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Costa Rica may not be known as a haven for filmmaking talent, but with the development of its film commission and the Costa Rica International Film Festival, that’s starting to change. The latest edition of the festival showcases a number of promising young directors from the region — some born there, others who came later — throughout the lineup. Here’s a look at a few of them in their own words.

Read More: Costa Rica’s Plans to Build Its Film Industry

Nathalie Álvarez Mesén

Age: 28

Latest Project: “Filip” (National Short Film Competition) is about a seven-year old boy who admires his older brother Sebastian most of all. One evening, Filip sees something unexpected happen between Sebastian and Sebastian’s best friend. He doesn’t know how to handle it. Filip questions his admiration for his older brother when he discovers that he is homosexual. But even living in a...

I caught up with Argentine producer Gema Juarez Allen at the Panama Film Festival. Since seeing (and falling in love with) the Argentine road movie “Road to La Paz”/ “Camino a La Paz in Guadalajara and interviewing its director, Francisco Varone, I was interested in meeting her as well, even more so because her other film, the Colombian drama “Oscuro Animal” which premiered in Rotterdam and won four prizes at Mexico’s Guadalajara International Film Festival in March 2016, for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Cinematography and has been sold to seven territories. “Oscuro Animal” is about three women fleeing armed conflict in Colombia. It was directed by Colombia’s Felipe Guerrero, an editor on “La Playa DC,” “Perro come perro” and “El Paramo”. It received funding from the Hubert Bals Fund and World Cinema Fund.

In Panama Gema was quite busy, not only with “Road to La Paz” but participating on the panel, Your Project in Motion: Coproduction and Financing along with Panamanian producers and directors, Delfina Vidal (“Caja 25”), Annie Canavaggio (“Breaking the Wave”) and Abner Benaim (“Invasion”) who also happens to be Gema’s partner.

As one of Latin America’s most active producers, Gema’s extensive experience international coproduction was invaluable and she shared it freely at the panel. Her participation in workshops in Europe, such as the Eave Producers Workshop and Eurodoc, has played a key role in establishing her international connections. While at Eave, she met Greek Boo Productions and Germany’s Ingmar Trost of Sutor Kolonko who came on board to coproduce “Oscuro Animal”.

“Road to La Paz” director, Francisco Varone said,

"In 2012 we submitted the project to Visions Sud Est in Switzerland. I was almost working by myself on the film at this time and then started working with a larger Argentinean production company, Concreto Films, owned by Juan Taratuto, a big film director who was directing TV commercials and said he’d help. They had a tough time finding investors so he introduced me to Gema Juarez Allen (whose recent film “Invasion” is the story of the U.S. invasion of Panama in the 1980s). She is a well-known documentary producer with experience in coproductions who knows how to find money and understands the value of going to festivals. She said she would do it as her first fiction film and went to San Sebastian Film Festival’s Foro de Coproduccion in 2013. There she had lots of one-on-one meetings and met Julius Ponten our Dutch coproducer who got funding from the Netherlands Film Fonds and Gunter Hanfgarn (“Bad Hair”) who applied to Ezef, an Evangelistic Fund for films from the south (one of the backers of “Timbuktu”). “

Read more on “Road to La Paz” here.

Gema continued this story when we spoke:

Juan liked the project but it was not in his domain so he sought me out. I read the script about two men and one car and thought, “This is easy”. But of course it was not. A road movie is the most difficult of all genres, and with animals, and covering two countries! Working with Pancho (Francisco Varone), he is the kind of director I like. I find the shooting is usually more important than the people, but with Pancho, the crew is important and he balanced the people and the shoot, so after all, it was ‘easy’.

The film is being sold internationally by FiGa. It is doing well in Argentina with 35,000 admissions, 20 copies and now in its fourth month in the cinemas. It is a ‘word of mouth’ film.

Sl: What are you working on now?

Gema Juarez Allen: I am now filming “Mapa Mudo”/ “Silent Map”.

A doc project by Felipe Guerrero, Nicolás Rincón and Jorge Caballero, based on video letters of three Colombian filmmakers who left their home country in the late 90s.

And I am developing a new project with the directors of our breakthough film from 2011, “Revenge of the Antipodes”/ “¡Vivan las antípodas!“ which screened in Venice. It’s called “Cro-goo-fant” and is a documentary for children, a funny story about animals. The director, Victor Kossokovsky, did a short doc for kids before.

