“The Echo” — or rather, El Eco — is the name of a tiny rural village in Mexico’s Puebla state that sufficiently captivated Mexican-Salvadorean filmmaker Tatiana Huezo into filming it over the course of 18 months, observing its changes in weather, fortune and the temperament of its few, tightly bonded residents in fine, fraught degrees. But there’s more to the title of Huezo’s return to documentary filmmaking — following the major success of her 2021 fiction debut “Prayers for the Stolen” — than a mere marker of place: Examining the unique ties that bind farming families, where everyone’s welfare hangs on the same unkind elements, this exquisitely textured film observes how children’s lives echo those of their parents, repeating for generations on the same constantly inconstant land, until somebody breaks the pattern.
There’s something of an echo, too, between Huezo’s last film and this one, even as they nominally...
There’s something of an echo, too, between Huezo’s last film and this one, even as they nominally...
- 2/17/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
To return to documentary filmmaking after her lauded debut fiction feature “Prayers for the Stolen” (“Noche de Fuego”), Tatiana Huezo laid down a set of parameters to follow.
“I didn’t want to include any interviews, any narration or any voice-over,” she told Variety. “The Echo” (“El Eco”), world premiering at Berlinale’s Encounters sidebar, sometimes feels like a fictional story as a result.
“After ‘Prayers..,’ I felt like returning to the language of the documentary, but most importantly, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, in the smallest details in everyday life,” she mused. Its trailer bows exclusively in Variety.
Research on the docu took some four years. The Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker found the titular village of El Eco in the state of Puebla, a four-hour drive from Mexico City. After visiting several rural schools, she zeroed in on the village, captivated by its name and even more so after...
“I didn’t want to include any interviews, any narration or any voice-over,” she told Variety. “The Echo” (“El Eco”), world premiering at Berlinale’s Encounters sidebar, sometimes feels like a fictional story as a result.
“After ‘Prayers..,’ I felt like returning to the language of the documentary, but most importantly, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, in the smallest details in everyday life,” she mused. Its trailer bows exclusively in Variety.
Research on the docu took some four years. The Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker found the titular village of El Eco in the state of Puebla, a four-hour drive from Mexico City. After visiting several rural schools, she zeroed in on the village, captivated by its name and even more so after...
- 2/16/2023
- by Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
The AcademyThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents The Academy Awards, which is popularly known as the Oscars.Tnm StaffA collage of actors Suriya and KajolActors Suriya and Kajol are among the invitees to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The organisation has extended an invitation to 397 artists and others to join the organisation in 2022. "Membership selection is based on professional qualifications with an ongoing commitment to representation, inclusion and equity. This year's class of invitees includes 71 Oscar nominees, including 15 winners. The Academy is the organisation which presents The Academy Awards, popularly known as Oscars. Other Indians who made it to the list include filmmakers Reema Kagti, Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas. Indian documentary Writing With Fire, made by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, was recently nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category at the 94th edition of the Academy Awards. The documentary chronicled the rise of Khabar Lahariya,...
- 6/29/2022
- by BNitin
- The News Minute
The unforgettable final shot of Tatiana Huezo’s last film, the songlike documentary “Tempestad,” is the silhouette of a figure swimming in blue water – an amputee, missing one of her legs from the knee down. Combining grace and trauma, the image is also striking because of its perspective: She’s floating but, seen from below, from down in the soundless depths just where the water starts to get murky, it looks like she’s flying. With Un Certain Regard title “Prayers for the Stolen,” .
Seen through Huezo’s eyes, the hollow in the earth that Rita (Mayra Batalla) and her pretty 8-year-old daughter Ana (Ana Cristina Ordóñez González) are digging in the ground near their scruffy house’s front door is a grave and a womb, a trap and a refuge. It is designed to fit Ana’s little frame snugly, and the girl has already been...
Seen through Huezo’s eyes, the hollow in the earth that Rita (Mayra Batalla) and her pretty 8-year-old daughter Ana (Ana Cristina Ordóñez González) are digging in the ground near their scruffy house’s front door is a grave and a womb, a trap and a refuge. It is designed to fit Ana’s little frame snugly, and the girl has already been...
