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Welcoming foreign shoots while the rest of Latin America was in Covid lockdown, Uruguay has benefited from a growing influx of international productions, with local talent and crew gaining invaluable on-set experience.

National production has increased to nearly pre-pandemic levels, 33 features in 2023, on a par with 2019, and 30 features in 2024, way up on 2016’s 11 features produced.

Uruguay’s film industry has also grown in diversity in terms of genres and co-productions. Last year also saw 32 local theatrical releases, with documentaries making up the bulk but also featuring Montelona co-produced “A Blue Bird,” the latest from “Las Acacias” director Ariel Rotter, and the 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week winner “Simon of the Mountain” by Federico Luis.

Driving growth are powerhouse companies led by Cimarrón, a Mediapro company, which provided production services to J.A. Bayona’s Oscar-nominated “Society of the Snow” and Daniel Burman’s Rose d’Or Latino winner “Yosi, the Regretful Spy.” Cimarrón,...

The 45th edition of the Cairo Film Festival concluded with the top prize, the Golden Pyramid Award, going to Bogdan Mureșanu’s “The New Year That Never Came.” The black comedy, which previously won the Horizons sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, is set in 1989 during the festive season that immediately precedes the downfall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

The Special Jury Award for best director, the Silver Pyramid, went to Russian director Natalia Nazarova for “Postmarks,” which also picked up a best actor award for Maxim Stoyanov and a special mention for the female lead, Alina Khojevanova. The other male lead award went to Lee Kang-Sheng for his performance in “Blue Sun Palace.”

The International Jury led by Danis Tanović (“No Man’s Land”) also awarded the Bronze Pyramid for best debut or second feature award to Pedro Freire’s “Malu.” The Rio-set film was inspired by his...

Bogdan Mureșanu’s The New Year That Never Came, a tragicomedy set on the brink of revolution in 1989 Romania, has won the Golden Pyramid for best film at the 45th Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff).

The international competition jury was unanimous in selecting the film, which premiered at Venice in September where it won best film in the Horizons strand as well as the Fipresci prize.

Scroll down for full list of winners

Ciff handed out an expanded set of awards at a glitzy closing cermony of this year’s edition, which marked a return for the longest-running film festival...

Three experienced Chilean film producers have launched a new collaborative production company called Maquina. The company was formed through a partnership between Augusto Matte, Úrsula Budnik, and Fernando Bascuñán. Each producer brings their own expertise and resources to the new venture.

Matte, Budnik, and Bascuñán have long wanted to work together. Maquina gives them a flexible structure to tackle complex, multi-territory projects with greater ease. As Matte explained, “Maquina allows us to be more nimble and practical.” Maquina operates as a “collaborative network” where the three production companies contribute unique strengths to development and production, according to Budnik.

The founders bring decades of experience to Maquina. Budnik has produced acclaimed films and TV shows for over 20 years. Bascuñán’s credits include Chile’s recent Oscar submission. Matte specializes in managing complex international co-productions and launching careers.

By merging their skills and networks, the producers aim to navigate the intricacies of international co-productions and evolving markets.

Aiming to optimize and streamline the development and production of films and series in the international marketplace, Maquina, a new production entity comprising three companies, has launched at the 72nd San Sebastian Festival.

Formed by three firms led by seasoned Chilean producers – Augusto Matte’s London-based Deptford Film, Úrsula Budnik’s Horamágica in Valdivia and Fernando Bascuñán’s Santiago-based Planta – Maquina has been established to leverage the combined strengths of its founding partners, all of whom are attending the prominent Spanish festival.

“We’ve always wanted to work together, Maquina provides us with a more flexible structure that allows us to be more agile and practical,” Matte told Variety, explaining: “It is conceptually inspired by the idea of machinic assemblages, which refers to a fluid and dynamic system where different elements come together to create a functional whole without a fixed center.”

Added Budnik: “This means that the structure operates...

After premieres in the Venice competition, a Toronto splash and an eventual NYFF slot, Luis Ortega‘s Kill The Jockey is among the fourteen films selected for San Sebastián’s Horizontes Latinos section (which is essentially the best film fest circuit items of the new year that come from other Latin American nations. We have Sundance Grand Jury Prize winners Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez with Sujo, Juliana Rojas’ Berlinale Encounters section fave in Cidade; Campo and Argentinean Cannes items in Most People Die On Sundays by Iair Said and Simon Of The Mountain by Federico Luis. Next section to be unveiled should be the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera line-up.…...

