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Exclusive: Vision Entertainment has brought on Chris Bellant as a manager in their talent and literary departments. He’ll work out of the company’s Los Angeles office and will also work with Vision’s production arm to produce both film and TV.

Bellant joins from Zero Gravity Management, where he also worked across talent, literary and production. Before Zero Gravity, he was a manager at Established Artists and previously ran the management and production company Waldorf Entertainment. Most recently, Bellant produced the upcoming crime thriller Nowhere Men, starring Jack Quaid, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Malin Akerman. Previously, he produced films including Loserville, starring Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Matt McGorry, and The Lost Weekend, starring Tony winner Reed Birney and Gracie Gillam.

Bellant’s clients include Emmy-nominated writers Steven White and Daniel Dratch; actors Brad Leland, Taylor Anthony Miller...

Madrid-born horror meister Adrián García Bogliano, behind “La Exorcista,” one of 2022’s highest-grossing films in Mexico, has unveiled a teaser and first still of his new thriller “Someone’s at the Door,” which had a special presentation at Cannes’ genre business hub Fantastic Pavilion last May.

Produced by Carlos Meléndez’s Mr.Blue as well as executive producer Andrea Quiroz’s Salto de Fe Films, “Someone’s at the Door” features newcomer Alexis Cárdenas, Samantha Coronel (“Medea”) and “This Is Not Berlin” actor Mauro Sánchez Navarro.

García Bogliano’s love triangle drama follows the unexpected reunion between former high school classmates Alicia and Marianela, whose initially warm meeting takes a sinister turn. Alicia, portrayed by Cárdenas, becomes deeply suspicious of Marianela, played by Coronel, as she senses an affair between her husband (Sánchez) and her mentally perturbed friend.

García Bogliano describes his film as a “suspense machine” that delves into...

Academy Award-winning producer Daniel Dreifuss (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) has boarded “Red Men,” the latest feature from Mexico’s Hari Sama, best known for his lauded autobiographical pic “This is not Berlin,” which world premiered at Sundance in 2019.

Described as an “edgy and provocative coming-of-age story” about the life of Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele, “Red Men” hones in on Schiele’s role in reshaping European aesthetics through his intimate relationship with lover and muse, Dominik Van Osen.

Their bond inspired Schiele’s pioneering Expressionist style while also compelling the young artist to confront his sexually fluid identity amidst repressive laws banning homosexuality in turn-of-the-century Vienna. This romantic saga delves into the emotional complexities of two artistic companions turned lovers, which drove Egon’s artistic vision while he struggled to navigate society’s norms. Schiele, whose provocative art was known for its contorted body shapes and dramatic lines,...

The infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper has been transplanted to America in ViX Original Series “El Dentista” (“The Dentist”) (working title) with Oscar-nominated Demián Bichir (“A Better Life”) in the titular role. Behind-the-scenes pics of the series, now shooting in Mexico, have been exclusively shared with Variety.

Based on the novel by prominent Chilean scribe Julio Rojas, creator of podcast sensation “Caso 63” and a co-writer on Pablo Fendrik’s “El Refugio,” the period thriller series is produced by Oscar-winning brothers Pablo and Juan de Dios Larrain and their powerhouse shingle, Fabula, along with the top Spanish pay TV/SVOD service Movistar Plus+, which will also handle international sales.

This is possibly the second time that Fabula handling a mythical figure after Pablo Larrain’s horror satire “The Count,” which world premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is now streaming on Netflix. However, in “The Count,” Larrain reimagines...

One of the most anticipated of series from Latin America in 2022, Lucía Puenzo’s “Señorita 89” will premiere in the U.S. on Feb. 27, bowing on Spanish-language streaming service Pantaya which has also dropped official teaser key art and a first-look teaser trailer.

Produced by Academy Award winners Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín and Fabula, Pantaya, Starzplay and Fremantle, “Señorita 89” is showrun by Puenzo who is rapidly emerging as one of the Latin America’s foremost film and TV writer-directors after “La Jauría,” first fruit of a first-look deal between Fabula and Fremantle.

“La Jauría” drilled down on multiple forms of sexual abuse, powered by a thriller format. “Señorita 89’ look as if it might do the same but in a far different context, exposing the unseen and unseemly reality behind the glamor of a 1989 Miss Mexico beauty pageant.

As the teaser trailer shows, the drama thriller is set in a seeming paradise,...

Exclusive: Aaron Diaz (Quantico) and Ana Brenda Contreras (Dynasty) have been set to star in Mexican crime thriller series Toda La Sangre, for Pantaya, Starzplay, Spiral International and Fremantle Mexico.

Produced by Fremantle Mexico, production is now underway on the genre series which is being directed by Luis Prieto and Hari Sama and is based on the best-selling novels by Mexican author Bernardo Esquinca.

Diaz will play the role of Eugenio Casasola, a journalist who joins forces with Lieutenant Edith Mondragon, played by Contreras, in a quest to uncover the truth behind a series of visceral murders that resemble Aztec sacrifices in modern-day Mexico City.