I am also working with Andres di Tella, the most important documentary filmmaker and founder of Bafici in Argentina. It’s a very personal story about the avant garde art Institute lead by his father, the Instituto Di Tella.

And I am working on “Veterans” about the Falkland Islands War. Bertha Fund is backing it. Lola Arias is directing this documentary feature about the unexpected consequences of war on its protagonists, about the way memory is turned into fiction. I am looking for coproducers now. It is a different look at United Kingdom and Argentina vets that is at the same time both serious and humorous. We are creating a film around a theater play which will open in London this May. It began with the London International Theater Festival along with the Royal Court House Theater. It is not filmic; Lola Arias’ language is so refreshing; she is from the theater.

A winner of the 2015 Berlinale Co-production Market Pitch, Abner Benaim’s “Plaza catedral,” is also in the works. It is a tangled false friendship drama with thriller elements, set against the background of Panama’s social divide.

And I am currently producing Benaim’s doc, “My Name is Not Ruben Blades” with Ruben Blades.

Also in the works: the next film from Manuel Abramovich (“La Reina”), a Mar del Plata 2014 Works in Progress winner for “Solar” – a small but remarkable heart-warming doc-feature whose power struggle between director and subject adds unusually honest depths to a bio-portrait of someone who claims to come from the sun.

Sl: You are so prolific! How did you get started in this?

I studied anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Rio de Janeiro but didn’t like academia and so I studied film at the National Film School and thought I would combine the two. In England I studied Visual Anthropology and worked as a P.A. and as a researcher for the BBC for a “Discovery Channel” type of channel and then I returned to Argentina.

Between 2003 to 2008 I worked at Cine Ojo the oldest doc company in Argentina and at Habitación 1520 Producciones (“Imagen Final”, “Criada”, “Los Jóvenes Muertos”, “Dulce Espera”) before creating my own company Gema Films in 2009.

Sl: You were coordinator of DocBuenos Aires until 2003, a training initiative as well.

Gema Juarez Allen: I have produced 17 films with lots of help.

I was a Sundance Documentary Fund grantee on two films. My projects have been supported by Visions Sud Est, Tribeca Film Institute, Hubert Bals Fund, Idfa Fund, Cinereach, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, DocStation Berlin, et al. I received the Arte/Bal Award in 2008 for Upcoming Producers at Bafici.

I coproduce with Wg Film (Sweden), Majade FilmProduktion (Germany), Gebrüder Beetz (Germany), Lemming Film (Netherlands) and Producciones Aplaplac (Chile).

I have received awards at Berlinale, Bafici, Roma, Guadalajara, Silverdocs, among many others. Gema is part of EuroDoc since 2010 and is a member of the Board of Adn, the Argentinean Documentary Filmmakers Network.

Sl: What advice do you have for young filmmakers?

Gema Juarez Allen: First find a good project. It is very competitive and you must have an original perspective on the subject. There are so many ideas everywhere, it must be good.

Producers should be highly-organized. Be sure to fully develop projects before presenting them to partners and funding decision makers. The key elements to present when the project is fully conceived are an overview, a synopsis, a director’s statement, a brief treatment, a financial plan, a budget, a production timetable and bio-filmographies.

Find a producer with experience. I’m always interested in new directors and new voices.

The best opportunities to find partners are at festivals, markets and above all workshops. These are good places to find colleagues and mentors to give you great feedback. Diana Elbaum is my mentor from Eave and she is always looking at what I’m doing. And most of my coproduction partners came from the Eave and Eurodoc workshops.

Beyond Eave and Eurodoc, which are very open to Latin American projects, other good workshops are Docmontevideo, Guadalajara, Typa, Cinergia Lab, Idfa Summer Academy, Chiledoc, Berlin Talent Campus, Documentary Campus, Morelia Lab among others.

Good international funding sources are Ibermedia and also the “Plus” schemes associated to funds such as Creative Europe, World Cinema Fund, Hubert Bals Fund and the Idfa Bertha fund. Other funds are Fonds d’Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, the Sundance documentary fund, Visions Sud Est, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Doha Film Institute and Sorfond, for co-productions with Norway.

In terms of leading international markets, Cannes, Rotterdam’s Cinemart, Berlin’s European Film Market, Ventana Sur and Guadalajara – and for documentaries – starting with Idfa Forum and Hotdocs, followed by Meetmarket Sheffield and Docmontevideo.