Sundance prize winner Sujo and the latest films by José Luis Torres Leiva and Celina Murga have joined San Sebastian’s Horizontes Latinos strand, which spotlights Latin American films that have not yet screened in Spain.

Mexican directors and producers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez won the grand jury prize in the world cinema dramatic competition at Sundance for Sujo, the story of a boy’s survival after the murder of his father, a hired killer.

It’s joined by Chilean filmmaker Torres Leiva’s When Clouds Hide The Shadow, which premiered at Jeonju Festival, and will open the strand.

Netflix Argentina executives have been promoting the upcoming slate featuring new work from Ricardo Darin, Santiago Mitre, and Juan José Campanella including series adaptations of two of the most iconic graphic novels and comic strips in Latin America.

Leading the new productions at the Made In Argentina showcase unveiled to industry members in Buenos Aires on Monday night was 27 Nights (27 Noches), Daniel Hendler’s adaptation of the family drama novel by Natalia Zito inspired by actual events.

Mitre, who wrote and directed the 2023 Oscar-nominated Argentina, 1985, will serve as producer on 27 Nights.

Campanella, the writer-director of The Secret In Their Eyes...

Buenos Aires – Mafalda, the beloved and wily six-year-old drawn into acclaim by celebrated Argentine artist Quino, will bring her socially-conscious hijinks to the screen. News of the adaptation, which will be ushered in by Oscar-winner Juan José Campanella, was announced Monday evening as Netflix unveiled their 2024 ‘Made in Argentina’ slate to a spirited crowd of industry and media professionals.

Campanella will direct, produce and showrun the project, while Gastón Gorali co-pens and acts as general producer of the Netflix Original series and Sergio Fernández boards as production director. Netflix and Campanella and Gorali’s Mundoloco CGI, the studio behind “Metegol,” the largest Latin American animated production to date, produce.

“Mafalda and her friends not only made me laugh a lot, but from time to time, they sent me to the dictionary. And each new word I learned came with the reward of a new laugh,” Campanella revealed in a July statement.

Mahdi Fleifel’s To A Land Unknown, Gábor Reisz’s Explanation for Everything, Federico Luis’ Simon Of The Mountain and Minh Quý Trương’s Viet And Nam, were the winners of the four main competitive strands of this year’s Munich International Film Festival (Miff) which closed on Saturday July 6.

The festival’s biggest award, the €100,000 CineCoPro award, provided by Fff Bayern to be invested in a future co-production, was presented to François Morisset’s company Salaud Morisset, the German co-producer of To A Land Unknown.

The first narrative feature by Palestinian filmmaker Fleifel is a refugee drama about two Palestinians stranded in Athens.

A trio of French sales houses have made a flurry of appointments ahead of the summer break and before the autumn festival season.

Núria Palenzuela Camon has joined Paris-based Indie Sales as head of festivals and will co-run marketing alongside the company’s sales executive Constance Poubelle. She is taking over for Clement Chautant who is heading to French arthouse distributor Arizona Distribution to lead on acquisitions.

Palenzuela Camon is fresh off a four-year stint as head of festivals and marketing at sales outfit Totem Films. Salomé Rizk will take over in the same position at Totem after running the festivals team for Loco Films.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, are among the films that will screen in CineMasters, the main competition of this month’s Munich International Film Festival (Miff), taking place from June 28 to July in Germany.

Fourteen films are in the running for CineMasters’ €50,000 Arri Award which is presented to the producers of the best international film. Further titles include Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught By The Tides, Rúnar Rúnarsson’s When The Light Breaks, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section last month, as well as Jaione Camborda...

Unusual in tone and content, “Simon of the Mountain” is a small, low-budget drama in which the title character tries to find his comfort zone. Unfolding in short vignettes, the Argentine feature centers on a group of nonprofessional performances: independent-minded adolescents with cognitive disabilities. The only professional actors featured on-screen play the title character and the working adults they interact with. The open-to-interpretation debut feature from prize-winning shorts helmer Federico Luis challenges viewers’ preconceptions about his characters and won’t be to every taste. But the intimate drama has definitely found fans, as indicated by its warm reception from the jury of the Cannes Critics’ Week, where it nabbed the Grand Prize last week.

Twenty-one-year-old Simon first appears ascending a small mountain during a wind storm with a group from a school for disabled youth, hiking toward a statue of Christ. Simon pals around with another older lad, Pehuén (Pehuén Pedre...

