s not always easy talking about Mayans as a ‘white...
Berlin competition entry Ixcanul (Volcano) charts the haunting story of a 17-year-old Mayan woman who lives on the slopes of an active volcano in Guatemala but dreams of seeing ‘the city’.
However, her status as an indigenous woman does not allow her to go out into that ‘modern world’. Later, during a pregnancy complication, this modern world will save her life, but at a price.
For 37-year old Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante his debut feature is very much a personal story.
“I grew up in a Mayan community in a village that was 80 percent Mayan, 20 percent ‘mixed’”, he says.
“My mother was a doctor. She met a woman who told her the story I tell in the film. I wrote it down at the time but had to wait a while before coming to the screenplay. It’s not always easy talking about Mayans as a ‘white...
- 2/7/2015
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
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