Prieto is best known for features such as Kidnap and directing on TV series such as White Lines and Snatch while Sama is best known for movie This Is Not Berlin.

Distributed internationally by Fremantle, the ten-episode series is developed and produced by showrunner and...

Los Angeles-based 1844 Entertainment has acquired international sales rights and U.S. distribution for Jorge Cuchí’s 2020 Venice Critics’ Week player, “50 o Dos Ballenas se Encuentran En la Playa” (“50 (or Two Whales Meet on the Beach)”).

“50” stars young actors José Antonio Toledano as Félix and Karla Coronado as Elisa, two 17-year-olds who together embark on the 2016 social media phenomena Blue Whale Challenge together. In the “game,” players are assigned tasks over a 50-day period which start as trivial or innocuous activities, but eventually mutate into self-harm and, at its conclusion, suicide.

“When people decide to commit suicide it is not because they want to put an end to their lives, but because they want to put an end to their sadness,” explained Chuchí of the spark that ingnited his feature debut.

Describing his protagonists, he remembered that Felix and Elisa started as “two kids who came to life inside my...

In an unprecedented move, Kate del Castillo’s Cholawood and Fabrica de Cine’s Gaston Pavlovich, producer of Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and “Silence,” have teamed up with Endemol Shine Boomdog (Esb) to co-produce “El Agente Mexicano” (“The Mexican Agent”).

The series is loosely based on the true story of Francisco García, a young photographer who is recruited by the CIA after inadvertently saving President Kennedy from an assassination attempt during a 1962 visit to Mexico.

In the first season, now being penned by Rodrigo Ordoñez, the naive photographer transforms into a genuinely ruthless spy. Carlos Bolado is attached to direct what promises to include elements of action, suspense and a good dose of romance. Esb’s head of scripted, Leo Zimbron oversees the production, which will likely run for multiple seasons.

In 2019, the Spanish-language division of Endemol Shine North America inked an overall development and production pact with Pavlovich.

L.A.-based Spanish-language streaming platform Pantaya and global streamer Starzplay have revealed that production is underway on the period new drama series “Señorita 89” from Fremantle and the Larraín brothers’ Fabula, the latest co-production stemming from a first-look deal between the two, dating back to 2019.

The first fruit of that combined labor was global hit series “La Jauria,” available on Amazon Prime Video in Latin America and HBO Max in the U.S. Selected as one of Variety’s best international series of 2020, “La Jauria” stars “A Fantastic Woman” lead Daniela Vega and is directed by one of Latin America’s most prominent film and TV writer-directors Lucia Puenzo.

Sticking with a talent alliance that worked so well for Fabula and Fremantle the first time around, Puenzo also co-wrote and is directing “Señorita 89.” She is joined by co-screenwriters María Renée Prudencio and Tatiana Mereñuk, and co-directors Nicolás Puenzo...

Michel Franco’s Venice winner “New Order” (“Nueva Orden”) has scored over 330,000 admissions and $950,000 in Mexico off an Oct. 22 bow, according to Comscore.

Released by Televisa’s Videocine distrib label, that box office would be notable in any normal circumstance, given that “New Order,” an often shocking dystopian thriller, is by no stretch of the imagination a comedy nor entertainment for all the family, Mexico’s box office staples.

It’s all the more an extraordinary feat for a Mexican movie during Covid-19 when box office is tracking at some 15%-20% of its full-on power before pandemia.

“It is satisfying to see brave releases that are helping the market and attracting audiences to cinemas,” said Comscore’s Luis Vargas.

Topping Mexico’s box office on release, “New Order’s” domestic box office run is also a good way of showing the distributors who have bought the film for release in...

For filmmakers, the process of getting the cultural powers that be to submit your film to contend for the Best International Feature Film Oscar varies from country to country. That Oscar can give your movie an enormous boost. Mexico has been participating in the foreign-language Oscar race since 1957, a year after the category was created. Of the 53 films submitted, nine have been nominated, including five from Arturo Ripstein, two from A.G. Iñárritu (“Amores Perros” and “Biutiful”), one from Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), and one from Alfonso Cuarón (“Roma”), which was the first Mexican film to win the foreign-language Oscar. Cuarón lobbied the Academy Board of Governors to change the category name to Best International Feature Film.

This year, the selection committee from the Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas has picked six finalists: Xavi Sala’s “Guie’dani’s Navel,” “I Carry You with Me” (Sony Pictures Classics...

Exclusive: Gaumont, the production company behind Netflix’s hit drama Narcos, is lining up its next trip south of the border.

The company, which also produces Amazon original El Presidente, is developing Spanish-language drama series Los Últimos Análogos (w/t). The series comes from Max Zunino and Hari Sama, who were behind Sundance Film Festival feature This Is Not Berlin.