- 7/22/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Two decades on from the star-making one-two punch of “Amores Perros” and “Y Tu Mamá También” Gael García Bernal’s sophomore directorial film “Chicuarotes” exists very much in the shadow of those two modern Mexican classics. And while measuring his well-intentioned, patchily engaging and largely well-crafted new film against such competition might seem unfair, in truth it’s unavoidable: “Chicuarotes” seems to actively court the comparison, with its rambunctious, street-level story of a volatile teenager flirting with criminality as he tries to bootstrap himself, his girlfriend and his best friend/sidekick/whipping boy out of their hardscrabble circumstances in the slums of Mexico City.
But where Iñarritú and Cuarón’s films also dealt in socially-aware, dramatically dissonant portraits of young Mexicans on the cusp of manhood, they both emitted an infectious, buoyant energy. Here, despite a handful of inspired moments and a rough-hewn but dynamic presentation — due largely to Dp Juan Pablo Ramirez’ lively,...
But where Iñarritú and Cuarón’s films also dealt in socially-aware, dramatically dissonant portraits of young Mexicans on the cusp of manhood, they both emitted an infectious, buoyant energy. Here, despite a handful of inspired moments and a rough-hewn but dynamic presentation — due largely to Dp Juan Pablo Ramirez’ lively,...
- 10/24/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
“Forgiven but not forgotten” is a platitude we routinely use to end disputes both petty and grievous, but it’s the reverse outcome — the mass forgetting of crimes and conflicts never truly resolved — that itches away at a post-Franco Spain in “The Silence of Others.” Soberly chronicling the ongoing legal battle of General Franco’s victims and their descendants to exhume (in some cases quite literally) the skeletons of an ugly past protected by Parliament, Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo’s straightforward but emotionally acute documentary works as both a thorough history lesson and a work of contemporary activism. Much-garlanded on the documentary festival circuit, it should benefit from the arthouse imprimatur of executive producers Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar when it opens theatrically on May 8, before finding a wider audience on streaming platforms.
Bahar and Carracedo’s film boasts less stylistic brio than you might expect given the Almodóvars’ backing,...
Bahar and Carracedo’s film boasts less stylistic brio than you might expect given the Almodóvars’ backing,...
- 4/24/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Tempestad has been selected as Mexico’s official entry to the 90th Academy Awards in the foreign-language film category, and was also recently nominated for an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary. It was also the winner of the Best Documentary at the last edition of the Cinema Tropical Awards, and its Dp Ernesto Pardo was nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers Award.
Its U.S. theatrical premiere is October 20 at Anthology Film Archives who is co-presenting with Cinema Tropical, its distributor.
Utilizing the direct testimony of two women whose lives have been torn apart by the cartel-fueled terror racking Mexico in the 21st century, Tempestad is an impressionistic portrait — at once lyrical and shattering — of the human cost of the country’s lawlessness.
This extraordinary film by Salvadorian filmmaker Tatiana Huezo, whose Ariel Award (among others) winning doc was The Tiniest Place/ El lugar más pequeño, will shake...
Its U.S. theatrical premiere is October 20 at Anthology Film Archives who is co-presenting with Cinema Tropical, its distributor.
Utilizing the direct testimony of two women whose lives have been torn apart by the cartel-fueled terror racking Mexico in the 21st century, Tempestad is an impressionistic portrait — at once lyrical and shattering — of the human cost of the country’s lawlessness.
This extraordinary film by Salvadorian filmmaker Tatiana Huezo, whose Ariel Award (among others) winning doc was The Tiniest Place/ El lugar más pequeño, will shake...
- 10/4/2017
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Pablo Larraín’s “Jackie” may be getting Oscar buzz, but it’s not his only film up for contention. His Spanish-language picture “Neruda,” starring Luis Gnecco and Gael García Bernal, has also been well received by critics, especially at the 2016 Fenix Awards — it took home four prizes, including Best Picture and Best Editing.
The drama, which is also Chile’s official Oscar entry for Best Foreign-Language Film, tells the story of poet Pablo Neruda (Gnecco), arguably the most famous communist in post-wwii Chile. When the political tides shift, he is forced into hiding with tenacious police inspector Oscar Peluchoneau (Bernal) hot on his trail.
