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Invercine, Gema Films and Gaman Cine, top producers on Latin America’s film-TV scene, will bring to market their latest productions at Sanfic Industria in its industry centerpiece, WIP Iberoamericana.
Turning on Alejandro
Zambra, one of Latin America’s most-read novelists whose “Poeta Chileno” is currently being adapted by Oscar winning Sebastián Lelio (“A Fantastic Woman”), “Zambra,” directed by Paula Leonvendagar, is backed by Invercine.
Led by Macarena and Matías Cardone, the Chilean production house has proved a pioneer on Latin America’s premium series scene, behind top-notch premium series such as “News of a Kidnapping,” “Dignity,” “Ramona” and “Mary & Mike.”
Directed by Agustina Pérez Rial, “The Other Voice,” an intimate first-person portrait of Mercedes Sosa, is lead produced by Nicolás Gil Lavedra (“Las grietas de Jara”) at Argentina’s Gaman Cine, co-founded with Emiliano Torres, director of “El invierno.”
The debut of DP-turned-helmer Marchesini Weihmuller, nominated for his cinematography on Clarisa Navas’ “One in a Thousand,” “Hot Springs” is produced by Gema Juárez’s Allen’s Gema Films, behind “Reas,” ”The Castle” and “Pornomelancholy.”
Co-producing WIP Iberoamericana title “The Grass Along the Path,” Cinestación, headed by Dominga Sotomayor (“La Perra”) and Omar Zúniga (The Strong Ones”), was also behind “Chile ’76.”
“The Grass Along the Path” is directed by Fernando Lavanderos, one of the mid-2000s “Novíssimo” Chilean Cinema movement which heralded the emergence of a clutch of young star auteurs. Nicolas Videla, a leading director on Chile’s LGBTQ scene, helms “The Criminal Record of Madame Wittmann.”
Leonvendagar, Pérez Rial and Marchesini Weihmuller are just beginning their careers, as are other directors of titles at WIP Iberoamericana.
The industry strand, for example, will highlight a second chance later life dramedy from Panama’s Mariel García Spooner whose debut, 2021’s “Algo Azul,” proved a HBO Max U.S. pickup and Prime Video buy for Latin America, and “Las Visitantes” from Afro-Colombian producer-director Yurieth Romero Velásquez, producer of the Premios Macondo nominated short “El hombre sin cabeza.”
“The Cry of Serankwa,” marks the second feature from Yull Núñez, whose debut, “El Silencio de los Palafitos,” scored an honorable mention at Miami’s Ibero-American Film Festival, and is spoken in Iku, an Indigenous language in Colombia’s highest mountains.
A closer look at the eight titles:
“The Cry of Serankwa,” (“El grito de Serankwa,” Yull Núñez, Cinequipos Producciones, Colombia)
In Colombia’s mountains, two Iku people best friends Marcelo and Anibal prepare a rite to save the world from ecological decimation. The ritual fails and Anibal departs the mountains for a big city. Years later, now a mining engineer, he returns with a project that threatens his ancestral village’s ecosystem and his friendship with Marcelo, the new guardian of the mountains. The film “invites us to reflect on our relation with the environment, life and death,” Nuñez tells Variety.
“The Grass Along the Path,” (“Las hierba de los caminos,” La Forma Cine/Cinestación)
Pinky, an insecure teenager, is part of a socially diverse gang marked by violence and rigid gender roles, which are challenged when he meets Valentina. A Chilean coastal town coming of age drama recreating the social milieu of 1990. The latest from Lavanderos, also director of fest favorite “Lost North” and Chilean smash hit documentary “Eterno.” “Grass” is produced by Clara Taricco (“La Once,” “Yo no soy de aquí,” “Los Niños”).
“Hot Springs,” (“Las termas,” Armin Marchesini Weihmuller, Argentina)
Over 80, Evangelina and brother Luis vacation briefly at a hot springs hotel spa. He talks 12 to a dozen, which riles Evangelina, but they love and depend on each other. A touching hybrid vision of old age, its infirmities and resilient zest for life. “A film built around apparently trivial conversation, but every word and silence talks about the passage of time, of bodies which fail and an obstinacy to go on living,” Marchesini Weihmuller tells Variety.
“The Other Voice,” (Agustina Pérez Rial, Gaman Cine, Fiørd Estudio, Mercado Films, Lorolo, Vorágine, Unafilms, Argentina, Spain, Brazil)
The great Argentine folk-singer Mercedes Sosa came across on stage as an imposing warm stage presence and an unyielding champion of the poor. “The Other Voice” delivers a more intimate first-person portrait of Sosa, exiled from Argentina over 1979-82: desperately lonely, fragile and homesick. “When I sing, nobody notices my pain,” she writes to friend Hugo Otero in one of the over 100 letters on which the film in based. A revelatory doc-feature.
“The Criminal Record of Madame Wittmann,”(“El Prontuario de Madame Wittmann,” Nicolas Videla, Anastasia Benavente, Cinespecie, Chile)
The return to Chile of legendary transsexual vedette Evelyn Wittmann, now 73, whose life story crosses with lost documentary “Prontuario,” from Hernán Garrido. The latest from Videla (“Naomi Campbel,” “El Diablo es Magnífico,” “Travesti Odyssey”), Benavente and Cinespecie, respectively protagonist and producer of “Travesti Odyssey.”
“La Residencia,” (Mariel García Spooner, Hello October, Panama)
Three friends in their mid-60s, facing financial uncertainty and fearing loss of independence, unite to create a seniors’ social club. Starring Colombia’s Xilena Aycardi and Marcela Carvajal, a triple Málaga Festival WIP winner, gathering industrial support as it moves through its final stages of post-production ahead of festival launch. “The film explores friendship, the fear of growing older and above all the possibility of starting over without losing who you are,” says García Spooner.
“Las Visitantes,” (Yurieth Romero Velásquez, La Caracola Films, Belle Films, Pablo Mondragón, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Mexico)
Five women cross paths every Sunday in the entry line of a prison, united by the incarceration of their loved ones, making them face the same pivotal decisions, such as seeking freedom or confronting the past. Their lives intertwine even more after the escape of two prisoners, planned by two of the women. “Born from a personal experience, ‘Las Visitantes’ focuses on women, especially Afro-Caribbean, who sustain, care and resist from outside, revealing the emotional loads, shame and emotional economies implied by loving someone in prison,” says Romero Velásquez.
“Zambra,” (Paula Leonvendagar, Invercine, Tierra de Juego Foundation, Chile)
The engaging “Zambra” follows poet Alejandro Zambra in Mexico on his daily round with his young son, buying chiltepe, battling with his latest novel, expanding it to rewrite, his possible inspiration in his grandmother, and back in Chile, at a book signing and reflecting on literature an an escape from chronological time. “A profound reflection on literature, exploring the nature of its language, the creative processes through which it emerges and the technology it represents,” Leonvendagar (“Creo“) tells Variety.
