‘Lambs of God’ (Photo: Mark Rogers)
Lingo Pictures’ Foxtel-commissioned comedic drama Lambs of God will have its world premiere in official competition at Series Mania next month.
Created by Sarah Lambert and directed by Jeffrey Walker, the show adapted from Marele Day’s novel will compete with nine series from the UK, the Us, Israel, Norway, France and Russia.
Glendyn Ivin’s BBC/ABC psychological drama The Cry, adapted by Jacquelin Perske from the Helen FitzGerald novel, will screen in the International Panorama section of the event which runs from March 22-30 in Lille, northern France.
Sharp Objects creator Marti Noxon will serve as president of the competition jury with The Good Wife star Julianna Margulies, French actress Audrey Fleurot, French writer Delphine de Vigan and Thomas Lilti, creator-director of Canal + hit Hippocrate.
Starring Essie Davis, Ann Dowd, Jessica Barden and Sam Reid, Lambs of God follows three nuns,...
Lingo Pictures’ Foxtel-commissioned comedic drama Lambs of God will have its world premiere in official competition at Series Mania next month.
Created by Sarah Lambert and directed by Jeffrey Walker, the show adapted from Marele Day’s novel will compete with nine series from the UK, the Us, Israel, Norway, France and Russia.
Glendyn Ivin’s BBC/ABC psychological drama The Cry, adapted by Jacquelin Perske from the Helen FitzGerald novel, will screen in the International Panorama section of the event which runs from March 22-30 in Lille, northern France.
Sharp Objects creator Marti Noxon will serve as president of the competition jury with The Good Wife star Julianna Margulies, French actress Audrey Fleurot, French writer Delphine de Vigan and Thomas Lilti, creator-director of Canal + hit Hippocrate.
Starring Essie Davis, Ann Dowd, Jessica Barden and Sam Reid, Lambs of God follows three nuns,...
- 2/20/2019
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
The 10th edition of Series Mania in Lille runs March 22-30.
The line-up for the 10th edition of Series Mania, which runs March 22-30 in Lille, has been revealed.
The competition features the world premieres of three Channel 4 dramas, including the Warp Films-produced The Virtues, which is written and directed by Shane Meadows and starring Stephen Graham as a troubled man who returns to Ireland to confront his childhood in the care system. Jack Thorne co-wrote the project.
The other C4 series are Iraq-set crime thriller Baghdad Central, from House Of Sadam creator Stephen Butchard, and Chimerica, created...
The line-up for the 10th edition of Series Mania, which runs March 22-30 in Lille, has been revealed.
The competition features the world premieres of three Channel 4 dramas, including the Warp Films-produced The Virtues, which is written and directed by Shane Meadows and starring Stephen Graham as a troubled man who returns to Ireland to confront his childhood in the care system. Jack Thorne co-wrote the project.
The other C4 series are Iraq-set crime thriller Baghdad Central, from House Of Sadam creator Stephen Butchard, and Chimerica, created...
- 2/20/2019
- by Orlando Parfitt
- ScreenDaily
Ever-growing international TV event Series Mania has unveiled an impressive 2019 lineup including new dramas from Netflix, HBO and the UK’s Channel4. Scroll down for the lineups in full.
Taking place in Lille, northern France, this year’s event (March 22-30) will include masterclasses from Uma Thurman, Freddie Highmore, Charlie Brooker and Sharp Objects creator Marti Noxon who will also serve as president of the Official Competition jury. Also on the jury are The Good Wife star Julianna Margulies, French actress Audrey Fleurot (Spiral), French writer Delphine de Vigan and Thomas Lilti, creator-director of Canal + hit Hippocrate.
Thurman will be in town for the international premiere of Netflix Original Series Chambers, a Ya supernatural drama thriller from Stephen Gaghan (Syriana). HBO’s Folklore, an Asian horror anthology, plays in International Competition, as does HBO Europe’s Success, directed by Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land). Amazon-Arte project Une...
Taking place in Lille, northern France, this year’s event (March 22-30) will include masterclasses from Uma Thurman, Freddie Highmore, Charlie Brooker and Sharp Objects creator Marti Noxon who will also serve as president of the Official Competition jury. Also on the jury are The Good Wife star Julianna Margulies, French actress Audrey Fleurot (Spiral), French writer Delphine de Vigan and Thomas Lilti, creator-director of Canal + hit Hippocrate.
Thurman will be in town for the international premiere of Netflix Original Series Chambers, a Ya supernatural drama thriller from Stephen Gaghan (Syriana). HBO’s Folklore, an Asian horror anthology, plays in International Competition, as does HBO Europe’s Success, directed by Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land). Amazon-Arte project Une...
- 2/20/2019
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Lleida, Spain — The feature directorial debut of producer Sebastián Perillo “Amateur” scooped both best feature and director at the 24th Lleida Catalonia Latin America Festival, hosted by the city known by gourmets as the Mecca of grilled snails.
Internationally sold by Switzerland-based Kafilms, “Amateur” is an erotic thriller produced by Argentina’s Rispo Films, Amada Films and Tecno Films, and world-premiered at Mar del Plata festival where it took the best original music award.
“Amateur” follows Martin (Esteban Lamothe), a solitary TV director who becomes obsessed with his neighbor and boss’ wife Isabel (Jazmín Stuart), when he finds a porno in which she appears. The jury described Perillo’s debut as “a surprising genre feature made with courage, and without prejudices.”