Read More: How The Fenix Awards Became Mexico’s Secret Weapon at the Oscars
The third annual Fenix Ibero-American Film Awards took place on December 7 in Mexico City and honored the best in film from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
Another big hit of the night...
The drama, which is also Chile’s official Oscar entry for Best Foreign-Language Film, tells the story of poet Pablo Neruda (Gnecco), arguably the most famous communist in post-wwii Chile. When the political tides shift, he is forced into hiding with tenacious police inspector Oscar Peluchoneau (Bernal) hot on his trail.
Read More: How The Fenix Awards Became Mexico’s Secret Weapon at the Oscars
The third annual Fenix Ibero-American Film Awards took place on December 7 in Mexico City and honored the best in film from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
Another big hit of the night...
- 12/8/2016
- by Liz Calvario
- Indiewire
'The Peanuts Movie': 2016 Best Original Score Oscar contender along with 111 other titles. Oscar 2016: Best Original Score contenders range from 'Mad Max: Fury Road' to 'The Peanuts Movie' Earlier this month (Dec. '15), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made public the list of 112 film scores eligible for the 2016 Oscar in the Best Original Score category. As found in the Academy's press release, “a Reminder List of works submitted in the Original Score category will be made available with a nominations ballot to all members of the Music Branch, who shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five achievements. The five achievements receiving the highest number of votes will become the nominations for final voting for the award.” The release adds that “to be eligible, the original score must be a substantial body of music that serves as original dramatic underscoring, and must...
- 12/24/2015
- by Mont. Steve
- Alt Film Guide
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 112 scores from eligible feature-length motion pictures released in 2015 are in contention for nominations in the Original Score category for the 88th Academy Awards.
The eligible scores along with their composers are listed below, in alphabetical order by film title:
“Adult Beginners,” Marcelo Zarvos, composer
“The Age of Adaline,” Rob Simonsen, composer
“Altered Minds,” Edmund Choi, composer
“Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip,” Mark Mothersbaugh, composer
“Anomalisa,” Carter Burwell, composer
“Ant-Man,” Christophe Beck, composer
“Beasts of No Nation,” Dan Romer, composer
“The Big Short,” Nicholas Britell, composer
“Black Mass,” Tom Holkenborg, composer
“Bridge of Spies,” Thomas Newman, composer
“Brooklyn,” Michael Brook, composer
“Burnt,” Rob Simonsen, composer
“By the Sea,” Gabriel Yared, composer
“Carol,” Carter Burwell, composer
“Cartel Land,” H. Scott Salinas and Jackson Greenberg, composers
“Chi-Raq,” Terence Blanchard, composer
“Cinderella,” Patrick Doyle, composer
“Coming Home,” Qigang Chen, composer
“Concussion,...
The eligible scores along with their composers are listed below, in alphabetical order by film title:
“Adult Beginners,” Marcelo Zarvos, composer
“The Age of Adaline,” Rob Simonsen, composer
“Altered Minds,” Edmund Choi, composer
“Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip,” Mark Mothersbaugh, composer
“Anomalisa,” Carter Burwell, composer
“Ant-Man,” Christophe Beck, composer
“Beasts of No Nation,” Dan Romer, composer
“The Big Short,” Nicholas Britell, composer
“Black Mass,” Tom Holkenborg, composer
“Bridge of Spies,” Thomas Newman, composer
“Brooklyn,” Michael Brook, composer
“Burnt,” Rob Simonsen, composer
“By the Sea,” Gabriel Yared, composer
“Carol,” Carter Burwell, composer
“Cartel Land,” H. Scott Salinas and Jackson Greenberg, composers
“Chi-Raq,” Terence Blanchard, composer
“Cinderella,” Patrick Doyle, composer
“Coming Home,” Qigang Chen, composer
“Concussion,...
