by the El Reportero’s wire services
The Spanish-Argentinian co-production Wild Tales has won a total of eight Premios Platino of Iberoamerican Cinema during the second annual award show recognizing the best work of the film industry in Iberoamerica.
Damian Szifrón’s Wild Tales, which started as the front-runner with 10 nominations, won the awards for Best Iberoamerican Feature Film, Best Director, Best Performance by an Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Sound Direction, Best Editing and Best Art Direction.
In the Best Actor category, the award went to Oscar Jaenada for his work on Cantinflas, while the film of Alberto Rodríguez, La isla mínima (Marshland) won for Best Cinematography. Two Brazilian productions dominated the categories for Best Animated Feature Film and Best Documentary, with O Menino e o mundo (The Boy and the World) and O sal da terra (The Salt of the Earth) respectively. As for the Best Iberoamerican Feature Film Debut, the award went to the Spanish-Venezuelan film La distancia más larga.
Critics and audiences have made Wild Tales the highest grossing film in the history of Argentina. Its director, Damian Szifron, emphasized that “it is the end of a long road” – a road that began at the Cannes Film Festival and has led him to earn almost a hundred awards including an Academy Award Nomination and now eight Premios Platino of Iberoamerican Cinema.
The Spanish actor Oscar Jaenada received from a trio of presenters (Kate del Castillo, Miguel Bose and Dario Grandinetti) the award for Best Performance by an Actor for his role as Mario Moreno in the Mexican film Cantinflas. The award for Best Performance by an Actress, which went to Erica Rivas for her performance in Wild Tales.
Italian square named after novel One Hundred Years of Solitude
Italy today perpetuates the memory of Gabriel García Márquez by naming a square in the village of Perdasdefogu One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is the most famous novel by the Colombian writer.
During the ceremony a plaque will be unveiled with the dates of birth and death of Garcia Marquez and the public will be able to read the first pages of the novel that tells the story of the Buendia family in the imaginary town of Macondo.
The initiative is a tribute to the 1982 Nobel Literature Prize winner, also known as one of the greatest exponents of magic realism, a literary movement founded in the mid-twentieth century.
In his prolific creation, Gabo brought to life unforgettable characters: Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza, protagonists of his famous novel Love in the Time of Cholera.
García Márquez also created unmatched stories that stand out in the world and Latin American literary scene as No One Writes to the Colonel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Of Love and Other Demons.
Record number of films in Film Festival Mar del Plata
The 29th edition of the Film Festival Mar del Plata, which will commemorate the 60th anniversary of this event, has registered a record of two 2,112 productions until today, organizers reported.
In total, 318 short and feature films from the USA are registered; 798 from Latin America; 832 from Europe; 126 coming from Asia; 25 from Oceania, and 13 others from Africa. On its website, the organizing committee also states that in the special celebration of this year more than one million 500,000 pesos will be distributed (over $163,000) as prizes.