Best screenplay was granted to “Family Life,” co-helmed by Alicia Scherson (“Il futuro”) and Alejandro Zambra (co-writer of Cristián Jiménez’s “Bonsái”). International sales on “Family Life” are handled...
Internationally sold by Switzerland-based Kafilms, “Amateur” is an erotic thriller produced by Argentina’s Rispo Films, Amada Films and Tecno Films, and world-premiered at Mar del Plata festival where it took the best original music award.
“Amateur” follows Martin (Esteban Lamothe), a solitary TV director who becomes obsessed with his neighbor and boss’ wife Isabel (Jazmín Stuart), when he finds a porno in which she appears. The jury described Perillo’s debut as “a surprising genre feature made with courage, and without prejudices.”
Best screenplay was granted to “Family Life,” co-helmed by Alicia Scherson (“Il futuro”) and Alejandro Zambra (co-writer of Cristián Jiménez’s “Bonsái”). International sales on “Family Life” are handled...
- 4/28/2018
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
I caught up with Argentine producer Gema Juarez Allen at the Panama Film Festival. Since seeing (and falling in love with) the Argentine road movie “Road to La Paz”/ “Camino a La Paz in Guadalajara and interviewing its director, Francisco Varone, I was interested in meeting her as well, even more so because her other film, the Colombian drama “Oscuro Animal” which premiered in Rotterdam and won four prizes at Mexico’s Guadalajara International Film Festival in March 2016, for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Cinematography and has been sold to seven territories. “Oscuro Animal” is about three women fleeing armed conflict in Colombia. It was directed by Colombia’s Felipe Guerrero, an editor on “La Playa DC,” “Perro come perro” and “El Paramo”. It received funding from the Hubert Bals Fund and World Cinema Fund.
In Panama Gema was quite busy, not only with “Road to La Paz” but participating on the panel, Your Project in Motion: Coproduction and Financing along with Panamanian producers and directors, Delfina Vidal (“Caja 25”), Annie Canavaggio (“Breaking the Wave”) and Abner Benaim (“Invasion”) who also happens to be Gema’s partner.
As one of Latin America’s most active producers, Gema’s extensive experience international coproduction was invaluable and she shared it freely at the panel. Her participation in workshops in Europe, such as the Eave Producers Workshop and Eurodoc, has played a key role in establishing her international connections. While at Eave, she met Greek Boo Productions and Germany’s Ingmar Trost of Sutor Kolonko who came on board to coproduce “Oscuro Animal”.
“Road to La Paz” director, Francisco Varone said,
"In 2012 we submitted the project to Visions Sud Est in Switzerland. I was almost working by myself on the film at this time and then started working with a larger Argentinean production company, Concreto Films, owned by Juan Taratuto, a big film director who was directing TV commercials and said he’d help. They had a tough time finding investors so he introduced me to Gema Juarez Allen (whose recent film “Invasion” is the story of the U.S. invasion of Panama in the 1980s). She is a well-known documentary producer with experience in coproductions who knows how to find money and understands the value of going to festivals. She said she would do it as her first fiction film and went to San Sebastian Film Festival’s Foro de Coproduccion in 2013. There she had lots of one-on-one meetings and met Julius Ponten our Dutch coproducer who got funding from the Netherlands Film Fonds and Gunter Hanfgarn (“Bad Hair”) who applied to Ezef, an Evangelistic Fund for films from the south (one of the backers of “Timbuktu”). “
Read more on “Road to La Paz” here.
Gema continued this story when we spoke:
Juan liked the project but it was not in his domain so he sought me out. I read the script about two men and one car and thought, “This is easy”. But of course it was not. A road movie is the most difficult of all genres, and with animals, and covering two countries! Working with Pancho (Francisco Varone), he is the kind of director I like. I find the shooting is usually more important than the people, but with Pancho, the crew is important and he balanced the people and the shoot, so after all, it was ‘easy’.
The film is being sold internationally by FiGa. It is doing well in Argentina with 35,000 admissions, 20 copies and now in its fourth month in the cinemas. It is a ‘word of mouth’ film.
Sl: What are you working on now?
Gema Juarez Allen: I am now filming “Mapa Mudo”/ “Silent Map”.
A doc project by Felipe Guerrero, Nicolás Rincón and Jorge Caballero, based on video letters of three Colombian filmmakers who left their home country in the late 90s.
And I am developing a new project with the directors of our breakthough film from 2011, “Revenge of the Antipodes”/ “¡Vivan las antípodas!“ which screened in Venice. It’s called “Cro-goo-fant” and is a documentary for children, a funny story about animals. The director, Victor Kossokovsky, did a short doc for kids before.
I am also working with Andres di Tella, the most important documentary filmmaker and founder of Bafici in Argentina. It’s a very personal story about the avant garde art Institute lead by his father, the Instituto Di Tella.
And I am working on “Veterans” about the Falkland Islands War. Bertha Fund is backing it. Lola Arias is directing this documentary feature about the unexpected consequences of war on its protagonists, about the way memory is turned into fiction. I am looking for coproducers now. It is a different look at United Kingdom and Argentina vets that is at the same time both serious and humorous. We are creating a film around a theater play which will open in London this May. It began with the London International Theater Festival along with the Royal Court House Theater. It is not filmic; Lola Arias’ language is so refreshing; she is from the theater.
A winner of the 2015 Berlinale Co-production Market Pitch, Abner Benaim’s “Plaza catedral,” is also in the works. It is a tangled false friendship drama with thriller elements, set against the background of Panama’s social divide.
