2008 FILM LISTINGS

After a long illness, Julio Salas dies in Mexico City. But it is a Sunday and his family is in economic troubles. So this situation forces the family to get the services of a modest funeral company. The owner of the business, a speedy little guy called Joaquin (Silverio Palacios), decides that the destiny of the corpse should be a different one. But Carlos (Humberto Busto), the nephew of the deceased Mr. Salas, uncovering some strange maneuverings at the funeral company, demands that his uncle's remains, end up in the crematorium oven. At the same time, he also falls for Ana (Maya Zapata), the silent and beautiful daughter of the funeral company’s owner.

Director Daniel Gruener excels in this his second feature. The film opened in Mexico with 220 copies, an unprecedented release for a Mexican film in that country. “The film is about the business of death,” said the director in interviews, “something that you hear very little about in Mexico.”

“The idea for the film came through something that happened to Antonio Armonía, the film screenwriter, when his uncle died on a Sunday, the same day as the former president of Mexico Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. Antonio told me about the ordeal to try to bury him. And because they couldn’t afford the prices the agencies were asking, they just opened the Yellow Pages and found a small, modest funeral parlor. And that’s when a whole surreal chain of events unfolded. Everything that happens in the film up to the second half are true facts. Antonio Armonia’s uncle died on a Sunday in September 2004. The family had hired a “zopilote” (vulture) to cremate the body only to discover later that it had been sold to a university morgue in Morelos.”

At the time Armonia and Gruener had been working on another script, but when the screenwriter relayed the gruesome news, Gruener knew this was the story they should be working on. The film opened in Mexico with great success and Gruener felt the audience understood exactly what they were watching. They knew that such corrupted transactions were not only possible but happened frequently in Mexico.

PRINCIPAL CAST: Silverio Palacios, Humberto Busto, Maya Zapata, Fernanco Becerril, Rosa María Bianchi, Raúl Méndez, José Angel Bichir, Mayahuel del Monte.

AWARDS: Best Film, Best Director (Daniel Gruener) Best Actor (Silverio Palacios), Best Actress (Maya Zapata), Best Second Actor (Humberto Bustos) – “DIOSAS DE PLATA AWARDS”, Mexico 2008.

Life long friendships, family, soccer and comedy are an irresistible combination when it works well. And so they do in this fast paced entertaining film for the whole family.

This is the story of Carlos Julio “el gordo” (fatty) a barber, Alfredo Rangel “el flaco” (skinny) his life long friend, and a group of soccer buddies from the neighborhood.

Since childhood el gordo has always played soccer with his friends in the corner field. But despite his enthusiasm for the sport, he rarely touched the ball. It seems nobody ever wanted to give it to him. And so it was clear that soccer was not going to take him far. El gordo then decided to get married, have kids, follow his father’s trade and become a barber.

Not so with el flaco who even as a kid seemed to played like a professional and had a natural gift for the game. It was this gift that allowed him to take it up professionally and start a succesful career in Colombian soccer. A career that eventually sent him to Buenos Aires to become part of one of Argentina’s best First Division soccer clubs.

All these events triggerd an incredible admiration in el gordo for his friend. An admiration that he has taken into his barber shop, where he created almost a virtual altar to the triumphs of his friend. An altar that makes his other soccer friends green with envy and jealousy.

But an unfortunate event drastically changes the life of his dear flaco. El gordo then decides to take the bull by the horns and offers unconditional support to his friend in trouble. Even if this could become extremely uncomfortable for everyone concerned or perhaps not…

In the last couple of years, the Spanish film industry has had an unprecedent impact in Europe and the rest of the world. Its success has elevated the films to a sophisticated production machine that is working like a clock. Good actors, good writers, good directors and good productions. Bienvenido A Farewell-Gutman is a good example of all these.

A tighted paced, surreal corporate tale about ambition and the moral dilemmas caused by the desperate search for social and professional success.

The Human Resources Department of the pharmaceutical company Farewell-Gutman has lost its committed director. Mr. Ruiz is dead. “Long live the King.” Still Lázaro, Adela and Fernando, some of his best employees, are not going to miss him.