It is also important to choose the right festival to premiere a project since it’s virtually impossible to premiere a picture in a small festival and then get a larger fest to screen the film. It’s also important to explore the work-in-progress sidebars that now exist at most Latin American festivals, including Iff Panama’s Primera Mirada competition.

State funding sources in Latin America include Dicine, in Panama, Incaa in Argentina, Proimagenes in Colombia, Brazil’s Fundo Setorial do Audiovisual, the Fondo Audiovisual in Chile, and Imcine in Mexico. The selection criteria used by these national funds varies considerably. Proimagenes in Colombia, which only finances around 14 films per year last year had three pictures at Cannes.

Over the last three or four years many national funds have created specific lines of funding for co-productions, through bilateral agreements, such as that between Brazil’s Ancine and Argentina’s Incaa, which grants $250,000 per pic supported. As a result of such bilateral agreements Brazil, for example, is now a key partner for all of Latin America.

“I’d like to make the second or third films of my directors. They’ve all been such good experience. We’ve grown together,” Juarez Allen told Variety at the Mar del Plata Festival.

The International Film Festival in Guadalajara (FICG31) celebrated its 31th anniversary this year and moved to the center of town, a move toward regaining its early luster within the galaxy of younger festivals now competing for resources in México. With its myriad of activities beyond the mere programming of films, its mentoring other festivals such as Puerto Vallarta and Oaxaca, I would give it two thumbs up.

On Friday, March 11, it announced its awards and officially announced next year’s Guest of Honor, Germany, closing with the German film, Doris Dörrie’s “Fukushima Mon Amour” (Isa: The Match Factory). This film is a deeply moving homage to the spirit of humanity, recovery and love as a German clown, played by Rosalie Thomass and her clown partners, the wonderful Moshe Cohen of San Francisco and Nami Kamata, visit the people remaining at the devastated town of Fukushima and Rosalie bonds with the last geisha of Fukushima played by the beautiful Aya Irizuki. It premiered at the Panorama of the Berlinale where Doris won the C.I.C.A.E. Award and the Heiner Carow Prize.

Official Competition Winners FICG31

Mezcal Award for Best Mexican Film to “Maquinaria Panamericana”/ “Panamerican Machinery”

Mezcal jury

The jury consists of 30 students from related fields from universities or major schools of Mexico, Latin American, Europe and Canada. Serving as a sort of tutor, Jose Ramon Mikelajauregui, Director of Dis was responsible for the academic program held at FICG31.

The Mezcal Award consisting of 500,000 Mexican pesos went to the director, Joaquín del Paso for “Maquinaria Panamericana”/ “Panamerican Machinery”, a portrait of an inefficient factory on the edge of Mexico City where the workers lock themselves in when the owner is found dead in the back of the warehouse and they discover he has been bankrolling the wages out of his own pocket for years.

A coproduction of Mantarraya Producciones, it also won the Fipresci Prize at its premiere in the Forum of the Berlinale. International sales agent (Isa) is the new Paris-based sales and co-production company Luxbox whose

co-ceo Fiorella Moretti was formerly head of sales at Ndm, the Mexico City-based sales company she set up with director Carlos Reygadas and producer Jaime Romandia of Mantarraya Productions in 2012 to sell “Post Tenebras Lux”.

Co-ceo Hédi Zardi previously worked in sales for Fortissimo and went on to Unifrance, the French cinema promotions agency and then to the PR and events company Le Public Systeme, where he was in charge of industry initiatives at Marrakesh and Deauville festivals.

The pair got to know one another through Gabriel Ripstein’s “600 Miles”, winner of the best first feature last year at the Berlinale, which Zardi associate produced and Moretti sold.

Special Mention went to “Margarita” directed by Bruno Santamaría Razo

Infinitum Aaward Grante dby the Public, consisting of 150,000 pesos, went to " El Charro de Toluquilla" (Isa: Imcine) by José Villalobos Romero, a doc about mariachi singer Jaime Garcia Dominguez who became fascinated by the recklessness and ladies´ man lifestyle of the classic Mexican movie characters with one difference: he´s got HIV. Jaime faces an inner maturing process as he decides between keeping this lifestyle or becoming a family man. It also won the award for Best Iberoamerican Documentary of 150,000 Mexican pesos or its equivalent in dollars to the director.