The show, which the pair will co-write chronicles the peak of the Rock en Español movement during the mid 1990s in Mexico City. Sama is attached to direct the series, to be filmed on location in Mexico City.

Los Últimos Análogos follows a foreign record label executive, who arrives in Mexico City to spearhead the A&r Rock division at a record label. What begins as an escape from her past becomes an opportunity to rebuild her life and capitalize on a new musical movement that’s simmering in Mexico City’s underground scene.

Exclusive: Samuel Goldwyn has acquired the North American rights to Dating Amber from filmmaker David Freyne. The LGBTQ+ teen comedy is slated to debut on-demand and digital at a to-be-announced date in November.

Written and directed by Freyne, the film stars Fionn O’Shea (Normal People), Lola Petticrew (A Bump Along the Way), and Sharon Horgan (Game Night). The coming-out comedy takes an honest and funny look at the highs and lows of teenage life and figuring out where you fit in — even if this goes against your very being. Set in Ireland during the mid-’90s, Eddie (O’Shea) and Amber (Petticrew) decide to stage a relationship in order to stop everyone speculating about their sexuality. Eddie is keen to follow his Dad into the military, while Amber dreams of moving to the liberal hub of London. The plan seems solid, but as their arrangement begins to fall apart, Eddie...

The GLAAD Media Awards winners were announced on Thursday, with “Booksmart” and “Pose” taking home the top honors.

The winners were announced in a virtual ceremony hosted by comedians Fortune Feimster and Gina Yashere. The event streamed on GLAAD’s Facebook and YouTube accounts, with a taped version set to air on Logo on Monday. Performers included Chloe x Halle, Shea Diamond and Ben Platt.

Among the winners highlighted on the stream were “Old Town Road” singer Lil Nas X, who took home the award for Outstanding Music Artist; the cast and producers of “Pose” and “Schitt’s Creek,” which won the top awards for drama and comedy series, respectively; “Booksmart,” which won Outstanding Film – Wide Release; and Rachel Maddow, who received the award for Outstanding TV Journalism Segment for her one-on-one interview with Pete Buttigieg.

Also Read: Why Are There Still So Few LGBTQ Characters in Gaming? (Guest Blog)

During the ceremony,...

Madrid — Having placed Hari Sama’s “This is Not Berlin” at 2019’s Sundance Festival, Mexico’s Catatonia Cine has scored at France’s Toulouse Latin America Film Festival, taking two of the biggest prizes in this year’s online Films in Progress section.

An industry fixture, Toulouse’s Film in Progress grants post-production and distribution awards to up to six pix-in-post from Latin America. A notable number segue from Toulouse to selection at Cannes.

The latest production from Catatonia Cine, ruToulousen by Sama, Veronica Valadez and Laura Berrón, “50,” the feature film debut of former commercials director Jorge Cuchi, turns, like “This is Not Berlin,” on the world of adolescence, here two 16-year-olds, Félix and Elisa. They meet playing the Blue Whale Game, fall in love and decide to take on together the game’s final challenge: Suicide.

Written and directed by Cuchi, “50” won the most probably biggest prize on offer...

GLAAD has announced the nominees for the 31st GLAAD Media Awards, honoring Lgbtq representation in film, television, news and entertainment in 2019.

Netflix received the most nominations of any network with 15 nominees, followed by HBO with eight and ABC, CBS and NBC each with four. New streaming services Apple+ and Disney+ earned their first ever nominations with Dickinson and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, respectively.

“There are more nominees for the 31st Annual GLAAD Media Awards than ever before not only because Lgbtq diversity and inclusion has progressed, but...

A sprawling and diverse amount of fictional and real life Lgbtq narratives are represented in the nominees for the 31st annual GLAAD Media Awards, announced by the legacy watchdog group on Wednesday.

A total of 176 nominations were awarded in categories from outstanding wide release movie, to newspaper article, to kids and family programming — a record number of contenders thanks to increased representation in film, streaming television, unscripted projects and news.

Variety was nominated for outstanding magazine overall coverage, in a year that marked its first ever Power of Pride issue and subsequent celebration in New York. Others in the category include Advocate, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, and Out. The awards have also reinstated a category for best Broadway production, whose nominees for 2019 include “The Inheritance,” “Slave Play,” and “Jagged Little Pill.”

“The GLAAD Awards this year not only celebrate new Lgbtq stories that educate, entertain, and affect positive cultural change, but...

Headed by Alberto Müffelmann and Gerardo Gatica, Mexican indie production house Panorama Global has boarded Luis Javier Henaine’s feature “Desaparecer del todo,” a Moonlight Pictures production co-produced with Pablo Zimbron’s Varios Lobos.

The supernatural thriller, based on true events, explores witchcraft in Mexico through the eyes of a tabloid crime photographer.

Varios Lobos and Panorama previously co-produced Henaine’s popular comedy “Ready to Mingle,” and it’s a relationship Müffelmann was eager to rekindle.