And I am currently producing Benaim’s doc, “My Name is Not Ruben Blades” with Ruben Blades.
Also in the works: the next film from Manuel Abramovich (“La Reina”), a Mar del Plata 2014 Works in Progress winner for “Solar” – a small but remarkable heart-warming doc-feature whose power struggle between director and subject adds unusually honest depths to a bio-portrait of someone who claims to come from the sun.
Sl: You are so prolific! How did you get started in this?
I studied anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Rio de Janeiro but didn’t like academia and so I studied film at the National Film School and thought I would combine the two. In England I studied Visual Anthropology and worked as a P.A. and as a researcher for the BBC for a “Discovery Channel” type of channel and then I returned to Argentina.
Between 2003 to 2008 I worked at Cine Ojo the oldest doc company in Argentina and at Habitación 1520 Producciones (“Imagen Final”, “Criada”, “Los Jóvenes Muertos”, “Dulce Espera”) before creating my own company Gema Films in 2009.
Sl: You were coordinator of DocBuenos Aires until 2003, a training initiative as well.
Gema Juarez Allen: I have produced 17 films with lots of help.
I was a Sundance Documentary Fund grantee on two films. My projects have been supported by Visions Sud Est, Tribeca Film Institute, Hubert Bals Fund, Idfa Fund, Cinereach, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, DocStation Berlin, et al. I received the Arte/Bal Award in 2008 for Upcoming Producers at Bafici.
I coproduce with Wg Film (Sweden), Majade FilmProduktion (Germany), Gebrüder Beetz (Germany), Lemming Film (Netherlands) and Producciones Aplaplac (Chile).
I have received awards at Berlinale, Bafici, Roma, Guadalajara, Silverdocs, among many others. Gema is part of EuroDoc since 2010 and is a member of the Board of Adn, the Argentinean Documentary Filmmakers Network.
Sl: What advice do you have for young filmmakers?
Gema Juarez Allen: First find a good project. It is very competitive and you must have an original perspective on the subject. There are so many ideas everywhere, it must be good.
Producers should be highly-organized. Be sure to fully develop projects before presenting them to partners and funding decision makers. The key elements to present when the project is fully conceived are an overview, a synopsis, a director’s statement, a brief treatment, a financial plan, a budget, a production timetable and bio-filmographies.
Find a producer with experience. I’m always interested in new directors and new voices.
The best opportunities to find partners are at festivals, markets and above all workshops. These are good places to find colleagues and mentors to give you great feedback. Diana Elbaum is my mentor from Eave and she is always looking at what I’m doing. And most of my coproduction partners came from the Eave and Eurodoc workshops.
Beyond Eave and Eurodoc, which are very open to Latin American projects, other good workshops are Docmontevideo, Guadalajara, Typa, Cinergia Lab, Idfa Summer Academy, Chiledoc, Berlin Talent Campus, Documentary Campus, Morelia Lab among others.
Good international funding sources are Ibermedia and also the “Plus” schemes associated to funds such as Creative Europe, World Cinema Fund, Hubert Bals Fund and the Idfa Bertha fund. Other funds are Fonds d’Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, the Sundance documentary fund, Visions Sud Est, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Doha Film Institute and Sorfond, for co-productions with Norway.
In terms of leading international markets, Cannes, Rotterdam’s Cinemart, Berlin’s European Film Market, Ventana Sur and Guadalajara – and for documentaries – starting with Idfa Forum and Hotdocs, followed by Meetmarket Sheffield and Docmontevideo.
It is also important to choose the right festival to premiere a project since it’s virtually impossible to premiere a picture in a small festival and then get a larger fest to screen the film. It’s also important to explore the work-in-progress sidebars that now exist at most Latin American festivals, including Iff Panama’s Primera Mirada competition.
State funding sources in Latin America include Dicine, in Panama, Incaa in Argentina, Proimagenes in Colombia, Brazil’s Fundo Setorial do Audiovisual, the Fondo Audiovisual in Chile, and Imcine in Mexico. The selection criteria used by these national funds varies considerably. Proimagenes in Colombia, which only finances around 14 films per year last year had three pictures at Cannes.
Over the last three or four years many national funds have created specific lines of funding for co-productions, through bilateral agreements, such as that between Brazil’s Ancine and Argentina’s Incaa, which grants $250,000 per pic supported. As a result of such bilateral agreements Brazil, for example, is now a key partner for all of Latin America.
“I’d like to make the second or third films of my directors. They’ve all been such good experience. We’ve grown together,” Juarez Allen told Variety at the Mar del Plata Festival.
In Panama Gema was quite busy, not only with “Road to La Paz” but participating on the panel, Your Project in Motion: Coproduction and Financing along with Panamanian producers and directors, Delfina Vidal (“Caja 25”), Annie Canavaggio (“Breaking the Wave”) and Abner Benaim (“Invasion”) who also happens to be Gema’s partner.
As one of Latin America’s most active producers, Gema’s extensive experience international coproduction was invaluable and she shared it freely at the panel. Her participation in workshops in Europe, such as the Eave Producers Workshop and Eurodoc, has played a key role in establishing her international connections. While at Eave, she met Greek Boo Productions and Germany’s Ingmar Trost of Sutor Kolonko who came on board to coproduce “Oscuro Animal”.