Simon has a strong twitch that drives him to shake his head, meaninglessly. He sometimes dribbles. The way he looks out at the world from under his brows, especially when people are talking to him, suggests he can’t quite keep up with what they’re saying. When he meets a group of young people from a local daycare center for the intellectually disabled, he naturally falls in with them. He befriends Pehuen Pedre (playing a version of himself) on the top of a mountain, where the group has walked and gotten into difficulties in high winds. When they all manage to get down and back on the bus, Simon gets on board with them. This is where he belongs.

Simon of the Mountain, Argentinian director Federico Luis’ moving, puzzling and wholly original debut feature, which won the top prize at Critics’ Week in Cannes, is a callback to Luis Bunuel...

Agnès Jaoui gives a bravura performance in Sophie Fillière’s last film This Life Of Mine which was awarded a Coup de Coeur prize Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Before the announcement tomorrow of all the Cannes glittering prizes from the main Competition and Un Certain Regard, including the winner of the ultimate accolade the Palme d’Or, other announcements have been arriving thick and fast.

In the Directors’ Fortnight the late screenwriter and director Sophie Fillières was honoured for her seventh and final feature This Life Of Mine featuring a bravura performance from Agnès Jaoui as middle-aged woman facing up the realities of life after 55. The film, which progresses from comedy to tragedy, was named as France’s Writers’ Guild Favourite Prize or Coup de Coeur.

Simon Of The Mountain Anne Villacèque, président of the Sacd (La société des auteurs, described it as “a daring, delicate unpredictable film.

Simon of the Mountain, the debut feature from Argentinian director Federico Luis, has won the Grand Prize at the 63rd edition of Cannes Critics’ Week.

Argentinian actor and singer/songwriter Lorenzo Ferro stars in the coming-of-age story of a young man struggling with a mental disorder. Luxbox is handling international sales on the film.

Blue Sun Palace from U.S.-Chinese filmmaker Constance Tsang won the French Touch Prize of the Jury for best first feature in the Cannes sidebar. The drama is a look at the lives of Chinese immigrants living in Queens. Charades are selling Blue Sun Palace internationally, with WME representing rights in North America.

The Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for best actor went to Ricardo Teodoro for his performance in the Queer romantic drama Baby from Brazilian director Marcelo Caetano, where Teodoro plays an outsider trying to survive in the mean streets of São Paolo.

Federico Luis’ Simon Of The Mountain won the Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize on Wednesday night (May 22).

The Argentinian first feature is a coming-of-age story about a boy with a disability wrestling through life. Luxbox is handling international sales for the film produced by Argentina’s 20/20 in coproduction with Chile’s Planta, Uruguay’s Mother Superior and Los Angeles and Mexico City-based Twelve Thirty Media.

The jury prize went to US director Constance Tsang’s first feature Blue Sun Palace about Chinese immigrants living in Queens. Charades is handling international sales and WME has North American rights to the film...

Argentinian director Federico Luis’s first film Simon of the Mountain has won the Grand Prize at the 63rd edition of Cannes Critics’ Week.

The coming-of-age tale stars rising Argentinian actor, singer and song writer Lorenzo Ferro as a young man grappling with the challenges of a mental disorder.

It is produced by Patricio Alvarez Casado at Argentinian production house 20/20 in coproduction with Fernando Bascuñan at Chilean company Planta, Ignacio Cucucovich’s Uruguayan company Mother Superior and L.A. and Mexico City based producer Carlos Rincones at Twelve Thirty Media, with Luxbox handling international sales.

In other key prizes, U.S.-Chinese filmmaker Constance Tsang’s won the French Touch Prize of the Jury for first feature Blue Sun Palace, a bittersweet chronicle of the tumultuous destiny of Chinese immigrants living in Queens.

It is produced by Eli Raskin at Field Trip Media and Tony Yang at Big Buddha Productions,...

And the winner is: “Simon of the Mountain.”

The film, directed by Federico Luis – and marking his feature debut – was awarded Cannes’ Critics Week Grand Prix.

Sold by Luxbox, the Argentina-Chile-Uruguay production stars Lorenzo “Toto” Ferro, the lead in breakout “El Angel,” as Simon, 21, a lonely only son who falls in with a group of discapacitated kids, feigning a discapacity. Thanks to their friendship he flowers, discovering love, sex and a sense of belonging.