- 12/17/2015
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Well-told, well-shot and featuring a strong, but restrained and internalized performance from actress Abbie Cornish, director David Riker's "The Girl" is a mannered and in-the-pocket indie drama that might be a total subdued winner if it weren't for its dubious political ideologies, an irony considering the film's DNA is clearly built on humanist tendencies. While the Australian Cornish does have mild issues with sticking the landing on her Texas accent, it's her meatiest role since the deeply underrated "Bright Star" and lesser-seen, but no less valuable indies like "Somersault" and "Candy" (the latter featuring her going toe-to-toe with Heath Ledger and giving as good as she got) and she makes the most of it.
She leads the pic as the emotionally distraught and financially destitute Ashley (played quietly with an internal smoldering), and as the narrative unfolds through the mundane, we learn that her introverted angst and suffering stems...
She leads the pic as the emotionally distraught and financially destitute Ashley (played quietly with an internal smoldering), and as the narrative unfolds through the mundane, we learn that her introverted angst and suffering stems...
- 4/22/2012
- by The Playlist
- The Playlist
Cannes Film Festival, Critics' WeekRodrigo Pla's "The Desert Within" ("Desierto Adentro") is a powerful fable about the obsessive pursuit of redemption and the toll it takes on all concerned. Following hard on the heels of his award-winning "La Zona", the movie places Pla in the front rank of Mexico's current cinematic resurgence and will play well in all Spanish-speaking territories, not to mention arthouse cinemas elsewhere.
The movie opens on a shot of a man carving a series of altar-pieces in a country church, then flashes back to 1926 for the first of four chapters -- each given a heading: sin, penance, the sign, and the pardon that never comes -- which spreads the action over two decades.
In the beginning is an action by the protagonist Elias Mario Zaragoza) during the peasant uprising of that year. This results in the destruction of the local San Isidro church and the death of innumerable townspeople, including his wife (in childbirth), one of his sons and the local priest.
Fearing divine retribution against his surviving children, including the newly-born Aureliano (named after the son who died), Elias devotes his life to restoring the old church to its former splendor. The story unfolds as seen from the point of view of Aureliano (Diego Catano) who provides occasional voice-over commentary and who we at last realize to be the altar-piece craftsman.
The movie has epic sweep, particularly the early scenes in which the issues of faith and conscience are presented with an intensity worthy of a Graham Greene. There are frequent religious references but without religiosity.
Pla uses a limited color palette with an emphasis on browns and olive greens, amid rain and mud in the opening chapter and parched desert at the close. At moments he also uses animated inserts, a device which might have been irritating but which, in context, appears fitting.
By the close Elias has become a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions, and Pla ends this absorbing movie with the Nietzsche epigraph from which it draws its title: "The desert grows, and woe to him who conceals the desert within him..."
Production company: Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE), Beret Films.
Cast: Mario Zaragoza, Diego Catano, Memo Dorantes, Eileen Yanez, Luis Fernando Pena, Jimena Ayala, Katia Xanat Espino.
Director: Rodrigo Pla.
Screenwriters: Rodrigo Pla, Laura Santullo.
Producers: German Mendez, Rodrigo Pla.
Photography: SergueiHeiblum Saldivar Tanaka.
Editor: Ana Garcia, Rodrigo Pla.
Production design: Gloria Carrasco, Antonio Pla, Juan Jose Medina, Rita Basulto
Music: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo.
Sales: FilmSharks International
No rating, 112 minutes.
The movie opens on a shot of a man carving a series of altar-pieces in a country church, then flashes back to 1926 for the first of four chapters -- each given a heading: sin, penance, the sign, and the pardon that never comes -- which spreads the action over two decades.
In the beginning is an action by the protagonist Elias Mario Zaragoza) during the peasant uprising of that year. This results in the destruction of the local San Isidro church and the death of innumerable townspeople, including his wife (in childbirth), one of his sons and the local priest.
Fearing divine retribution against his surviving children, including the newly-born Aureliano (named after the son who died), Elias devotes his life to restoring the old church to its former splendor. The story unfolds as seen from the point of view of Aureliano (Diego Catano) who provides occasional voice-over commentary and who we at last realize to be the altar-piece craftsman.
The movie has epic sweep, particularly the early scenes in which the issues of faith and conscience are presented with an intensity worthy of a Graham Greene. There are frequent religious references but without religiosity.
