Toulouse – Rencontres Cinémas d'Amérique Latine

Outstanding: "Cochochi"

The real name of this festival, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, is "encounters". And it is the perfect name, since the "Rencontres Cinémas d’Amérique Latine", in the southern-French city of Toulouse, is a true meeting point in all senses. Filmmakers, actors, festival directors, critics and people from all areas of the industry, as well as the amazing crew of over 300 enthusiastic volunteers that hold the festival together, all gather and socialize in a most friendly atmosphere.
    This year's anniversary allowed the festival to show not only recent productions from the continent in the feature fiction, documentary and short-film programs, but also to rediscover some of the titles that marked these past two decades.
    Within the Rencontres, the 13th edition of "Cinéma en Construction", the initiative that helps Latin American projects make their way through post-production, was another true "encounter", where six projects (three from Chile, and the others from Mexico, Argentina and Brazil), chosen out of 101 submissions, were presented to a professional audience. During these two full-day work-sessions, the third edition of "Cinéma en Développement" allowed 14 other projects, still in a very early phase, to be pitched before the same audience who would later provide both feedback and possible partners.
    The FIPRESCI jury, coming from Poland, Argentina and Chile, concentrated on the first-features section "Compétition Découvertes" and on the debuts included in "Coup de Coeur". Our choice went to Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdena’s outstanding work Cochochi, which also won the festival’s official award. (Pamela Biénzobas)

Rencontres Cinémas d'Amérique Latine, Toulouse, March 28 — April 6, 2008, cinelatino.free.fr
FIPRESCI Prize: Cochochi (Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdena). Details

Reports:

Latin American Cinema in Search of its Identity. With an increasing competition from multimillion dollar productions, Paulo Pécora argues that the Latin American cinema can only put up a sporadic resistance, generally a weak and disorganized one, with the only answer being in creating a strong and independent cinema.
Coming of Age in the Sierra. Pamela Biénzobas Saffie believes Cochochi is a remarkable debut by directors Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas, not least for its authentic honest and dignified portrayal of young Raramuri people in rural Mexico.
    See also Violeta Kovacsics' review of Cochochi written at the occasion of the Gijón Film Festival of 2007
A Scorching Day in Porto Alegre. The one-shot film Still Orangutans is an adaptation of a selection of Brazilian short stories by Paulo Scott who, like the director Gustavo Spolidoro, lives in Porto Alegre. Tadeusz Szczepanski underlines that this is not a debut preoccupied with art for art´s sake.

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