Tag Archives: Miami Film Festival

John Leguizamo to Receive Impact Award at This Year’s Miami Film Festival

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John Leguizamo is being honored for his impact…

The 62-year-old Colombian actor, comedian and film producer will receive the Miami Film Festival‘s Impact Award on March 11.

John LeguizamoLeguizamo’s new MSNBC series Leguizamo Does America will screen ahead of the award presentation. The festival’s upcoming 40th edition runs from March 3-12.

Leguizamo has more than 75 film, theater and television credits, including Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, Summer of Sam and as the voice of Bruno on Encanto. Most recently, he co-starred in Mark Mylod’s film The Menu.

The Emmy winner is next set to star alongside Toni Collette in Prime Video’s The Power.

Following his MFF Impact award, Leguizamo will premiere his directorial debut, Critical Thinking, at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival. In addition to his Emmy award, Leguizamo has received a Drama Desk award and a special Tony award for his one-man show, Latin History for Morons.

Leguizamo Does America follows the actor as he travels from San Juan, Puerto Rico to East Los Angeles while making a few surprising stops along the way. In addition to celebrating and honoring Latino history, culture and food, Leguizamo will speak with Latino actors, the Latino immigrants who transformed the city of Chicago, as well as the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. Leguizamo Does America will premiere on MSNBC on April 16 at 10 p.m.

In addition to Leguizamo, the Miami Film Festival will honor Nicolas Cage with the Variety Legend & Groundbreaker Award, Diego Luna with the Variety Virtuoso Award and Nicholas Britell with Art of Light Composer Award, presented by Alacran Group.

The complete Miami Film Festival program is available at miamifilmfestival.com.

Maite Alberdi Signs with United Talent Agency (UTA)

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Maite Alberdi has new representation…

The 37-year-old Chilean producer, director, documentarianand screenwriter has signed with United Talent Agency (UTA) for worldwide representation in all areas. 

Maite Alberdi,

Alberdi runs the production company Micromundo Productions and is known for making documentaries that paint intimate portraits of characters in small-scale worlds.

Most recently, Alberdi directed and wrote the documentary The Mole Agent, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for “World Cinema – Documentary” at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The Mole Agent was also nominated for awards at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Miami Film Festival, among others.

Ahead of the film’s Sundance screening, Alberdi won the prestigious 2020 Chicken & Egg Award, which annually recognizes six experienced documentarians.

Previously, Alberdi directed, produced, and wrote the 2016 feature documentary The Grown-Ups. Her additional credits include the documentary short I’m Not From Here and the feature documentaries Tea Time and The Lifeguard. 

Alberdi also co-authored the book Teorías de cine documental en Chile 1957-1973.

Miami Film Festival’s Encuentros Sidebar to Include Schnicer & Guardiola’s “Tigre”

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Silvina Schnicer and Ulises Porra Guardiola will have a special encuentro in Miami…

The Miami Film Festival has unveiled its industry sidebar Encuentros, a selection of Latin American feature films produced partially or entirely by Ibero-American-based production companies currently in the postproduction stage, with the Argentine filmmakers’ latest project making the list.

Tigre

In addition to Schnicher and Guardiola’s Tigre, the program also selected Eugenia (Bolivia), directed by Martin Boulocq; Camocim (Brazil), directed by Quentin Delaroche; and Los debiles (Mexico), directed by Raul Rico and Eduardo Giralt Brun.

The Encuentros sidebar was curated by Sandro Fiorin, from LatAm-specialty sales agent FiGa Films,

The projects will be matched with industry professionals, and a jury will award a $10,000 cash prize in completion financing, courtesy of the Knight Foundation.

“None of them were seen anywhere before,” said Fiorin on this year’s selection. “All remarkable in their own way, they represent what is happening at this moment in Latin America. The freshness and attitude are palpable, though the similarities and politics are buried deep inside each story. A total reflection of our times here in the U.S. and elsewhere,” he added.

Last year, the Encuentros winner was The Candidate, directed by Uruguayan actor Daniel Hendler, and an international premiere at the Miami fest this year.

The Festival also announced this year’s Miami Encuentros jury, formed by Dana Keith (Miami Beach Film Society and Cinematheque), Molly O’Keefe (Tribeca Film Institute), and the program creator Diana Sanchez (Toronto International Film Festival).

Additional prizes to be awarded include a DCP Mastering Service package valued at $5,000 presented by Madrid’s Aracne Digital Services; and a poster design service valued at $5,000 presented by Buenos Aires’ Boogieman Media.