Pla uses a limited color palette with an emphasis on browns and olive greens, amid rain and mud in the opening chapter and parched desert at the close. At moments he also uses animated inserts, a device which might have been irritating but which, in context, appears fitting.
By the close Elias has become a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions, and Pla ends this absorbing movie with the Nietzsche epigraph from which it draws its title: "The desert grows, and woe to him who conceals the desert within him..."
Production company: Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE), Beret Films.
Cast: Mario Zaragoza, Diego Catano, Memo Dorantes, Eileen Yanez, Luis Fernando Pena, Jimena Ayala, Katia Xanat Espino.
Director: Rodrigo Pla.
Screenwriters: Rodrigo Pla, Laura Santullo.
Producers: German Mendez, Rodrigo Pla.
Photography: SergueiHeiblum Saldivar Tanaka.
Editor: Ana Garcia, Rodrigo Pla.
Production design: Gloria Carrasco, Antonio Pla, Juan Jose Medina, Rita Basulto
Music: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo.
Sales: FilmSharks International
No rating, 112 minutes.
PARK CITY -- Based on a horrific expose of an international sex slave network, "Trade" is an earnest attempt to dramatize the network of Internet sex "tunnels." Unfortunately, the film's horrific and important subject matter is distilled into a lackluster lump of generic buddy-movie/road-picture components. "Trade" certainly will incite early boxoffice based on its provocative subject matter, but this humdrum film does little justice to the young girls who are prey to these bands of international slime.
Plotting along from the squalor of Mexico City, where brigands capture girls for delivery to New Jersey where they will be auctioned off on an Internet site, "Trade" lumbers along a plot course that, basically, explicates what a good documentary filmmaker could do in half the time and with considerably more of an emotional wallop.
The narrative centers on the cruel abduction of a Polish girl (Alicja Bachleda)and a 13-year-old Mexican girl (Paulina Gaitan) whose combative brother, Jorge (Cesar Ramos), sets off on a trans-America trail to find his younger sister. Careening into the U.S., Jorge runs smack dab into a U.S. lawman, Ray (Kevin Kline), who is on some sort of "insurance" case. Further down the road a piece, we learn Ray is an emotionally wounded cop on a personal mission.
While Kline bravely undertakes the role of lawman with a vendetta, walking as stiff as Dirty Harry and emoting as minimally as Chuck Norris, he never gets a handle on the role. Bathetic phone calls to his wife about their cat convince Jorge that he's dealing with a candy-ass gringo. At this juncture, "Trade" careens into battling-buddy territory as the macho Jorge and the stoic lawman trade barbs, complain about the other's music and eventually bond.
Unfortunately, screenwriter Jose Rivera's banter and dialogue is as leaden as his drab expositional structuring. The dialogue is so uninspired it's as if listening to someone reading subtitles. Similarly, Marco Kreuzpaintner's slow-footed direction never puts the pedal to the metal; in essence, this "important" road picture/chase/buddy movie is devoid of visual accelerants. It is further slowed by editor Hansjorg Weissbrich's tentative braking -- car driving and other padding consistently defuse the story line.
The musical score by Jacobo Lieberman and Leonardo Heiblum is in sync with the film's overall lackluster aesthetics: The music is dreary and listless, more apt as a midwinter Scandinavian overture to the tundra than a torrid expose of international sex slavery.
On the plus side, Ramos' charismatic and charged portrayal of the avenging brother is the film's highlight: Ramos packs energy and fire, combustions that this subject matter deserves. Plaudits also to Gaitan as the waifish Mexican girl who endures unspeakable degradations, as well as Bachleda for her sympathetic and steely performance as the abducted Polish beauty.
Unfortunately, Ray's cat cannot overcome the filmmaker's sloppy cutesiness, and we're left with a final, comic fillip that seems writ from "Walker, Texas Ranger".
