News

Blood Window, Ventana Sur’s Latin American horror and fantasy film platform, returns to the Cannes Film Market this year with a selection of works in progress and completed films, including titles from Brazil and Mexico.

This year’s Blood Window Showcase screens Brazilian director Sabrina Greve’s film debut — still a work in progress — “The Basement of Scream Street” (“O porão da rua do grito”). The pic won Blood Window’s best work-in-progress competition at Ventana Sur last year, an honor that also granted it a world premiere at this year’s Sitges Film Festival in Spain.

“The Basement of Scream Street” centers on siblings Jonas and Rebeca, who, haunted by guilt over their parents’ death, have developed an obsessive dependency on each other as they care for their grandmother and a child trapped in the basement. Coração da Selva is handling sales for the film.

Likewise unspooling in...

Later this month our friends at Blood Window are once again headed to Cannes, the Marche du Film, with a heads up on what is coming out of Latin America this coming year.  They have five films to present to their peers on May 20th, some we have been tracking recently. They come armed with a work in progress screening of Sabrina Greve's horror drama, The Basement of Scream Street, out of Brazil. She pitched her film at the Blood Window Lab in 2019 then started screening her two years later at the market.  Then there are five films currently in post, all part of a reel that will be screened that day. It looks like our friend, Fabian Forte, whose Legions is hitting the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Huge winners roster marks close of 13th edition which ran November 29-December 3 in Buenos Aires and online.

Fernando Babuy de la Torre’s Peru-Colombia-France family drama Diogenes took the Cine+ Club Award for films in post-production as the hybrid 2021 Ventana Sur came to a close in Buenos Aires.

The award was one of many in a huge awards roster announced on Friday (December 3) that marked the end of the market’s 13th edition and included the Cine + Club Award in Copia Final for Mariano Biasin’s Sublime from Argentina, which like Diogenes means the French distributor that acquires the film...

See the LatAm horror films of tomorrow, today. Ventana Sure kicks off at the end of the month in Buenos Aires and our friends at Blood Window have been announcing their programs. Today comes word on the six films selected for the Bw Screenings.   Six works in progress will be screened for buyers, sellers and festival programmers. All six films are at the post-production stage and come to the market by way of Ecuador, Chile, Panama, Argentina and Brazil this year.    There are some of the films we have written about recently. Our friends at Del Toro Films will be screening a Wip of Nestor Sanchez's Don't Come Back Alive. We also see that Brazilian Sabrina Greve will be presenting her film, The...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Ventana Sur’s Blood Window Works in Progress sidebar, along with the event’s Screenings and project pitchings, have firmly cemented the annual event as one of the standout dates for genre cinema in Latin America and abroad. This year, six works in progress will screen as part a hybrid Ventana Sur market which will run Nov. 29 through Dec. 3.

The 2021 selection of works in progress can, in some ways, be seen as a return to form for the event. Over the past several years, the types of films screened in the section have diversified to include science fiction, fantasy and thriller propositions, in addition to the traditional horror flicks on which it was founded. For 2021, however, terror is the name of the game once again, with all six films self-defining as either horror, thriller or a combination of the two genres.

Also notable is the impressive spread of countries contributing to the section.

Festival top brass announced on Monday the 12 Narrative and eight Documentary Feature Film Competition films in 22nd edition, set to run in Park City from January 22-28, 2016.

The 20-strong line-up includes 12 world premieres, three North American premieres and one Us premiere.

All competition films are feature directorial debuts with budgets of less than $1m and without Us distribution.

Jury awards are presented to feature films in both categories and all films are eligible for audience awards as well as the Spirit Of Slamdance Award, judged by the filmmakers themselves.

“The standard of Diy filmmaking around the world is the highest we’ve seen, and the diversity of storytelling is the most we’ve experienced,” sad Slamdance co-founder and president Peter Baxter.

“With a record breaking number of submissions to select from, the narrative and documentary feature line-up has never been so competitive or as exciting to programme.”

All synopses provided by the festival.

Narrative Features...

Festival top brass announced on Monday the 12 Narrative and eight Documentary Feature Film Competition films in 22nd edition, set to run in Park City from January 22-28, 2016.

The 20-strong line-up includes 12 world premieres, three North American premieres and one Us premiere.

All competition films are feature directorial debuts with budgets of less than $1m and without Us distribution.

Jury awards are presented to feature films in both categories and all films are eligible for audience awards as well as the Spirit Of Slamdance Award, judged by the filmmakers themselves.

“The standard of Diy filmmaking around the world is the highest we’ve seen, and the diversity of storytelling is the most we’ve experienced,” sad Slamdance co-founder and president Peter Baxter.

“With a record breaking number of submissions to select from, the narrative and documentary feature line-up has never been so competitive or as exciting to programme.”

Al synopses provided by the festival.

Narrative Features...

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...

Berlin -- The Berlin film festival's Panorama sidebar is coming back loud and proud this year with a lineup packed with films examining gender identity and the gay movement.

The 2010 Panorama opens Feb. 11 with the Russian film "Jolly Fellows," director Felix Mikhailov's look at the drag queen subculture of a Moscow club.

This year's lineup also features Cheryl Dunye's thriller "The Owls," in which aging lesbians try to get away with murder; and Jake Yuzna's "Open," a series of intertwined love stories featuring gay and trans-gendered partners.

Several of Panorama's documentary selections explores related themes -- such as Crayton Robery's "Making The Boys" about Matt Crowley's ground breaking gay play "The Boys in the Band;" "Cuchillo de Palo," Renate Costa's expose of persecution of homosexuals during the Paraguayan dictatorship and the German doc "Rock Hudson – Dark and Handsome Stranger" from directors Andrew Davies and Andre Schaefer.