While the corpse is still warm, the devoted subordinates start the race for promotion.

The relations between them will change forever when the eccentric executive Luger arrives. The prominent executive comes from Head Office to choose who is going to lead the Department and order things around. What will they be capable of doing to get the coveted post?

In Patagonia’s Peninsula de Valdés, in the south of Argentina, there is a little privileged town of which its inhabitants are proud.

The small population makes a good living out of the local natural resources. Everyone agrees that kind of life, close to the Peninsula’s clear seawaters, where you can find whales, sea elephants, penguins, and every imaginable kind of wild life, is ideal.

¿But what would happen then when one day an outsider arrives with unclear intentions?

Tomás Bullrich (Federico D’Elía) from big city Buenos Aires, is sent to the small town of Puerto Pirámides in Peninsula de Valdés to fulfill a corporate mandate. There he will have to get a consensus from the inhabitants about the installation of a tourist venture. The tourist complex will disregard the prosperous but small economy of the town, but that’s not something for him to talk about with anyone.

After gaining the people’s trust and discovering a wonderful communal world, he’s unmasked by the unscrupulous Captain Morelo (Alfredo Casero), the owner and master of the place, who exposes his intentions thereby leaving his mission to founder.

But soon opportunity knocks and he meets José (Miguel Dedovich), a tough long resident of the place who knows the ins and outs of the region better than anyone. They become friends and interchange an invaluable amount of information each one offering the other their very different life experiences. And through their mutual help, they will each meet the women of their lives, José will find Alina (Georgina Barbarossa), and Tomás will find the local teacher Cecilia (Isabel Macedo).

An eco-humoresque-dramatic-romantic story set around Puerto Pirámides, Trelew, Punta Tombo and Puerto Madryn in Argentinean Patagonia.

This film is the story of the Bossa Nova, the Brazilian music born in the early fifties that attained definitive international recognition in 1962 with the memorable concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

The music went on to revolutionize Brazilian popular music composition. The melodies, jazzy guitar chords arrangements and romantic lyrics of the new music, were a striking entrée into a contagious climate. It presented a gentle, cheerful country of flowers and smiles. And it started a radiant time when a group of youngsters from Rio’s South Zone turned the country’s music upside down. It was definitely Brazilian music but it sounded very different. Immediately, there were cries and heated arguments of those both for and against the innovation. Forty years later, and with a growing acclaim around the world for Bossa Nova, the matter has been settled.

Two of the great composers from this movement: Roberto Menescal, composer of the classic “O barquinho” among many others, and Carlos Lyra, of the timeless “Lobo bobo”, “Coisa mais linda” and “Voce e Eu”, tell the story. As they revisit some of the sites where Brazilian popular music history was made -the beaches of Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, for example- this life long friends musicians give us the complete “goods”. Anecdotes, funny stories about the initiators of the movement; the personality and musicians traits of the “avant garde” heroes, and a sense of what was it like to have lived in an unforgettable era. But they not only explain. They play and sing to us too.

The film includes interviews and extensive musical performances with all the prominent Bossa Nova creators. From Joao Gilberto to Alaide Costa, Chris Delano, Sergio Ricardo, Johnny Alf, Joao Donato, Lenny Andrade, and many more. Special prominence is given to Antonio Carlos Jobim, his career, and the duo with Vinicius de Moraes. There’s even a brief but felt moment between Jobim and Sinatra performing.

Director Carlos Ferrand was born in Lima, Perú, and for the past 35 years has worked as screenwriter, director of photography and director. He lives in Montreal with his family, and “Americano” is his personal journey through the back alleys of the Americas.

A movie with an eye to the past, part diary, part investigational, it’s a film that is committed, poetic and above all, profoundly human.

Travelling from Patagonia to Nunavut over a period of four years, Ferrand revisits some of the men and women he befriended during his wanderings through the Americas: a singing filmmaker; a cook who knows how to talk to animals; a hunter of shadows and “disappeared” peoples; masked wrestlers; human sacrifices; a prayer to the Virgen de Guadalupe; men and women who struggle for justice; gospel singers; professors and family members, and the cook of his childhood home. All have lived meaningful lives and carry the memories with them; all have stories to tell that bear witness to the political upheavals of recent years. And the documentary gives them their moment in the spotlight.

