Rio de Janeiro 2007

"Silent Light" by Carlos Reygadas

Rio is a city that loves cinema, and its film festival reflects that love. This year's edition of the Rio International Film Festival surpassed last year's attendance, resulting in a big festival for big cinema buffs.
    As usual, the focus of the festival is "Premiere Brazil", the competitive showcase of unseen new cinema from Brazil. Shorts and features compete for prizes awarded by an international jury, this year presided over by the great Brazilian director of photography Affonso Beato, known for the lightness he created for Pedro Almodóvar's motion pictures.
    Apart from that, "Festival do Rio" also directed considerable attention towards new Latin American films. And we can surely mention the good news coming from that region, with countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay demonstrating the media hype around their filmmakers has been building for good reason.
    But even with all the movie love, Rio is still a festival where human contact counts for a lot. Everyone, from the volunteers to the organizational staff, exudes great joy and good vibes. During these two weeks, the 300,000-strong audience enjoyed parties, tourist activities and the already famous "feijoada" (stew of beans).
    And, most importantly, the Rio International Festival loves FIPRESCI. At the closing gala, artistic director Ilda Santiago thanked our organization more than a couple of times. Sometimes, critics are welcomed rather than shunned. In Rio, no film journalist feels like the bogeyman. (Rui Tendinha)

Silent Light (Stellet Licht) by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas was selected, by our jury, best film among the Latin American films shown in various sections of the festival. Like Carl Theodor Dreyer's Word (Ordet), Silent Light develops the story of a woman (of a minority in a remote Argentinean province, the Memnonites) who dies and finds back to life. A review follows.

At the occasion of the Rio Festival, Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro (photo, Berlin 1998) received FIPRESCI's Lifetime Achievement Award

Details of the Prize
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, September 20 — October 4, 2007,
www.festivaldorio.com.br

Reports
Guilty or Innocent? Marcelo Janot worries about the real message of José Padilha's feature debut Elite Squad, a film which "depicts Rio de Janeiro's daily reality of violence, hypocrisy and corruption". More
Filmmaking against all Obstacles. Chiara Arroyo Cella considers the films of Carlos Reygadas, the renaissance of Mexican cinema, and the stumbling blocks in its way. More
Déjà Vu in Rio. Claudio Cordero refers to films in which it's "evident that the manipulation of time is a technique widely accepted in contemporary cinema." He talks in particular of Lust, Caution (Ang Lee), Atonement (Joe Wright) and Estômago (Marcos Jorge). More
One Take Only. Rui Tendinha notices an explosion of showy shots at the Rio International Film Festival.. "More than the static frame, the strength of the single take seems to be more present than ever in contemporary filmmakers' intentions." PVC-1 and The Waltz, says Tendinha, "are literally composed of just one shot". More

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