“It is not just a business thing either,” he elaborated. “We understand one another well in a creative manner as well as for the economic and financial aspects. We work hand-in-hand. I think we’ve grown together. They came to us as a smaller company, but they are growing at the same time that we are.”

Also announced at Los Cabos, “Moonwalker,” is co-directed by Rodrigo Guardiola (“Zoé: Panoramas”) and Gabriel Nuncio (SXSW player “Cumbres”) of production house Bengala,...

Morelia Film Festival’s (Ficm) Impulso sidebar for pix in progress will run Sunday through Tuesday this coming week, having become one of the territories most important launchpads for Latin American feature films in post-production.

Many of the participating films in recent editions have gone on to find festival success the world around.

Last year, Hari Sama’s “This is Not Berlin” was the talk of the day, and since being finished has made major impacts at Sundance, Tribeca and Malaga. From 2017, Andres Kaiser’s cabin in the woods thriller “Feral” went on to win awards at Los Cabos and participate in several major genre fests across Europe and North America. 2016 hosted Joshua Gil’s “Sanctorum” which closed Venice Critics’ Week this year.

Other standout participants include, but are not limited to: “The Chaotic Life of Nada Kadi’c” from Marta Hernaiz (Berlinale 2018); “Devil’s Freedom” from Everardo González (Berlinale...

Mexican Oscar-nominated actress Marina de Tavira (“Roma”) is receiving the Premio Cuervo Tradicional, a career recognition award from Morelia Int’l Film Festival (Ficm) sponsor Jose Cuervo Tradicional. The prize ceremony will take place on Saturday, Oct. 19.

The award has been given out for more than 12 years at Ficm to a Mexican actor or actress who has contributed to the national and international film industry. It includes a cash award of over $6,000 towards the completion of any future project.

De Tavira, who stars in competing Mexican film “This is Not Berlin” by Hari Sama, is also among the jurors of the 17th Morelia Int’l Film Festival, which runs October 18-27.

Prior to the award ceremony at the Teatro Ruben Ramiro in Morelia, Jose Cuervo Traditional tequila will be screening its inaugural mini-documentary about the lakeside town of Patzcuaro, which kicks off its docu series on Mexico’s Day of the Dead tradition.

For the first time in its history, the Morelia Film Festival will open with a European film, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s drama “Le Jeune Ahmed” (“Young Ahmed”), which garnered a best director prize for the Belgian siblings at Cannes last May. Luc Dardenne will be on hand to present the drama, described by Variety critic Peter Debruge as an “instantly recognizable” Dardenne film for having a “deceptively ‘rough’ quality as the directors’ earlier work, a carryover from their documentary background.”

Helmer-scribe James Ivory, who won a best adapted screenplay Oscar last year for his first-love gay drama “Call Me By Your Name” is also making his first visit to Morelia, which will honor him with a retrospective of his films.

“Five continents will be represented in Morelia this year, but most important are the 100-plus Mexican filmmakers participating in this edition,” said Morelia artistic director Daniela Michel.

The festival,...

Opening your film with a quote from Marcel Proust is certainly a choice, and “This Is Not Berlin” does its best to back the bold move. In his fourth narrative feature, Mexican filmmaker Hari Sama paints a vivid, if dizzying, portrait of his hometown, Mexico City circa 1986: There’s a steady stream of music, art, and literary references; broadly painted caricatures of youth searching for identity; hypnotic montages of political performance art; and full-frontal male nudity.

Using the underground avant-garde art scene as its backdrop and a wayward teenage boy as its protagonist, “This Is Not Berlin” renders the follies of youth through a kaleidoscopic phantasma of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Despite all the compelling decoration, however, there are few surprises.

The story follows Carlos (Xabiani Ponce De León), a fatherless teen who watches his little brother as his mother (“Roma” star Marina de Tavira) stays in bed hungover all day.

Hints of autumn are unspooling this weekend with stars fronting Specialty fare opening in theaters. Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Billy Crudup and Abby Quinn headline Sundance ’19 opener After The Wedding, starting in New York and L.A. today via Sony Pictures Classics. The film by Bart Freundlich is based on the 2006 Oscar-nominated original by Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier. Shia Labeouf and Dakota Johnson join newcomer Zack Gottsagen in Roadside Attractions’ modern-day Huck Finn-style adventure Peanut Butter Falcon, opening in seven markets this weekend. Doc awards hopeful One Child Nation from Amazon Studios begins its theatrical with exclusive runs in Los Angeles and New York today, while non-fiction title This Changes Everything, featuring a slew of veteran actors and public figures, heads out to three theaters in both cities from Good Deed Entertainment. Following screenings at recent Lgbtq festivals Frameline and Outfest, Samuel Goldwyn Films rolls out Mexican period drama...

Let’s be very clear—“This Is Not Berlin” is very much a coming-of-age movie. If you have somehow escaped the seemingly never-ending onslaught of films that explore interchangeable stories about self-discovery, consider yourself lucky. However, if you too have been swept up in this tiresome trend, knowing that Hari Sama’s newest feature fits perfectly within the overstuffed subgenre gives you a clear indication of what to expect.