“Road to La Paz” director, Francisco Varone said,
"In 2012 we submitted the project to Visions Sud Est in Switzerland. I was almost working by myself on the film at this time and then started working with a larger Argentinean production company, Concreto Films, owned by Juan Taratuto, a big film director who was directing TV commercials and said he’d help. They had a tough time finding investors so he introduced me to Gema Juarez Allen (whose recent film “Invasion” is the story of the U.S. invasion of Panama in the 1980s). She is a well-known documentary producer with experience in coproductions who knows how to find money and understands the value of going to festivals. She said she would do it as her first fiction film and went to San Sebastian Film Festival’s Foro de Coproduccion in 2013. There she had lots of one-on-one meetings and met Julius Ponten our Dutch coproducer who got funding from the Netherlands Film Fonds and Gunter Hanfgarn (“Bad Hair”) who applied to Ezef, an Evangelistic Fund for films from the south (one of the backers of “Timbuktu”). “
Read more on “Road to La Paz” here.
Gema continued this story when we spoke:
Juan liked the project but it was not in his domain so he sought me out. I read the script about two men and one car and thought, “This is easy”. But of course it was not. A road movie is the most difficult of all genres, and with animals, and covering two countries! Working with Pancho (Francisco Varone), he is the kind of director I like. I find the shooting is usually more important than the people, but with Pancho, the crew is important and he balanced the people and the shoot, so after all, it was ‘easy’.
The film is being sold internationally by FiGa. It is doing well in Argentina with 35,000 admissions, 20 copies and now in its fourth month in the cinemas. It is a ‘word of mouth’ film.
Sl: What are you working on now?
Gema Juarez Allen: I am now filming “Mapa Mudo”/ “Silent Map”.
A doc project by Felipe Guerrero, Nicolás Rincón and Jorge Caballero, based on video letters of three Colombian filmmakers who left their home country in the late 90s.
And I am developing a new project with the directors of our breakthough film from 2011, “Revenge of the Antipodes”/ “¡Vivan las antípodas!“ which screened in Venice. It’s called “Cro-goo-fant” and is a documentary for children, a funny story about animals. The director, Victor Kossokovsky, did a short doc for kids before.
I am also working with Andres di Tella, the most important documentary filmmaker and founder of Bafici in Argentina. It’s a very personal story about the avant garde art Institute lead by his father, the Instituto Di Tella.
And I am working on “Veterans” about the Falkland Islands War. Bertha Fund is backing it. Lola Arias is directing this documentary feature about the unexpected consequences of war on its protagonists, about the way memory is turned into fiction. I am looking for coproducers now. It is a different look at United Kingdom and Argentina vets that is at the same time both serious and humorous. We are creating a film around a theater play which will open in London this May. It began with the London International Theater Festival along with the Royal Court House Theater. It is not filmic; Lola Arias’ language is so refreshing; she is from the theater.
A winner of the 2015 Berlinale Co-production Market Pitch, Abner Benaim’s “Plaza catedral,” is also in the works. It is a tangled false friendship drama with thriller elements, set against the background of Panama’s social divide.
And I am currently producing Benaim’s doc, “My Name is Not Ruben Blades” with Ruben Blades.
Also in the works: the next film from Manuel Abramovich (“La Reina”), a Mar del Plata 2014 Works in Progress winner for “Solar” – a small but remarkable heart-warming doc-feature whose power struggle between director and subject adds unusually honest depths to a bio-portrait of someone who claims to come from the sun.
Sl: You are so prolific! How did you get started in this?
I studied anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Rio de Janeiro but didn’t like academia and so I studied film at the National Film School and thought I would combine the two. In England I studied Visual Anthropology and worked as a P.A. and as a researcher for the BBC for a “Discovery Channel” type of channel and then I returned to Argentina.
Between 2003 to 2008 I worked at Cine Ojo the oldest doc company in Argentina and at Habitación 1520 Producciones (“Imagen Final”, “Criada”, “Los Jóvenes Muertos”, “Dulce Espera”) before creating my own company Gema Films in 2009.
Sl: You were coordinator of DocBuenos Aires until 2003, a training initiative as well.
Gema Juarez Allen: I have produced 17 films with lots of help.
I was a Sundance Documentary Fund grantee on two films. My projects have been supported by Visions Sud Est, Tribeca Film Institute, Hubert Bals Fund, Idfa Fund, Cinereach, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, DocStation Berlin, et al. I received the Arte/Bal Award in 2008 for Upcoming Producers at Bafici.
I coproduce with Wg Film (Sweden), Majade FilmProduktion (Germany), Gebrüder Beetz (Germany), Lemming Film (Netherlands) and Producciones Aplaplac (Chile).
I have received awards at Berlinale, Bafici, Roma, Guadalajara, Silverdocs, among many others. Gema is part of EuroDoc since 2010 and is a member of the Board of Adn, the Argentinean Documentary Filmmakers Network.
Sl: What advice do you have for young filmmakers?
Gema Juarez Allen: First find a good project. It is very competitive and you must have an original perspective on the subject. There are so many ideas everywhere, it must be good.
Producers should be highly-organized. Be sure to fully develop projects before presenting them to partners and funding decision makers. The key elements to present when the project is fully conceived are an overview, a synopsis, a director’s statement, a brief treatment, a financial plan, a budget, a production timetable and bio-filmographies.
Find a producer with experience. I’m always interested in new directors and new voices.
The best opportunities to find partners are at festivals, markets and above all workshops. These are good places to find colleagues and mentors to give you great feedback. Diana Elbaum is my mentor from Eave and she is always looking at what I’m doing. And most of my coproduction partners came from the Eave and Eurodoc workshops.