TRADE
Lionsgate
A Centropolis Entertainment and VIP Medienfonds 4 production
Credits:
Producers: Roland Emmerich, Rosilyn Heller
Director: Marco Kreuzpaintner
Screenwriter: Jose Rivera
Story: Peter Landesman, Jose Rivera
Based on the New York Times Magazine article "The Girls Next Door" by: Peter Landesman
Executive producers: Ashok Amritraj, Robert Leger, Tom Ortenberg, Michael Wimer, Nick Hamson, Peter Landesman, Lars Sylvest
Director of photography: Daniel Gottschalk
Production designer: Bernt Capra
Editor: Hansjorg Weissbrich
Music: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Costume designer: Carol Oditz
Cast:
Ray: Kevin Kline
Jorge: Cesar Ramos
Veronica: Alicja Bachleda
Adriana: Paulina Gaitan
Manuelo: Marco Perez
Laura: Kate del Castillo
Hank Jefferson: Tim Reid
Vadim Youchenko: Pasha Lynchnikoff
Running time -- 120 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Plotting along from the squalor of Mexico City, where brigands capture girls for delivery to New Jersey where they will be auctioned off on an Internet site, "Trade" lumbers along a plot course that, basically, explicates what a good documentary filmmaker could do in half the time and with considerably more of an emotional wallop.
The narrative centers on the cruel abduction of a Polish girl (Alicja Bachleda)and a 13-year-old Mexican girl (Paulina Gaitan) whose combative brother, Jorge (Cesar Ramos), sets off on a trans-America trail to find his younger sister. Careening into the U.S., Jorge runs smack dab into a U.S. lawman, Ray (Kevin Kline), who is on some sort of "insurance" case. Further down the road a piece, we learn Ray is an emotionally wounded cop on a personal mission.
While Kline bravely undertakes the role of lawman with a vendetta, walking as stiff as Dirty Harry and emoting as minimally as Chuck Norris, he never gets a handle on the role. Bathetic phone calls to his wife about their cat convince Jorge that he's dealing with a candy-ass gringo. At this juncture, "Trade" careens into battling-buddy territory as the macho Jorge and the stoic lawman trade barbs, complain about the other's music and eventually bond.
Unfortunately, screenwriter Jose Rivera's banter and dialogue is as leaden as his drab expositional structuring. The dialogue is so uninspired it's as if listening to someone reading subtitles. Similarly, Marco Kreuzpaintner's slow-footed direction never puts the pedal to the metal; in essence, this "important" road picture/chase/buddy movie is devoid of visual accelerants. It is further slowed by editor Hansjorg Weissbrich's tentative braking -- car driving and other padding consistently defuse the story line.
The musical score by Jacobo Lieberman and Leonardo Heiblum is in sync with the film's overall lackluster aesthetics: The music is dreary and listless, more apt as a midwinter Scandinavian overture to the tundra than a torrid expose of international sex slavery.
On the plus side, Ramos' charismatic and charged portrayal of the avenging brother is the film's highlight: Ramos packs energy and fire, combustions that this subject matter deserves. Plaudits also to Gaitan as the waifish Mexican girl who endures unspeakable degradations, as well as Bachleda for her sympathetic and steely performance as the abducted Polish beauty.
Unfortunately, Ray's cat cannot overcome the filmmaker's sloppy cutesiness, and we're left with a final, comic fillip that seems writ from "Walker, Texas Ranger".
TRADE
Lionsgate
A Centropolis Entertainment and VIP Medienfonds 4 production
Credits:
Producers: Roland Emmerich, Rosilyn Heller
Director: Marco Kreuzpaintner
Screenwriter: Jose Rivera
Story: Peter Landesman, Jose Rivera
Based on the New York Times Magazine article "The Girls Next Door" by: Peter Landesman
Executive producers: Ashok Amritraj, Robert Leger, Tom Ortenberg, Michael Wimer, Nick Hamson, Peter Landesman, Lars Sylvest
Director of photography: Daniel Gottschalk
Production designer: Bernt Capra
Editor: Hansjorg Weissbrich
Music: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Costume designer: Carol Oditz
Cast:
Ray: Kevin Kline
Jorge: Cesar Ramos
Veronica: Alicja Bachleda
Adriana: Paulina Gaitan
Manuelo: Marco Perez
Laura: Kate del Castillo
Hank Jefferson: Tim Reid
Vadim Youchenko: Pasha Lynchnikoff
Running time -- 120 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 1/25/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- "Maria Full of Grace" is a modern-day version of "The Bicycle Thief". In this gripping competition entry, a desperate 17-year-old girl travels as a mule, smuggling drugs to the United States to pay for her mother and sister's upkeep.