Best Latin American Fiction Film consisting of 250,000 Mexican pesos or its equivalent in dollars went to the production company of Felipe Guerrero’s film “ Oscuro animal”, about three women forced to flee their homes in a war torn region in Colombia. The film also won Best Actress Award (s) for Marleyda Soto, Luisa Galiano and Jocelyn Vides Meneses and Best Photography Award to Fernando Lockett.

A coproduction of Argentina, Greece, Netherlands, Germany and Colombia, it is being sold internationally by FiGa. It previously played in the Rotterdam Film Festival’s Tiger Competition and Ficci Cartagena 2016’s Official Dramatic Competition. At the Berlinale’s Efm 2016 it was part of the World Cinema Fund’s First Look section. Financing for the film came from Colombia’s Proimágenes, Argentina’s Incaa, Netherlands’ Hubert Bals Fund, Fundación Typa, and Germany’s Nrw and World Cinema Fund.

It also won the award for Award for Best Iberoamerican Director consisting off 150,000 Mexican pesos or its equivalent in dollars, because “almost wordlessly it portrays a complex and painful situation in Colombia which is all too common in Latin America.”

Special Feature Film Jury Award Iberoamerican Fiction of 125,000 Mexican pesos or its equivalent in dollars, went to the production company of “The 4th Company”/ ”La 4a Compañía” by Amir Galván Cervera and Mitzi Vanessa Arreola, based upon a true story about an underdog prison (American-style) football team that, against all odds, wins against the police force team. The jury stated that it “considers it a cinematic achievement about a shameful moment in the history of Mexico to be remembered and not to be repeated”. Adrian Thief also won for Best Actor, and he is that! There is no Isa of record, so those ISAs reading this should check it out on Cinando! It’s a seller!

Award for Best Latin American Film of 125,000 Mexican pesos or its equivalent in dollars went to the superb debuting director from Puerto Rico, Angel Manuel Soto for“La Granja”/ “The Farm”. Also the first film produced independently by Tom Davia’s Cinemaven (but check out his credits!), this film is a full-circle “Crash”-style story that rivals “Gemorrah” in its look at the barrio called “The Farm” or “La Granja” in which the lives of a midwife, a young boxer, a janitor, a mute kid and a young couple collide in a story about the desperate pursuit of happiness on the mean streets of La Granja. Shot on a budget of $250,000, this film took four years to complete as the Puerto Rican government film establishment sought to block its production and release – and you can see why. It previously played in Fantastic Fest.

This is another discovery film with no Isa, and I am sure the agents have already locked their eyes upon writer-director Angel Manuel Soto. He lives in Los Angeles. “Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico. Son of a car salesman and a flight attendant. Studied architecture and advertising. Always loved films. Now he makes them. He is a cinephile. He travels all over the world doing it, including Australia, Thailand, Cambodia, France, USA, and Puerto Rico. He is not planning on stopping.”

Best Screenplay Award went to Marina Seresesky for “La Puerta Abierta”/ “Open Door” (pictured above). Marina also directed this first film. She has made two shorts previously. After Ficg it will play at Sofia Iff 2016 in International Competition, San Diego Latino 2016 and Chicago Latino 2016 Film Festivals.

Movies Recommended for Selection for the Golden Globes Awards 2017 are “The 4th Company” and “Ciudades Desiertas” / “Deserted Cities” by Roberto Sneider.

Documentary Jury Special Award of 100,000 Mexican pesos or its equivalent in dollars to the director Jorge Caballero for“Patient”/ "Paciente" Isa Rise and Shine, a new company in Germany, picked up the film at its world premiere in Competition at Idfa.

Best Iberoamerican Short Film Award D of 75,000 pesos or its equivalent in dollars to the directors Miguel de Olaso and Bruno Zacharias for the 10 minute short “ Los Angeles 1991”.

Special Mention went to “Juan's Sundown”/ "El Ocaso de Juan" by Omar Deneb Vargas Juárez

Rigo Mora Award for Best Mexican Animated Short Film of 100,000 Mexican pesos went to the director Alejandro Rios for “ The Cats”/"Los Gatos."

Maguey Award for best Lgbt film went to "Theo et Hugo dans le meme bateau"/ "Paris 05:59" of France, directed by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau.

Special Mention went to “Neon Bull” of Brazil, directed by Gabriel Mascaro for its poetic and innovative illustrating of how traditional ideas of masculinity slowly have been made obsolete inviting us to question our own perspectives on gender bias.