“This film”, says Ferrand, “comes from the need to find my familia americana. Part road movie, quest for sense and Fata Morgana, the voyage avoids the highways that lead toward the skycrapers and other symbols of success. Instead, it follows the roads where friends walk in search of a full life which is too often denied. Women and founding nations show the way. And the search for an identity is the silent background of these stories. I am an americano. Like a worn coat, a bit too large but comfortable, that definition suits me just fine.”

“At the editing stage of the film, we left the scenes we captured to stand alone without sound or visual dissolves, without any effects, and accompanied by music only when it comes from our characters, long time friends whose tender guidance help us feel the pulse of the Americas.”

This is a film that will strike a chord in the hearts and minds of all those who have been involved, near or far in the adoption of Chinese girls here in Canada. But this story takes place in Spain...

In a nearby future, Zhao is 25 years of age. She has gone with her boyfriend Martín to a house on the beach and it is in this house where her love story unfolds. She is writing about her own life. She was adopted by a Spanish family and her happy childhood suddenly changes with the death of her adoptive parents. Zhao starts to hide in her own world and begins taking Chinese classes. Divided between her memories and her love for Martín, she has to take a crucial decision.

The film is narrated not from the parents’ point of view but by the adopted girl, now a woman. It is a poetic and at the same time critical examination of the situation faced by many adopted Chinese children in the world. The film touches on sore points including the disappearance and murder of hundreds of western women and also women of Chinese origins arriving in that country in recent years.

Zhao remembers:
“In April 1999, a paper clip shaped my destiny. That year, 3.000 girls arrived in Spain. Another 7,000 became citizens of the United States followed by Canada. These countries headed what was baptized as “the boom in Chinese girls”.

Without moving from their seats, the gods of The Popular Republic of China’s bureaucracy decided the fate of thousands of Chinese girls. It was about matching a girl to probable parents as similar as possible in skin, color, facial features. They call all the girls they found in the same month: Zhao. It doesn’t mean anything. Three days is not enough time to think of a pretty name. My name wasn’t even registered by the Government in China. It was the same for half a million girls abandoned that year.

My sister wanted to know what Group Zero was. She was happy to learn that is was a group from Vancouver, Canada, committed to Chinese culture and already established in many countries.”

Based on the novel by Danielle Girard, this tantalizing and moving drama between mother and daughter has French star Isabelle Huppert giving one of her best performances ever. After a third suicide attempt, Danielle (Isabel Huppert) is placed under psychiatric observation in a private clinic in Paris. Her daughter Sophie (Mélanie Laurent) with whom she has never been able to have a relationship, haunts the very fibre of Danielle’s dreams and waking hours. She is trying to recuperate from her self inflicted wounds, but is not able to speak about her past. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Nielsen (Greta Scacchi), is not ready to give up on her just yet, even if Danielle won’t speak about her traumas. And in time she convinces Danielle to put down her thoughts in paper. This she does in little, cathartic doses, that allow the words to flow out of her. From these, Dr. Nielsen begins to catch a glimpse of her patient’s tortured reality. Still wholly and inexplicable absorbed by her role as a mother, Danielle sees in her daughter only a hostile, intrusive, if not violent element to her life.

Under Dr. Nielsen’s care, Danielle slowly emerges from her incoherence. In more and more emotionally engaging ways, she manages to find the words to articulate and understand the roots of her distress and despair.

Danielle soon realizes that if she is to make any progress on emotional and psychological levels, she and Sophie must work through the obstacles of anger that divide them. With great effort she patiently examines her past –an isolated childhood, an unwanted pregnancy borne without consent, and the chasm of intolerance that yawned between mother and daughter from the moment of Sophie’s birth.

But Sophie unexpectedly reappears, undermining Danielle’s fragile process of self-analysis. She sees Danielle not as a mentally ill patient, but in the only way that she can see her: as her mother, and she berates her mercilessly, causing Danielle to slide back into herself.

