Sanfic Industria’s WIP Iberoamericana, its industry centrepiece featuring eight movies in post-production, also weighs in as a platform for emerging directors from across Latin America 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. 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. 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”). 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 revelatory doc-feature. 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.
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