After the Awards, Ficg gave a great closing night party. Lots of good people, new and old friends, great salsa band, danced til 3! Here’s me with my friend David Martinez of Raindance Film Festival. Coming from Guadalajara, living in London, this year he came home with Elliot Grove of Founder and Director of Raindance, and Aaron Wileman of Imaginative Exposure who gave a Master Class on Film Funds and Product Placement.

And of course I presented my own book in its abridged, Spanish language format, published by the University of Guadalajara Press, Cine Iberoamerican Industria y financiamiento por pais (Iberoamerican Cinema: Industry and Financing by Country). Read more about it here.

Gabriel Mascaro’s selection from Brazil-Uruguay-Holland has won the official narrative competition award as the Colombian festival came to a close on Monday.

Jurors Michel Franco, Mike Downey and Ailín Salas awarded Neon Bull (Boi Neon, pictured) the $15,000 Cine Colombia prize.

Best director went to José Luis Guerín for Spain’s La Academia De Musas.

The Fipresci Prize went to Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ recent Sundance world premiere Much Ado About Nothing (Chile).

The Cine Colombiano official competition prize and an $11,000 award was presented to Noche Herida (Colombia-Belgium) by Nicolás Rincón.

A special jury prize went to Siembra (Colombia-Germany) by Angela Osorio and Santiago Lozano, while best director was awarded to Luis Ospina for Todo Comenzó Por El Fin. Ospina’s film also won the audience award.

Top documentary honours went to El Viento Sabe Que Vuelvo A Casa (Chile) by José Luis Torres Leiva, and best director to Jorge Caballero for Paciente (Colombia). The jury prize was awarded...

George Gittoes. Snow Monkey and Bill Guttentag and Michael Ware.s Only the Dead will screen at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Idfa).

Filmed in Afghanistan in 2014 when foreign forces leave and an internal power struggle begins, Snow Monkey will screen in official competition at the festival which runs November 18-29.

Produced by Lizzette Atkins and Gittoes, the final film in his What the World Needs Now! trilogy premiered at Miff this year and followed the lives of those living in the Yellow House at Jalalabad, a collective of artists, film makers and social revolutionaries as they again face the threat of a Taliban-ruled society. It was funded through Screen Australia's Signature Documentary program.

Only the Dead, which follows Ware, an Australian journalist for CNN and Time Magazine as he journeys through the deepest recesses of the Iraq War, will unspool in the Best of Fests section. Patrick McDonald produced with Ware.

George Gittoes’s Snow Monkey (pictured) and Nick Read’s Bolshoi Babylon among the 15 titles in competition.

The 28th Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) has unveiled its line-up, including its main competition.

The festival, which runs Nov 18-29, will comprise 319 titles (from 3,425 submissions), 78 of which receive their world premieres at Idfa. A total of 50 Dutch productions are included in the program, spread across the various strands.

A total of 15 films will compete in the Idfa Competition for Feature-Length Documentary, including Tom Fassaert’s A Family Affair, which opens the festival on Nov 18.

The jury, made up of Laurent Bécue-Renard (France), Mahamat Saleh Haroun (Chad), Hanna Polak (Poland), Jonathan Rosenbaum (USA) and Barbara Visser (the Netherlands) will present the Vpro Idfa Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary, a cash prize of €12,500 ($14,000) and the Idfa Special Jury Award for Feature-Length Documentary worth €2,500 ($2,800).

The titles include (synopses provided by Idfa):

Bolshoi Babylon by Nick Read (Russia / UK)

A revealing...

Pickpocket drama from Girl With a Pearl Earring director is one of 33 film projects in development being presented at the Bogota Audiovisual Market (Bam).

Filmmakers will begin talks with potential partners in Bogota today at the fifth edition of Bam (July 14-18), Colombia’s biggest film market, organised by the Bogota Chamber of Commerce and Proimagenes Colombia

The projects include Fresh, a new film to be directed by Peter Webber, who made Oscar-nominated Girl With a Pearl Earring and more recently Emperor.

The feature is being produced by Colombia’s 4Direcciones Audio-Visual, which has raised nearly 25% of its estimated $2.5m budget, and centres on a teenage pickpocket against the backdrop of hip hop and graffiti in Bogota.

The project, which is hunting co-production, investors and distribution partners, was previously selected for Rotterdam’s Cinemart and the Berlinale Co-production market.

More than 250 applications were submitted for this year’s Bam Projects, covering films in...