One day, while being transferred to another clinic, Danielle runs away from the transport van and wonders through the streets of Paris where she has a real, different kind of adventure. Shortly after, she’s back at the clinic where she receives unexpected news. Though hard and painful, this news, and perhaps only this news, will forever change Danielle’s life and create for the first time, a future for her.

After the sudden death of grandfather Moishe, the rituals of mandatory reclusion begin and with them a catharsis that leads the family and friends to rediscover the ties that bind them, the secrets that have been hidden, and their relationship to their environment.

According to Jewish belief, from the moment a Jew is born, two angels accompany him or her: an angel of light and an angel of darkness. With the passing of Moishe, his family and friends gather to sit shivah, the seven-day Jewish mourning ritual. The spirit angels, Aleph and Bet, divine accountants, only visible to the camera, watch over the family and calculate which angel will accompany Moishe's soul to the afterlife. The odds are against Moishe from the beginning.

Family dysfunction aside, Moishe's friends are all attending for their own motives. And to make matters worse, while performing his duties, a member of the Sacred Funeral Society, is taking advantage of the family for all they're worth: charging for kosher food, slippers and various shivah goods.

Obsessed with staying young, Moishe's daughter Esther, falls apart; crying over a lost tooth and announcing that she is going to have plastic surgery to fix her entire body immediately after the shivah. Meanwhile, Moishe's son, Ricardo, is attempting to convince a doctor attending the shivah to give his girlfriend an unmentionable remedy, while his wandering eye leads him to his dead father's lover, Julia Palafox, the mistress for whom Moishe left his family some years earlier.

Which angel will win the battle for Moishe's soul? If the shivah reveals anything, it's that Moishe's family and friends loved him with all his flaws and mystery- and most of all his spirit.

SOPHIA, YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW is a feature documentary that retraces the life of Italy’s SOPHIA LOREN, one of the world iconic actresses. Through an exclusive interview with the Neapolitan actress, with images provided by Istituto Luce in Rome, and interviews with the “who” is “who” of international cinema, such as Ettore Scola, Claude Chabrol, Woody Allen, Lina Wertmuller, Francesco Rossi, Dino Risi, the documentary offers a fascinating glimpse into her life through the films she made. A story that started when Sophia left a small Italian town in Pozzuli, conquered Rome and then Hollywood, won two Oscars and earned her place among the most popular stars of world cinema.

With plenty of original footage from her long career, the film focuses on the unforgettable roles which “La Loren” interpreted on screen: roles that made her an Italian symbol worldwide.

Director Massimo Ferrari’s notes
The aim of this documentary is to present a portrait of one of the last great divas as she has never been portrayed before: as seen through the eyes of her characters. We chose to base the documentary on the actress’s four most representative films: Marriage Italian Style/Matrimonio all’italiana; Two Women/La ciociara; Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow/Ieri, oggi, domani; A Special Day/Una giornatta particolare.

The artistic formula for the film was naming each of the four chapters after the characters interpreted by Sophia Loren in the films: “Filomena” (Marriage Italian Style), “Cesira” (Two Women), “Mara” (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow), “Antonieta” (A Special Day), in an attempt to strike a balance between the real person and the characters she interpreted. The actress presents each of the above mentioned characters while we also see precious scenes from her films. We discover an actress who lives through her characters because this is her own special way of interpreting life. With drama and hilarity, embodying comedy and tragedy as if the most authentic part of her is only revealed by the characters she has played. The attention paid to the editing of this documentary, including the selection of the most important and moving scenes of the films in question, allows us to follow an emotional, rather than biographical journey through the life of the star.

I thank Sophia Loren for all her help during the making of this documentary and also those who participated in making it possible.

A surprising and corrosive black comedy/drama directed by the talented Argentinean duo of Flavio Nardini and Cristian Bernard.

