Toulouse Cinélatino Meetings: an eclectic list of winners for a bountiful offer
The curtain has fallen on the 36th edition of the Rencontres du cinéma latin-american de Toulouse. And the juries of the various festival prizes honored films which well represent the variety of the offering both in terms of the issues raised and the way of telling the stories. A few more favorites that we hope to see soon on screens in France.
Cinélatino: the curtain has fallen on the 36th edition (2024) of the Latin American Cinema Meetings in Toulouse. ©DR
By: Isabelle Le Gonidec
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My film tells stories that I have heard over the twenty years that I have been working in this region of the Colombian Pacific, says director Santiago Lozano Alvarez. His feature film
I Saw Three Black Lights
won the Grand Prize for the festival's favorite, awarded by a jury composed in particular of the Cuban director Ernesto Daranas (director of
Chala, a Cuban Childhood
and
Sergio y Serguei
and of whom we hope to be able to quickly talk again about the beautiful documentary
Landrian
) and the composer Harry Allouche, creator of the soundtrack for the shock film
The Colons
, released last December.
The actor Jesus Mina is José de los Santos in the film “I saw three black lights” by Colombian Santiago Lozano, winner of the Grand Prize for Favorite at the 36th edition of the Rencontres du cinéma latin-american de Toulouse. © Cinélatino 2024
Choco...
José de los Santos, the main character of Lozano's film, is the custodian of an ancestral culture, that of the Afro-descendant peoples of this mountain region of dense forests where the blacks who fled the slavery of the cane plantations took refuge sugar. José de los Santos knows the language of plants, that of signs. He also knows the prayers that soothe the souls of the dead. And the dead are legion, in this region of Chocó where there are guerrillas, armies, mercenaries and gold miners. The river always returns their bodies and José dos Santos gives them the last sacraments mixing, as its name indicates all the saints, those of Colombia, Spain and Africa. The rituals linked to death are those which best represent these cultures of the African diaspora, their political and cultural resistance and the syncretism at work in this region of the Pacific, said Santiago Lozano during the public presentation of the film. The actor (and teacher) of theater from the city of Cali, Jesus Mina is José de los Santos, an old wise man with a massive figure and an attentive gaze behind his homemade glasses. A magnetic presence on screen, he participated in the construction of the character, explained Santiago Lozano. Many characters literally haunt the film, looking straight at the camera, as if questioning the viewer: are they alive or dead? And are those who are alive only dead people on borrowed time? The forest and the river – hats off to cinematographer Juan Velasquez, are almost characters in their own right and death is on the lookout. Coming from Cinéma en construction and the Cinéfondation in Cannes, it is a film that we hope to see on screens in France.
Death is also at the heart of the second feature film, the Brazilian
Estranho caminho
by Guto Parente, which won the special mention from the Coup de cœur jury. A film already selected at the San Sebastian festival last year. Young filmmaker, David returns to his hometown to present his experimental film at a festival, but due to the Covid pandemic, it is canceled. He is forced to ask his father for shelter, and settles back into the family apartment where this grumpy old man lives, played by Carlos Francisco, a giant of Brazilian cinema who we had previously seen in
Bucarau.
Between family comedy and fantasy film, the film swings and we let ourselves be taken in by the storms that shake this improbable and endearing couple, served by an inventive staging, which juggles between past and present, dream and reality.
...to female pleasure
The Audience Award - Fiction –
La Dépatch du Midi
and the Fipresci Prize rewarded
Memories of a Body on Fire
by Costa Rican Antonella Sudasassi Furniss. A daring film both in its subject matter and in its staging - we are between documentary and fiction - which dismantles the shackles imposed by morality and religion on women to prevent their bodies from living, from loving throughout their lives. , to enjoy. Most often in voice-over, three voices tell the story: their childhood and adolescence, the corseted upbringing, the first stirrings of love, life as a wife and marital rape. And the discovery of pleasure too, alone or in pairs. The voices are embodied on screen by a woman of around 70 years old who moves around her house, cleaning out her memories and her papers. The actress Sol Carballo, a discreet but very embodied presence, filmed on edge, challenges the camera and the viewer with her gaze. A difficult subject, almost taboo especially in societies with a Christian and macho culture, finely handled by the director who had already mentioned this theme in her previous documentary
El despertar de las hormigas.
Finally, another favorite shared this time with the juries of the CCAS fiction prizes – gas electricians prize and the SFCC prize, the Mexican film
No nos moveran
by Pierre Saint-Martin Castellanos. Selected, like Lozano's film, by Cinéma en construction 2023, this black and white feature film tells the story of Socorro's desire for revenge, fifty years after the death of his brother Coque, murdered during the student repression in the Place de Tlatelolco in October 1968.
Protesters march in Zocalo Square, in Mexico City, during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Tlatelolco student massacre in 1968, October 2, 2018. RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP
She is looking for the soldier who tortured Coque, because justice has not been done in this tragic episode in contemporary Mexican history. The film is carried by Socorro, an elderly lawyer damaged by cigarettes and tequila (?), but with fierce determination, sublimated on the screen by the actress Luisa Huertas. She is both tyrannical and tender, funny and frightening and the film plays on these two registers. The character of Sidarta, Socorrro's right-hand man, borrowed from Cantinflas, the Hispanic Charlie Chaplin, his cobbled-together lexicon and his machine-gun delivery. The format of the image is reminiscent of the television series that one of the characters makes fun of, its rounded edges and the black and white evoke the thriller. Another film that we hope to see on screens in France.
The actress Luisa Huertas is Socorro in the Mexican film “No nos moveran” by Pierre Saint-Martin Castellanos, crowned with the CCAS fiction prize – gas electricians prize – and SFCC prize at the 36th Latin American Cinema Meetings in Toulouse. © Cinélatino 2023 / Cinema under construction
►
The complete prize list on the Cinélatino website
► The documentary
Reas
by Argentina's Lola Arias
received the Audience Award - Documentary -
La Dépatch du Midi
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