Presented by the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, Miami Encuentros will be hosted March 6-7 at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach.

The 34th edition of the Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival will run March 3 –12.

Rodriguez’s “Marshland” Acquired by Todo Cine Latino & AZ Films

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Alberto Rodriguez’s latest film, one of Spain’s most recent blockbusters, is ready to conquer North America.

Todo Cine Latino, the specialty label of Paul Hudson’s Outsider Pictures, has teamed with Canada’s AZ Films to acquire the North America rights to La Isla Minima.

Marshland

The 44-year-old Spanish filmmaker’s fifth feature, titled Marshland in English is described as a noirish period cop thriller.

The film won 10 Spanish Film Academy Goya Awards, among them best picture, director and actor (for star Javier Gutierrez).

Produced by Atresmedia Cine, Sacromonte Films and Atipica Films, and a competition frontrunner at San Sebastian International Film Festival, where it world premiered on September 20, winning the jury prize and best actor (Gutierrez), Marshland went on to gross $8.4 million in Spain, a standout achievement for its distributor, Warner Bros. Entertainment España.

Marshland now figures with nine category recognitions as the leading contender for 2015’s Platino Awards, taking in movies from Spain, Latin America and Portugal, which takes place July 18 in Marbella.

Written by Rodriguez and his near-career-long co-scribe Rafael Cobos, and set in Spain’s deep South in 1980, Marshland begins in classic crime thriller style with two homicide detectives, one a Francoist hardliner, the other younger and more pliable with a bright future ahead of him in Madrid, being called in to investigate the disappearance of two teen girls on Seville’s flatlands, a sprawling marsh expanse of stunning natural beauty and base poverty ruled by a few families certainly not willing to give up their centuries-old power and privileges – economic, social or of droit du seigneur.

Marshland impressed for its stunning, often kinetic, and varied cinematography: It’s made up of some 170 sequences, some multi-shot, some not. It also won critical plaudits for the interplay between the two cops who realize that they must put aside their personal differences if they’re to stop a serial killer, and the shaded balance of its portrait of one, played by Gutierrez. Capable of absolute heroism, he also tortured suspects under Franco and will never be hauled up in court for that.

“Marshland has been compared to everything from the first season of True Detective to Seven, and is a first class thriller, and the Goya Awards are a testament to the quality of the filmmaking,” said Hudson.

Todo Cine Latino will look to build word-of-mouth via festivals; AZ Films will release the film in Canada on August 14, while Outsider will release in the U.S. on August 21 in Miami, where “Marshland” had its U.S. premiere in March at the Miami Film Festival.

Marshland will then be released on digital streaming site Todocinelatino.com, which is dedicated to the release of the best in Latin Cinema in North America.

Colombia Selects Gamboa’s “Mateo” as the Country’s Representative in the Foreign Language Category for the 2015 Oscars

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Maria Gamboa could possibly have a date with Oscar in the near future…

The Colombian filmmaker’s Mateo will be Colombia’s bet for a nomination in the Foreign Language category at the 2015 Academy Awards. The news was announced this week by the Colombian Film Academy on its Facebook account and confirmed by the film’s press agency LBV.

Maria Gamboa's Mateo

A winner of screenplay and first feature awards at the Miami Film Festival this year, Mateo was one of the three finalists to represent Colombia at the Oscars, together with Oscar Ruiz Navia‘s Los hongos — winner of a special jury prize in Locarno this year — and Ruben Mendoza‘s Dust on the Tongue, which topped Colombia’s main film event, the Cartagena Film Festival. The 378 members of the academy participated in the voting of the final slate, preselected by its board of directors.

“Both the crew and the people from Magdalena Medio who participated in this project, we all feel honored and happy to be able to represent Colombia,” Gamboa said in a statement. “We’re thrilled that there’s a recognition to Mateo’s story of peace and reconciliation, which offers a more human and truthful vision, so different from the way this crucial topic is usually presented.”

A Colombia/France co-production starring Carlos Hernandez and Felipe Botero, Mateo tells the story of a 16-year-old boy who faces a dilemma about the direction his life will take when his corrupt uncle asks him to infiltrate a local Barrancabermeja theater group to uncover its members’ political activities.

No local films have ever been picked for an Oscar nomination. But the recently reborn Colombian film industry has been expanding in number and size ever since the passing of the first film law in 2003 which poured funds into film production, the new Bogota Audiovisual Market and new co-production and shooting incentives.