Beyond Eave and Eurodoc, which are very open to Latin American projects, other good workshops are Docmontevideo, Guadalajara, Typa, Cinergia Lab, Idfa Summer Academy, Chiledoc, Berlin Talent Campus, Documentary Campus, Morelia Lab among others.
Good international funding sources are Ibermedia and also the “Plus” schemes associated to funds such as Creative Europe, World Cinema Fund, Hubert Bals Fund and the Idfa Bertha fund. Other funds are Fonds d’Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, the Sundance documentary fund, Visions Sud Est, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Doha Film Institute and Sorfond, for co-productions with Norway.
In terms of leading international markets, Cannes, Rotterdam’s Cinemart, Berlin’s European Film Market, Ventana Sur and Guadalajara – and for documentaries – starting with Idfa Forum and Hotdocs, followed by Meetmarket Sheffield and Docmontevideo.
It is also important to choose the right festival to premiere a project since it’s virtually impossible to premiere a picture in a small festival and then get a larger fest to screen the film. It’s also important to explore the work-in-progress sidebars that now exist at most Latin American festivals, including Iff Panama’s Primera Mirada competition.
State funding sources in Latin America include Dicine, in Panama, Incaa in Argentina, Proimagenes in Colombia, Brazil’s Fundo Setorial do Audiovisual, the Fondo Audiovisual in Chile, and Imcine in Mexico. The selection criteria used by these national funds varies considerably. Proimagenes in Colombia, which only finances around 14 films per year last year had three pictures at Cannes.
Over the last three or four years many national funds have created specific lines of funding for co-productions, through bilateral agreements, such as that between Brazil’s Ancine and Argentina’s Incaa, which grants $250,000 per pic supported. As a result of such bilateral agreements Brazil, for example, is now a key partner for all of Latin America.
“I’d like to make the second or third films of my directors. They’ve all been such good experience. We’ve grown together,” Juarez Allen told Variety at the Mar del Plata Festival.
- 4/26/2016
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
“Road to La Paz” is a quiet, understated film about brotherhood and kinship between two very different Argentinians during the 2001 economic meltdown of the country, one a young man at a loss about how to live with his new wife and one an old man, a Muslim who has lived his life with his wife in Argentina and now wants to begin his pilgrimage, first to La Paz and then onward to Mecca.
What better way to transition from Qatar where I attended Qumra, a support program for upcoming filmmakers from Mena (Middle East, North Africa) to Latin America where I saw at Ficg, the Guadalajara Film Festival. “Road to La Paz” is a coproduction of Qatar, Argentina, Netherlands and Germany.
As I write this, it is screening at Iff Panama as well. Below is my interview with first time filmmaker, Francisco Varone. This interview was actually conducted in the foyer of the multiplex in Guadalajara before he went in for its premiere screening, just after I had seen it at the press and industry screening in Ficg.
This road movie starring Rodrigo de la Serna (“Motorcycle Diaries”) and one of Argentina’s leading stage actors, Ernesto Suárez, takes us on a trip of over 1,800 miles, from Buenos Aires, Argentina to La Paz, Bolivia.
Sebastian, whose passions are the rock band Vox Dei and his old Peugeot 505 is married and short of cash. Sebas decides to start working as a limo driver with his Peugeot. Among his frequent passengers is Jalil, an old unkind Muslim who one day offers Sebas a large amount of money to drive him to La Paz, Bolivia. Sebas reluctantly accepts. Jalil and Sebas don't agree on anything, not even on what music to play, Sebas likes Vox Dei, a progressive rock band from the 1970s, and Jalil brings along his traditional Arabic music tapes.
The road and Jalil's deteriorated health, make them surmount obstacles and become good fellow travelers. Jalil confesses that in La Paz he'll meet his brother Nazim and peregrinate along to Mecca. Jalil's health worsens and Sebastian knows he has little time left. After a long and winding road, Jalil arrives very weak to La Paz. There, after forty years, he meets his brother again. Sebas heads back home, his mission accomplished, his life changed.
The financing of this film was quite straight forward according to Francisco.
Francisco Varone: In 2012 we submitted the project the film to Visions Sud Est in Switzerland. I was almost working by myself on the film at this time and then started working with a larger Argentinean production company, Concreto Films owned by Juan Taratuto, a big film director who was directing TV commercials and said he’d help. They had a tough time finding investors so he introduced me to Gema Juarez Allen (whose recent film “Invasion” is the story of the U.S. invasion of Panama in the 1980s), a well known documentary producer with experience in coproductions who knew how to find money and understood the value of going to festivals. She said she would do it as her first fiction film and went to San Sebastian Film Festival’s Foro de Coproduccion in 2013. There she had lots of one-on-one meetings and met Julius Ponten our Dutch coproducer who got funding from the Netherlands Film Fonds and Gunter Hanfgarn that applied to Ezef, an Evangelistic Fund for films from the south (one of the backers of “Timbuktu”).
We already had the support from Incaa in their “Opera Prima” (First Works) section. Out of 100 script submissions, they chose three and I got 50% of the production budget.
We shot the movie in 2014 and then after we had a first rough cut, we went to 2015 Cartagena where we won in Colombia’s first Ficci PuertoLAB (consisting of five films by first, second or third time filmmakers from Latam, Spain or Portugal). This post-production money was awarded by a three-woman jury composed of producer Christina Gallego (“The Wind Journeys”, “Embrace of the Serpent”), Gaelle Mareschi of Kinology, the international sales agent and Paz Lazaro.