Set in Mexico City in the late-’80s, “This Is Not Berlin” depicts a landscape buzzing with post-punk rebellion and high schoolers itching for adult excitement.

Continue reading ‘This Is Not Berlin’: Countercultural Coming-Of-Age Tale Sadly Falls In Line With The Genre’s Status Quo [Review] at The Playlist.

Hari Sama’s “This Is Not Berlin” is a memory movie set in the art world and punk scene of Mexico City circa 1986, a world that is packed with visual detail and moments that are trapped in time by the camera.

The film moves very fast and takes in as much of this world as possible for us, offering it up both lovingly and satirically. There are many characters, but somehow what stands out are shots of Tabasco sauce poured on eggs, a cartoon program playing on a television set and smoke drifting in the air from cigarettes.

In one charged and lyrical scene here, best friends Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de León) and Gera (José Antonio Toledano) are seen from above smoking cigarettes together, with a paper cup framed in back of them so that we can see the cigarette butts that have been discarded. Their faces are open to the pleasure of the moment,...

The summer movie season is now winding down and, in a reversal of prevailing expectations, August brings one of the best slates of the entire year. From stellar documentaries to heartfelt stories of romance to a 14-hour epic, it’s an eclectic lineup before the busy fall season begins.

15. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (Francis Ford Coppola; August 15)

This monthly rundown is usually reserved for new films, and Francis Ford Coppola’s latest project is no mere restoration, but rather a new “final cut” of Apocalypse Now–one that is getting an IMAX release. Nick Newman was at the world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, where he said, “More a reigned-in second stab than radical reworking, it suggests where he’d turned right or wrong, shows an affable stubbornness in the retention of lesser-liked pieces, and at day’s end maybe breeds further ambiguity as to what really shapes a masterpiece.

In the midst of Roma mania last awards season, a little film emerged at the Sundance Film Festival, also starring Marina de Tavira as a stalwart single mother: Hari Sama’s This Is Not Berlin. Led by newcomers Xabiani Ponce de León and José Antonio Toledano as Carlos and Gera, they play two high schoolers growing up in Mexico City. Bored with his high school’s machismo soccer culture, Carlos joins the small but radical queer and leftist community, participating in public displays of nudity to protest FIFA officials. Gera wants to join but his personality doesn’t click with the group, so the boys grow apart as they stumble through class exploration and settling on their identities. The surprising fate of Sama’s characters makes the viewer reconsider everything they’ve seen. What seems like a natural telos for Carlos and Gera is worth closer examination.

We sat down...

Coming-of-age movies are a peso a dozen, but Hari Sama makes something special out of This Is Not Berlin, wrapping his protagonist's story in an impeccably rendered portrait of mid-'80s underground culture in Mexico City that makes it about far more than just the boy. Smart, good-looking and buzzing with edginess, Sama's fourth feature has been made with a love and care that's palpable in every frame, allowing us to forgive its occasional, inevitable brushes with cliche.

A sensitive insider view of what it was like to be there, Berlin is both educational to those who weren't ...

Coming-of-age movies are a peso a dozen, but Hari Sama makes something special out of This Is Not Berlin, wrapping his protagonist's story in an impeccably rendered portrait of mid-'80s underground culture in Mexico City that makes it about far more than just the boy. Smart, good-looking and buzzing with edginess, Sama's fourth feature has been made with a love and care that's palpable in every frame, allowing us to forgive its occasional, inevitable brushes with cliche.

A sensitive insider view of what it was like to be there, Berlin is both educational to those who weren't ...

"I'm more of a spiritual guide." Samuel Goldwyn Films has debuted an official trailer for an indie film from Mexico titled This Is Not Berlin, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It also won a number of major awards, including a Special Jury Award and Best Cinematography, at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival this year. From Mexican filmmaker Hari Sama, This Is Not Berlin is described as a "thrilling and sexy clash of art, drugs, and punk music". Seventeen-year-old Carlos doesn't fit in anywhere, not in his family nor with the friends he has chosen in school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical nightclub where he discovers the underground nightlife scene: punk, sexual liberty and drugs. This stars Xabiani Ponce de León, José Antonio Toledano, Mauro Sanchez Navarro, Klaudia Garcia, Ximena Romo, Américo Hollander, and Marina de Tavira (seen in Roma). Looks vibrant & sincere.

Outfest has unveiled its programming lineup, including appearances by Kathy Griffin, Trixie Mattel, Angelica Ross and Robert Englund, for its 37th version on July 18-28.

Officially titled the 2019 Outfest Los Angeles Lgbtq Film Festival, the event opens at the Orpheum Theatre with the “Circus of Books” documentary and closes at The Theater at the Ace Hotel with family comedy “Before You Know It” from Hannah Pearl Utt (who also co-wrote and stars), featuring Judith Light alongside Alec Baldwin and Mandy Patinkin.