“I am thinking not only about what it means to us, but also about what it means to the people in Argentina who, over the course of the next four years, will struggle, trying to make local films,” said Luis, accepting the award.

“At home, there are people who still think we make films no one wants to see. I hope this will change it and that Argentinian people – and then the whole world – will watch Argentinian cinema.

The Face of An(other): Luis Complicates Identity Politics

Although it’s playing quite purposefully with various ambiguities and motifs, Federico Luis’ directorial debut Simon de la montaña (Simon of the Mountain) is most successful at obscuring the usual cliches of identity exploration. Its title recalls Luis Bunuel’s religious themed 1965 short film “Simon of the Desert,” and there are some comparable allusions to temptation and forsakenness in some of the minor metaphorical moments explored. But Luis instead aims to challenge perceptions of what’s culturally acceptable in not only the crafting of an identity, but also the construction of community through an inverse scenario, i.e.,…...

Uruguay’s José Ignacio International Film Festival (Jiiff) has launched the Pfeffer del Sur Fund, a $50,000 fund dedicated to supporting Ibero-American film projects.

The Pfeffer Del Sur Fund, established by Jiiff’s primary benefactors, María and John Pfeffer, will be launched in January 2025 as part of the festival’s 15th anniversary edition. It will be awarded to one of the projects selected from the Jiiff Lab, part of the Working Jiiff industry program.

The call for projects interested in competing for the first Pfeffer fund will launch in July. Eligible projects must have at least one Uruguayan producer attached or sign on a Uruguayan producer after being selected. They should also be the first or second film from an emerging director with a budget not exceeding $1.5 million. Co-productions between multiple countries will receive special consideration to encourage international collaboration.

Further details about the inaugural year of the Pfeffer fund will be shared on Wednesday,...

Exclusive: Arizona Distribution has acquired French rights for Argentinian director Federico Luis’s first feature Simon of the Mountain ahead of its world premiere in Cannes Critics’ Week in May.

The coming-of-age tale stars rising Argentinian actor, singer and song writer Lorenzo Ferro as a young man grappling with the challenges of a mental disorder.

Cannes Critics’ Week Artistic Director Ava Cahen has described the film as a deeply human drama challenging the misperceptions around disability.

French arthouse distributor Arizona has a track record in handling independent Argentinian cinema having previously released Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, which debuted in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2023.

“Federico Luis’ first feature film is an intense, masterful work of rare power. Its discovery was an emotional explosion for us, and we can’t wait to share it with French audiences,” said Arizona Distribution CEO Bénédicte Thomas.

“We’re delighted to once again be supporting an Argentinian film,...

Paris-based Luxbox, a sales company on a multiple standout Spanish-language debuts bowed at big festivals – from “1976” to “20,000 Species of Bees,” “Clara Sola,” “Song Without a Name” and “The Heiresses” – has swooped on international sales rights to “Simon of the Mountain” (“Simon de la Montaña”), in the run-up to the Cannes Film Festival.

The anticipated first feature of Argentina’s Federico Luis, “Simon of the Mountain” was announced Monday as one of seven movies confirmed for main competition at this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week.

Co-written by Federico Luis, the film’s editor Tomás Murphy and Agustín Toscano, helmer of Directors’ Fortnight title “The Snatch Thief” who also figures in the film’s key cast, “Simon of the Mountain” stars Lorenzo “Toto” Ferro, one of Argentina’s most rated young actors after his breakout performances as Argentina’s most notorious serial killer in Cannes 2018 Un Certain Regard player “El Angel...

The Cannes Critics’ Week, the parallel film festival sidebar organized by the French film critics’ union, has unveiled its 2024 selection.

The psychological thriller Ghost Trail, the first feature from acclaimed French shorts director Jonathan Millet, will open the 2024 sidebar. Adam Bessa (star of 2022’s Un Certain Regard winner Harka) plays the lead in the manhunt drama about a man pursuing his former torturer, using only his sensory memories to guide him.

The competition lineup includes Brazilian drama Baby from director Marcelo Caetano, a portrait of a young outsider growing up in São Paulo; Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace, which looks at the lives of Chinese immigrants in Queens; and the Egyptian/French/Danish/Qatari/Saudi Arabian drama The Brink of Dreams about a group of girls from the disenfranchised Christian Copts who defy tradition and set up an all-female street theater troupe.

Baby

Other competition titles include Antoine Chevrollier’s Block Pass,...