Then Doha added post-production funding for $25,000.
FiGa saw the film in Ventana Sur and picked it up for international sales.
Sl:What was your festival strategy?
Francisco Varone: Francisco Varone: The first festival it played in was Busan Film Festival 2015 in So. Korea. We wanted to play some festivals before its release in January in Argentina. There were many Latin American directors in Busan and it’s really good for making Asian sales.
From Busan it went on to Chicago, Sao Paolo, Mar del Plata where Ernesto Suárez won the Sagai Prize for New Actor, at Thessaloniki Ff 2015 where it won the Bronze Alexander, Palm Springs, London Argentinean Film Festival, Ficci, Ficg and Iff Panama. We also went to Palm Springs, Glasgow, Cartagena, Guadalajara (where I saw it) and Panama (where it is now playing). FiGa sells it at these festivals.
It was released in Argentina in January with 20 prints. So far it has 35,000 admissions and it is still playing, now in its fourth month!
Sl: How did you find your sales agent?
Francisco Varone: FiGa picked it up in Ventana Sur in December 2014 where they saw the first cut.
FiGa discussed playing it in more festivals but we needed the Argentinian release now, this year. Finding a commercial release date is hard so when you have it, you take it! There are not many options.
It was finished in 2015. At its premiere in Busan, FiGa it sold to Filmarti for Turkey. FiGa has sold to Danaos for Greece, Spain, Central America, Germany, France and Brazil. U.S. rights are still available.
Sl: Now that FiGa has it, what are you doing?
Francisco Varone: Four years ago when I quit commercials I became a professional scriptwriter and I’m also a script doctor, a rarity in Argentina. I conduct short-term one week-to-ten day workshops. Now I have written two scripts for two other directors and am working on my own script. I have lots of ideas…
Sl: What was the reaction to this film?
Francisco Varone: Most people have not seen Muslim films so audiences don’t recognize Sufi as something special.
In Sao Paolo, some young Muslims saw it and one told me that it was the first time in his life he saw Muslims without guns in a movie. He was surprised also that it came from Latin America.
Sl: What was the origin of the film?
Francisco Varone: In 2001 there was a huge economic crisis in Argentina. All savings in the banks disappeared. I was just finishing film school and there were no jobs. My best friend got married and his wife worked. He was a “house-husband”. This was a strange role conversion for me, but my friend was happy. I liked this character and wrote a half page of notes.
In 2008 I started a script about him. I also met an old film school friend and found out he had converted to Islam. These elements all went into the screenplay.
I am from a Catholic family but have always been interested in Buddhism and I practice martial arts; I’ve traveled to China and I like the East. So my friend introduced me to the Islam community. Like in the movie, I was in a ceremony called Dikhr, a Sufi ritual that takes one to two hours. It is a deeply moving experience.
I discovered something here in Argentina. How such Middle Eastern religions could be so organically a part of general society. I wanted to show this.
At the same time, I was into Zen Buddhism. Regarding how they express “truth”, I find the Buddhists and the Koran use the same words. We are all talking about the same thing.
The movie is not propaganda, it is simply depicting one possibility, one road…
Sl: How did you cast the film?
Francisco Varone: It as great for the film to have a huge star in such an indie film. The young actor, Rodrigo de la Serna, is very famous and he was very generous to trust in a debutant director and producer in fiction.
We had held a casting search in theaters in Cordoba, Uruguay, and other places and could not find an actor for the role of the Sufi. We had a casting director who called other casting directors and Eugenia Levin who had cast many important movies said on the phone she had the perfect actor and hd offered him this great part, but he had said no. She put us in touch with the older actor, Ernesto Suárez. He is very famous as a stage actor in Mendoza, a province in Argentina, but this is his first film. He lives a very modest life, drives a 1980 Renault, has a small house, a few clothes. He was not sure he wanted to do it, though we wanted him because he has such a natural quality.
He was not really interested in acting in a movie and I took a plane to talk to him. His two sons told him to do it, and so he accepted the part.
We found him three weeks before we started shooting. We were thinking of cancelling the shoot because we could not find the right actor.
What better way to transition from Qatar where I attended Qumra, a support program for upcoming filmmakers from Mena (Middle East, North Africa) to Latin America where I saw at Ficg, the Guadalajara Film Festival. “Road to La Paz” is a coproduction of Qatar, Argentina, Netherlands and Germany.
As I write this, it is screening at Iff Panama as well. Below is my interview with first time filmmaker, Francisco Varone. This interview was actually conducted in the foyer of the multiplex in Guadalajara before he went in for its premiere screening, just after I had seen it at the press and industry screening in Ficg.
This road movie starring Rodrigo de la Serna (“Motorcycle Diaries”) and one of Argentina’s leading stage actors, Ernesto Suárez, takes us on a trip of over 1,800 miles, from Buenos Aires, Argentina to La Paz, Bolivia.
Sebastian, whose passions are the rock band Vox Dei and his old Peugeot 505 is married and short of cash. Sebas decides to start working as a limo driver with his Peugeot. Among his frequent passengers is Jalil, an old unkind Muslim who one day offers Sebas a large amount of money to drive him to La Paz, Bolivia. Sebas reluctantly accepts. Jalil and Sebas don't agree on anything, not even on what music to play, Sebas likes Vox Dei, a progressive rock band from the 1970s, and Jalil brings along his traditional Arabic music tapes.