Films are from 33 countries and in 26 languages, and more than two-thirds of the titles are directed by women, people of color and trans filmmakers.

“As my tenure comes to an end I am most proud of Outfest’s increased visibility in Hollywood and our ever-growing stature within the industry,” said executive director Christopher Racster. “Outfest Los Angeles continues to shine a spotlight on those stories we must see and...

After 37 years as the nation’s premier Lgbtq film festival, Outfest shows no signs of slowing down. The 2019 festival, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles from July 18-28, has just announced its full schedule. The lineup features a combination of festival favorites and rarely-seen foreign films, placing Lgbtq cinema in a truly global context.

The festival opens on July 18 with “Circus of Books,” the Tribeca hit about a daughter’s learning about her parents’ groundbreaking gay porn shop. It closes out with Sundance breakout “Before You Know It,” and will feature 28 world premieres during its run.

From features and documentaries to shorts and episodic content, this is truly an all-inclusive launching pad for Lgbtq filmmakers. The festival continues to push the boundaries of progress, with a majority of this year’s films directed by filmmakers from groups underrepresented in queer film.

“As my tenure comes to an end I...

Madrid — Madrid’s Latido Films, one of the Spanish-speaking world’s top sales companies for arthouse and crossover films, acquired world sales rights to Dominican director José María Cabral’s in progress “Hotel Coppelia.”

The news comes as Latido has revealed a slew of sales on top titles. Their number suggests a larger depth to this year’s Cannes Film Market, allowing the company to push out two dozen or more deals in largely major territories.

“The Realm,” the latest feature from Oscar nominated Rodrigo Sorogoyen (“The Mother”) and Spanish Academy Award submission “Champions” lead many of the sales with “The Realm” going to Somos in the U.S., Impacto in Argentina, Vision in China, A-z Films in Canada and Cineplex in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Cabral’s “Hotel Coppelia” is based on the true stories of five women who, during the 1965 Dominican Civil War, made tremendous personal sacrifice to protect their own liberties.

Announced at the Cannes Film Market, L.A.’s Samuel Goldwyn Films acquired the North America rights to Hari Sama’s semi-autobiographical “This is Not Berlin.”

The deal was negotiated between Samuel Goldwyn Films’ Meg Longo, and Jason Ishikawa and Shane Riley from Cinetic Media on behalf of Madrid’s Latido films, which handles international sales.

Sama co-wrote the film with Rodrigo Ordóñez and Max Zunino, and co-produced with Ale García, Antonio Urdapilleta and Verónica Valadez P.

Having participated at a number of Latin American works in progress events, the film premiered to critical praise in Sundance, where Variety’s Dennis Harvey acknowledged it as “something special.”

Set in the politically contentious Mexico City of 1986, the film follows 17-year-old Carlos through a year of turmoil as he distances himself from his mother and childhood friends whose interests no longer align with his own.

Using his punk front-woman sister and acumen for fixing electronic equipment,...

In This Is Not Berlin, a group of truant artists discuss what makes art. “Whether you like it or not, art is political, man!” one declares. But another responds, “Art is whatever means one thing to us today.” This Is Not Berlin is a movie that lives in the moment, despite being set in a […]

The post ‘This Is Not Berlin’ Review: A Stylish Snapshot of an Unseen Era That Crackles With Life [Tribeca] appeared first on /Film.

Team Experience reporting from Tribeca 2019. Here's Jason...

Most of us never have the benefit of being at the right cool place at the right cool time. Or even if we do we don't really get to realize that while its happening. It's only in hindsight that we can shape that experience into a start and finish; that our lives can be packaged for proper consumption. It's always too messy to start with --the hair's gotta come down and the high's gotta wear off before you can see anything straight.

That whole tale's right there in the title of This Is Not Berlin. Hari Sama's fierce new coming-of-age film does indeed not take place in Berlin, but rather astride the post-punk burgeoning New Wave art-scene of Mexico City in the mid-80s...

The Spanish film The Days to Come and two 1980s-set Mexican dramas, This Is Not Berlin and The Good Girls, shared the bulk of the top prizes at the 22nd annual Malaga Film Festival, which ran from March 15-24 in the Spanish city.

The festival’s two best film honors — known as the Golden Biznagas — go to one Spanish film and one Ibero-American film. Taking home this year's awards were the Catalan-language Days to Come by Carlos Marques-Marcet and Mexican director Alejandra Marquez Abella’s Good Girls.

Days to Come, a documentary-style drama about a young couple’s nine-month journey to parenthood, also ...

The Spanish film The Days to Come and two 1980s-set Mexican dramas, This Is Not Berlin and The Good Girls, shared the bulk of the top prizes at the 22nd annual Malaga Film Festival, which ran from March 15-24 in the Spanish city.

The festival’s two best film honors — known as the Golden Biznagas — go to one Spanish film and one Ibero-American film. Taking home this year's awards were the Catalan-language Days to Come by Carlos Marques-Marcet and Mexican director Alejandra Marquez Abella’s Good Girls.