Maria Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a likable, spirited Colombian girl. To bring money to her family, she risks becoming a mule for a drug ring: Maria swallows packets of cocaine, traveling to New York. It's a harrowing journey and a frightful experience for small-town Maria.
An inherently intense story, "Maria" is told with a sympathetic eye. Although it's somewhat predictable, writer-director Joshua Marston has crafted a compelling portrait of the desperation of poverty. Throughout, we're constantly rooting for Maria, aware of her underlying decency and protective of her missteps. Ultimately, the ending is a bit of a cop-out, but that's a small criticism for a film with such decent perspectives.
This HBO Films presentation (in Spanish with subtitles) jells largely because of Moreno's endearing, forceful performance. Bolstering our involvement are the succinct technical contributions: Jim Denault's vivid cinematography as well as editors Anne McCabe and Lee Percy's pulsating cuts heighten this humane story's considerable jeopardy.
Maria Full of Grace
HBO Films presents in association with Tucan Producciones Altercine
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Joshua Marston
Producer: Paul Mezey
Co-producer: Jaimes Osorio Gomez
Associate producers: Orlando Tobon, Rodrigo Guerrero
Line producer: Becky Glupczynski
Director of photography: Jim Denault
Production designers: Monica Marulanda, Debbie De Villa
Editors: Anne McCabe, Lee Percy
Costume designers: Lauren Press, Sarah Beers
Composers: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Music supervisor: Lynn Fainchtein
Casting directors: Maria E. Nelson, Ellyn Long Marshall
Cast:
Maria: Catalina Sandino Moreno
Blanca: Yenny Paola Vega
Juan: Wilson Guerrero
Franklin: Jhon Alex Toro
Javier: Jaime Osorio Gomez
Lucy: Guilied Lopez
Carla: Patricia Rae
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
PARK CITY -- "Maria Full of Grace" is a modern-day version of "The Bicycle Thief". In this gripping competition entry, a desperate 17-year-old girl travels as a mule, smuggling drugs to the United States to pay for her mother and sister's upkeep.
Maria Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a likable, spirited Colombian girl. To bring money to her family, she risks becoming a mule for a drug ring: Maria swallows packets of cocaine, traveling to New York. It's a harrowing journey and a frightful experience for small-town Maria.
An inherently intense story, "Maria" is told with a sympathetic eye. Although it's somewhat predictable, writer-director Joshua Marston has crafted a compelling portrait of the desperation of poverty. Throughout, we're constantly rooting for Maria, aware of her underlying decency and protective of her missteps. Ultimately, the ending is a bit of a cop-out, but that's a small criticism for a film with such decent perspectives.
This HBO Films presentation (in Spanish with subtitles) jells largely because of Moreno's endearing, forceful performance. Bolstering our involvement are the succinct technical contributions: Jim Denault's vivid cinematography as well as editors Anne McCabe and Lee Percy's pulsating cuts heighten this humane story's considerable jeopardy.
Maria Full of Grace
HBO Films presents in association with Tucan Producciones Altercine
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Joshua Marston
Producer: Paul Mezey
Co-producer: Jaimes Osorio Gomez
Associate producers: Orlando Tobon, Rodrigo Guerrero
Line producer: Becky Glupczynski
Director of photography: Jim Denault
Production designers: Monica Marulanda, Debbie De Villa
Editors: Anne McCabe, Lee Percy
Costume designers: Lauren Press, Sarah Beers
Composers: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Music supervisor: Lynn Fainchtein
Casting directors: Maria E. Nelson, Ellyn Long Marshall
Cast:
Maria: Catalina Sandino Moreno
Blanca: Yenny Paola Vega
Juan: Wilson Guerrero
Franklin: Jhon Alex Toro
Javier: Jaime Osorio Gomez
Lucy: Guilied Lopez
Carla: Patricia Rae
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/22/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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