The road and Jalil's deteriorated health, make them surmount obstacles and become good fellow travelers. Jalil confesses that in La Paz he'll meet his brother Nazim and peregrinate along to Mecca. Jalil's health worsens and Sebastian knows he has little time left. After a long and winding road, Jalil arrives very weak to La Paz. There, after forty years, he meets his brother again. Sebas heads back home, his mission accomplished, his life changed.
The financing of this film was quite straight forward according to Francisco.
Francisco Varone: In 2012 we submitted the project the film to Visions Sud Est in Switzerland. I was almost working by myself on the film at this time and then started working with a larger Argentinean production company, Concreto Films owned by Juan Taratuto, a big film director who was directing TV commercials and said he’d help. They had a tough time finding investors so he introduced me to Gema Juarez Allen (whose recent film “Invasion” is the story of the U.S. invasion of Panama in the 1980s), a well known documentary producer with experience in coproductions who knew how to find money and understood the value of going to festivals. She said she would do it as her first fiction film and went to San Sebastian Film Festival’s Foro de Coproduccion in 2013. There she had lots of one-on-one meetings and met Julius Ponten our Dutch coproducer who got funding from the Netherlands Film Fonds and Gunter Hanfgarn that applied to Ezef, an Evangelistic Fund for films from the south (one of the backers of “Timbuktu”).
We already had the support from Incaa in their “Opera Prima” (First Works) section. Out of 100 script submissions, they chose three and I got 50% of the production budget.
We shot the movie in 2014 and then after we had a first rough cut, we went to 2015 Cartagena where we won in Colombia’s first Ficci PuertoLAB (consisting of five films by first, second or third time filmmakers from Latam, Spain or Portugal). This post-production money was awarded by a three-woman jury composed of producer Christina Gallego (“The Wind Journeys”, “Embrace of the Serpent”), Gaelle Mareschi of Kinology, the international sales agent and Paz Lazaro.
Then Doha added post-production funding for $25,000.
FiGa saw the film in Ventana Sur and picked it up for international sales.
Sl:What was your festival strategy?
Francisco Varone: Francisco Varone: The first festival it played in was Busan Film Festival 2015 in So. Korea. We wanted to play some festivals before its release in January in Argentina. There were many Latin American directors in Busan and it’s really good for making Asian sales.
From Busan it went on to Chicago, Sao Paolo, Mar del Plata where Ernesto Suárez won the Sagai Prize for New Actor, at Thessaloniki Ff 2015 where it won the Bronze Alexander, Palm Springs, London Argentinean Film Festival, Ficci, Ficg and Iff Panama. We also went to Palm Springs, Glasgow, Cartagena, Guadalajara (where I saw it) and Panama (where it is now playing). FiGa sells it at these festivals.
It was released in Argentina in January with 20 prints. So far it has 35,000 admissions and it is still playing, now in its fourth month!
Sl: How did you find your sales agent?
Francisco Varone: FiGa picked it up in Ventana Sur in December 2014 where they saw the first cut.
FiGa discussed playing it in more festivals but we needed the Argentinian release now, this year. Finding a commercial release date is hard so when you have it, you take it! There are not many options.
It was finished in 2015. At its premiere in Busan, FiGa it sold to Filmarti for Turkey. FiGa has sold to Danaos for Greece, Spain, Central America, Germany, France and Brazil. U.S. rights are still available.
Sl: Now that FiGa has it, what are you doing?
Francisco Varone: Four years ago when I quit commercials I became a professional scriptwriter and I’m also a script doctor, a rarity in Argentina. I conduct short-term one week-to-ten day workshops. Now I have written two scripts for two other directors and am working on my own script. I have lots of ideas…
Sl: What was the reaction to this film?
Francisco Varone: Most people have not seen Muslim films so audiences don’t recognize Sufi as something special.
In Sao Paolo, some young Muslims saw it and one told me that it was the first time in his life he saw Muslims without guns in a movie. He was surprised also that it came from Latin America.
Sl: What was the origin of the film?
Francisco Varone: In 2001 there was a huge economic crisis in Argentina. All savings in the banks disappeared. I was just finishing film school and there were no jobs. My best friend got married and his wife worked. He was a “house-husband”. This was a strange role conversion for me, but my friend was happy. I liked this character and wrote a half page of notes.
In 2008 I started a script about him. I also met an old film school friend and found out he had converted to Islam. These elements all went into the screenplay.
I am from a Catholic family but have always been interested in Buddhism and I practice martial arts; I’ve traveled to China and I like the East. So my friend introduced me to the Islam community. Like in the movie, I was in a ceremony called Dikhr, a Sufi ritual that takes one to two hours. It is a deeply moving experience.
I discovered something here in Argentina. How such Middle Eastern religions could be so organically a part of general society. I wanted to show this.
At the same time, I was into Zen Buddhism. Regarding how they express “truth”, I find the Buddhists and the Koran use the same words. We are all talking about the same thing.
The movie is not propaganda, it is simply depicting one possibility, one road…
Sl: How did you cast the film?
Francisco Varone: It as great for the film to have a huge star in such an indie film. The young actor, Rodrigo de la Serna, is very famous and he was very generous to trust in a debutant director and producer in fiction.