Days to Come, a documentary-style drama about a young couple’s nine-month journey to parenthood, also ...

A supporting actress Oscar nominee for playing Alfonso Cuaron’s fictional mother in “Roma,” Marina de Tavira has played pivotal roles in Mexican adaptations of plays by Bertolt Brecht, Harold Pinter and David Mamet, appeared in TV series such as Amazon’s “Falco,” and films including Hari Sama’s Sundance entry, “This Is Not Berlin.”

How do you feel about your Oscar nomination?

It was such a huge surprise. I was expecting “Roma” to get nominations in various categories, but I wasn’t expecting a supporting actress nomination. I never imagined I would reach this point in my life.

Where did you get your inspiration for your character?

Firstly, Alfonso’s memories of his mother, then my own memories of my mother. I grew up in the mid-to-late ’70s, early ’80s. The character Sofia in “Roma” represents a whole generation of women who were in the same situation during that time,...

Buyers respond to 4x4, The Weasels’ Tale, Bunuel In The Labyrinth Of The Turtles.

Madrid-based powerhouse Latido Films has struck a raft of key deals on its prestige Efm slate, led by further business on Argentine-Spain duo 4x4 and Oscar winner Juan Jose Campanella’s The Weasels’ Tale.

Mariano Cohn’s thriller 4x4 (Argentina-Spain) was the talk of Ventana Sur in Buenos Aires in December and stars Juan Pedro Lanzani from Argentine smash The Clan as a petty crook who breaks into a car, only to discover he has been lured into a trap.

Latido has licensed rights to...

Playback is a Variety / iHeartRadio podcast bringing you conversations with the talents behind many of today’s hottest films. New episodes air every Thursday.

One of the biggest surprises of this year’s Oscar nominations announcement was “Roma” star Marina de Tavira showing up in the supporting actress category. She gave a sublime, subtle performance, but it did not seem to have the expected traction going into the final stretch. Nevertheless, there she was on Jan. 22, and it was a delightful inclusion for one of the highlights of the circuit, an actress who has paid her dues and continues to work and mount theater productions in Mexico, but had not yet caught on here in the States. That’s sure to change now.

Listen to this week’s episode of “Playback” below. New episodes air every Thursday.

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“I was waking my son up...

There have been a lot of coming-of-age-in-the-punk-scene movies, not least because indie cinema really took off in the years immediately following the heyday of punk and New Wave, when the kids raised on that music were fresh out of film school. Still, Hari Sama’s fourth feature as writer-director is something special, and one of the best of its particular subgenre.

“This Is Not Berlin” deploys the wisdom of the director’s now-middle-aged perspective to provide what’s not just a portrait of adolescent liberation, but a snapshot of a moment in middle-class Mexican life whose larger sociopolitical context is both present yet mostly kept in the background (as in Alfonso Cuarón’s recent “Roma”). In the foreground is a vivid, often giddy, but also perilous world of hedonism for art’s sake in which the emerging threat of AIDS is seldom openly addressed yet omnipresent. With a coolness factor off the charts,...

It opens in slow motion with teenage bodies wrestling and punching inside chaotic dust swirls, one boy (Xabiani Ponce de León’s Carlos) caught isolated in the middle of the frame. He’s not looking to hit any of the others. In fact he’s barely dodging out of the way when they come too close. It’s almost as though Carlos isn’t even there, his mind and body separated as two halves of the same conflicted whole. He knows he should be present with his friends to show his machismo and do Mexico proud like the soccer team soon to hit the 1986 World Cup pitch, but something is calling him in the distance that he can’t quite see. It’s punk metal versus new wave blues, hetero-normative conformity versus queer counter-culture.

Director Hari Sama’s opening scene to This Is Not Berlin is the perfect prologue for its rebellious themes.

Starting this week, the 2019 Sundance Film Festival gives us a first glimpse at the year in cinema, but even if you won’t be at Park City, we’re rounding up an initial glimpse at the premieres. After highlighting our 20 most-anticipated films, bookmark this page for a continually-updated round-up of trailers and clips, kicking off with Velvet Buzzsaw, Apollo 11, Mope, We Are Little Zombies, The Hole in the Ground, and more.

Check out the trailers (and clips) below thus far in alphabetical order and we’ll be posting reviews from Park City soon, so follow along here.

Abe (Fernando Grostein Andrade)

Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)

Ask Dr. Ruth (Ryan White)



Bedlam (Kenneth Paul Rosenberg)

Dirty God (Sacha Polak)

Fighting with My Family (Stephen Merchant)



Gaza (Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell)

The Hole in the Ground (Lee Cronin)



The Last Tree (Shola Amoo)



Maiden (Alex Holmes)

Mope (Lucas Heyne)

Queen...