The film revolves around the stories of five close university friends: Alexis, Franco, Guido, Melina and Lacrose, meeting again at a graduation celebration. It happens in the Buenos Aires of 2002, a year after the biggest economic/banking collapse in the history of Argentina. And it starts with a full ex-alumni classroom where one of their professors is addressing them:

“I’d like to tell you a strange dream I had this morning. On this dream, God appeared to me. Several professors accompanied me from different parts of the Universe. The situation was very tense, as God accused us of having wasted an entire generation…”

The film then takes place on just one night, the night that followed the alumni meeting. Narrated in three interlaced stories, the main characters will have something in common in all of them: they have been given second chances.

Guido and Melina, a former couple meets again and discover that love between them is still alive but this could now have serious consequences.

Luis María, the former naughty boy of the class, by now has read too many books by best-selling writer Paulo Coelho. Especially one about the “warrior of light”. Wishing to be a good boy, he decides to attend the meeting to ask forgiveness from “Little Germán”, the shy classmate he tortured throughout high school.

The third story belongs to Lito, a nostalgic citizen of Buenos Aires, who has forged a successful career abroad. But unfortunately, success must be paid for: from the moment he left the country, Lito is unable to cry. But during this night with his classmates, change is in the air.

“Today is September 19, 2008, and nothing is resolved. The murdering of women in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, continues. The climate of violence and impunity keeps growing without any concrete action to end this feminicide. This is a matter of world interest. A question of crime against humanity. Even more when it is the product of international organized crime and involves the government authorities.” (Translation into English from the web: www.mujeresdejuarez.org)

Marisela Ortiz, Nuestras Hijas de Regreso A Casa A.C. (Our Daughters Coming Back Home):
“Women disappear in Ciudad Juárez. Unless their kidnappers decide to make them reappear dead with evidence of brutal torture and murdered, raped and body parts dismembered or burned. It is a terrible pain for this society. Is there nothing that will move those who could do something about it?

The desperation and fear of the families living in such insecurity. Seeing their daughters leave the house not knowing if they will return. These are not motives that will move anyone to stop these crimes.

To date these crimes are unpunished, the disappeared women are search by no one, and the murders and kidnappings continues without anyone held accountable. We invite the government to take action and to stop ignoring that in this border something very serious is occurring.

Lets stop being accomplices of the situation. Lets make a desperate call to anyone whose conscience demand making a minimum effort to back this fight against feminicide that seems to have no end.

You mark the limits. It seems the violence in this city has no borders. The murders of young and poor women in Ciudad Juárez started to be documented in 1993. In 2001 the terror expands to the city of Chihuahua. Where and when will it end?” Marisela Ortiz, Nuestras Hijas de Regreso A Casa A.C. (Our Daughters Coming Back Home).

Centered in the disappearances and murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, this feature documentary is an extraordinary investigative document that leaves no stone unturned. The story follows a mother who looses her daughter –a maquilladora worker just arriving from Veracruz- whose face represents “the living” from Juarez and two journalists who are experts in the case, and who explain the hidden side of these events.

After seeing and hearing the popular Uruguayan composer/singer Daniel Viglieti’s first song at the opening of this documentary, the theme is quite clear: to whom belongs the land of Uruguay today?

On January 15, 2006, the workers of Bella Unión occupied the land they were working. They had had it with the old promises of the “progresista” government. What these workers were doing could be interpreted as building a bridge between the fighters of today asking “land for the one who works it” and those from the 60’s and 70’s carried on by their fathers. A fight that was conducted by their farmer leader Raúl Sendic, who later founded the Tupamaros in Uruguay.

Forty years have passed and the reality of the situation is the same. Conceived as a tool for reflexion and debate, the film acknowledges that bridge and gives visibility to the legendary “Zafreros” (sugar cane workers) from the Uruguayan north, known as “los peludos” (the hairy ones).

But, although not part of this film, it seems that change in Uruguay is happening. On August 9th, 2008, thousands of students met at the Paranymph of the University of the Republic of Uruguay, to discuss strategies for the direction the country might take. Youth from trade unions, student unions, civil society and organizations from all over the country, were present. Also, the Second People’s Congress met in Montevideo, the country’s capital, for three days in mid August. It gathered 2.500 delegates from social organizations in the country, representing over 2 million Uruguayans. The participants, under the theme “One people, one congress, all hope” debated the most urgent social, political and economic issues of the country.