Writer-director Hari Sama’s fifth feature, “This is Not Berlin,” is set to world premiere at this month’s Sundance Film Festival. New York-based Cinema Tropical, a leading presenter of Latin American cinema in the U.S., has granted Variety exclusive access to the first trailer for the coming-of-age drama set in 1986 Mexico City.

Sama wrote, directed and his company Catatonia produced the semi-autobiographical feature, which impressed in works in progress sections at Impulso Morelia in October – where it scooped the Cinepolis Distribución Award and a special mention from the Jury – and Ventana Sur’s Copia Final in December.

The film boasts an ensemble cast led by two newcomers Xabiani Ponce de León and José Antonio Toledano, along with “Roma” star Marina de Tavira and popular Mexican TV actress Ximena Romo. Sama himself makes an appearance as well.

In the trailer, we see the drug and art-fueled world of political...

UTA has signed Mexican actress Marina De Tavira in all areas.

Most recently, she starred in Alfonso Cuaron’s critically acclaimed movie “Roma,” playing the mother Sofia. “Roma,” which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was named best film by the New York Film Critics Circle, was recently nominated for a handful of Golden Globes, including best director and best foreign film. Up next, De Tavira will appear in the drama “This Is Not Berlin,” set to debut next year.

Additionally, her previous film credits include “Ana y Bruno,” “Ilusiones S.A.,” and “Espacio Interior.” On the television side, she has appeared in Amazon Prime’s “Falco,” Netflix’s “Ingobernable,” and Telemundo’s “El Senor de los Cielos,” among other titles.

Her acting career first developed on the stage, as De Tavira has participated in more than 20 plays, and produced and starred in Mexican stagings of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,...

Buenos Aires — Ugc Distribution has beaten out all other suitors to clinch what had became by Friday morning the most anticipated deal of this year’s Ventana Sur market: All rights to France on Argentine Mariano Cohn’s “4 x 4,” sold by Latido Films and distributed throughout Argentina by Disney.

After mounting speculation about which distributor would finally win out on France, the deal was closed by Ugc’s Thierry Decourcelle and Latido Films Juan Torres.

The sale vindicates Latido and the producers’ decision to bring “4 x 4” onto the market at a private screening at Ventana Sur, attended this year by more than 100 French executives.

Stoking the drama of Thursday’s screening, it took place in torrential rain, but top-class screening conditions.

One of the biggest new titles at Ventana Sur, sitting in the mid-ground between arthouse and mainstream – it’s a thriller but makes caustic social comment about the vindictiveness...

Buenos Aires — In the first deal to be announced on a title in Ventana Sur’s three live-action feature competitions, Madrid-based Latido Films, headed by Antonio Saura, has acquired world rights outside Mexico on Hari Sama’s Copia Final contender “This Is Not Berlin.”

Latido’s buy, celebrated with a handshake at Ventana Sur, effectively re-calibrates the film’s commercial status, taking it off there market for other sales agents but giving “This Is Not Berlin” the prestige of a blue-chip sales agent, one of the biggest specialists in Spanish-language titles, before Sama’s new feature screens Tuesday in Copia Final.

Some sort of deal was always on the cards for Sama’s fifth feature. It won two prizes at Impulso Morelia and has been selected for Sundance’s World Dramatic Competition.

The deal also says much about one way the independent market is going – ever more towards accessible but singular titles with entertainment appeal.

Buenos Aires — 11 takes on the biggest Ventana Sur yet, in initiatives and initial business announcements:

1.Cannes’ Most Daring Move?

Over the last decade, film festivals two biggest growth roadmaps have run through strengthening their industry heft, aiding an ever more challenged independent film business, and to morph into all-year-round structures. The Cannes Festival and Film Market made its biggest move on both counts in 2009, launching Ventana Sur, a market for Latin American films, hand-in-hand with Argentina’s Incaa film-tv agency. For Cannes, it was a leap in the dark. The result? Last decade saw governments in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Chile step up hugely government film funding. Ventana Sur helped school these burgeoning production industries in the tools for international market reach. Even in a contracting overseas arthouse market, sales on Latin American movies rose exponentially.

2.Co-production: One Way Forward For The Independent Business

That market is especially challenged.

Hari Sama’s “This Is Not Berlin,” a buzzed-up contender in next week’s Copia Final, charts a teen’s rebellion at the social stupor of Mexico in 1986, sunk in repressive conservatism, World Cup herd fervor, and the frat-boy sexism of his classmates.

Carted off to a night-club as payback for mending a synthesizer, he discovers a dazzling anti-system nightlife of death post-punk, drugs, avant-garde art and, for Mexico of that time, avant-garde sex, single sex or hetero, but with the women making the moves.

Sama’s heartfelt retro but vital and very autobiographical tribute to the 1980s, “This Is Not Berlin,” portrays a Mexico where outrage at Mexico’s ruling elite was a badge-of-honor of the outrageous minority.

30 years later that sentiment has gone mainstream. The victory of Amlo in Mexico was a vote for radical change in a country beset by corruption and narco civil war. Few films...