We had held a casting search in theaters in Cordoba, Uruguay, and other places and could not find an actor for the role of the Sufi. We had a casting director who called other casting directors and Eugenia Levin who had cast many important movies said on the phone she had the perfect actor and hd offered him this great part, but he had said no. She put us in touch with the older actor, Ernesto Suárez. He is very famous as a stage actor in Mendoza, a province in Argentina, but this is his first film. He lives a very modest life, drives a 1980 Renault, has a small house, a few clothes. He was not sure he wanted to do it, though we wanted him because he has such a natural quality.
He was not really interested in acting in a movie and I took a plane to talk to him. His two sons told him to do it, and so he accepted the part.
We found him three weeks before we started shooting. We were thinking of cancelling the shoot because we could not find the right actor.
- 4/18/2016
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Exclusive: Sandro Fiorin and his team has concluded key territory sales on Francisco Varone’s road movie.
Rodrigo de la Serna and Ernesto ‘Flaco’ Suarez star in the story of a journey from Buenos Aires to La Paz involving an older man out to fulfil a lifelong promise and trip and a young companion who struggles to make sense of his existence.
The Gema Films feature was a co-production with No Problem Cine and Concreto Films of Argentina, Habbekrats (Netherlands), and Hanfgam & Ufer Filmproduktion (Germany).
Road To La Paz premiered in Busan, won awards in Thessaloniki and Mar del Plata.
Deals have closed in Spain (Monesc Seven Entertainment), France (Visionfeir Distribution), Germany (Farbfilm), Greece (Danaos), Turkey (Filmarti Films), and Brazil (Lume Filmes).
Gema Juárez Allen, Varone, Omar Jadur, Dolores Llosas, Juan Taratuto, Julius Ponten, Philip Harthoorn, and Gunter Hanfgam produced.
Allen and Sebastián Perillo erved as executive producers
Fiorin told Screendaily he expects to confirm deals in North...
Rodrigo de la Serna and Ernesto ‘Flaco’ Suarez star in the story of a journey from Buenos Aires to La Paz involving an older man out to fulfil a lifelong promise and trip and a young companion who struggles to make sense of his existence.
The Gema Films feature was a co-production with No Problem Cine and Concreto Films of Argentina, Habbekrats (Netherlands), and Hanfgam & Ufer Filmproduktion (Germany).
Road To La Paz premiered in Busan, won awards in Thessaloniki and Mar del Plata.
Deals have closed in Spain (Monesc Seven Entertainment), France (Visionfeir Distribution), Germany (Farbfilm), Greece (Danaos), Turkey (Filmarti Films), and Brazil (Lume Filmes).
Gema Juárez Allen, Varone, Omar Jadur, Dolores Llosas, Juan Taratuto, Julius Ponten, Philip Harthoorn, and Gunter Hanfgam produced.
Allen and Sebastián Perillo erved as executive producers
Fiorin told Screendaily he expects to confirm deals in North...
- 4/13/2016
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Lorenzo Vigas’ Venice Golden Lion winner From Afar and César Augusto Acevedo’s Cannes Critics Week France 4 Visionary Award winner Land And Shade will screen at the International Film Festival of Panama.
Both selections will play in the Ibero American Showcase under the auspices of Iff Panama 2016, which runs from April 7-13.
Italian actress Lucía Bosé will be guest of honour at the festival’s fifth edition when three of films will screen — Death Of A Cyclist, Story Of A Love Affair, and No Peace Under The Olive Tree. High Heels will screen in special presentation.
Ibero American Showcase entries include Anna Muylaert’s Brazilian foreign language Oscar submission My Second Mother, Álex de la Iglesia’s My Big Night (Spain), 3 Beauties (Venezuela) by Carlos Caridad-Montero, and Spy Time (Spain) by Javier Ruiz Caldera.
Rounding out the section are: The Apostate (Spain-France-Uruguay) by Federico Veiroj; Road To La Paz (Argentina) by Francisco Varone; Semana Santa (Mexico) by [link...
Both selections will play in the Ibero American Showcase under the auspices of Iff Panama 2016, which runs from April 7-13.
Italian actress Lucía Bosé will be guest of honour at the festival’s fifth edition when three of films will screen — Death Of A Cyclist, Story Of A Love Affair, and No Peace Under The Olive Tree. High Heels will screen in special presentation.
Ibero American Showcase entries include Anna Muylaert’s Brazilian foreign language Oscar submission My Second Mother, Álex de la Iglesia’s My Big Night (Spain), 3 Beauties (Venezuela) by Carlos Caridad-Montero, and Spy Time (Spain) by Javier Ruiz Caldera.
Rounding out the section are: The Apostate (Spain-France-Uruguay) by Federico Veiroj; Road To La Paz (Argentina) by Francisco Varone; Semana Santa (Mexico) by [link...
- 3/23/2016
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Icelandic feature Rams and Colombian rural drama Land and Shade take top prizes at Greek festival.Scroll down for full list of winners
Icelandic director Grimur Hakonarson’s Rams (Hrutar) has been named best film at the 56th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Nov 6-15) winning the Golden Alexander.
It beat competition from 13 other first and second films screened in this year’s particularly strong international competition section.
The film, awarded the Un Certain Regard top prize earlier this year in Cannes, deals with two brothers, who haven’t spoken to each other for over 40 years though living in neighbouring farms in a remote valley in Iceland raising sheep.
World sales are handled by Polish outfit New Europe Film Sales. It will be released in Greece by Ama Films.
Following a long tradition of Latin American productions sweeping the Thessaloniki awards, features from Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela shared the majority of the other official and side awards...
Icelandic director Grimur Hakonarson’s Rams (Hrutar) has been named best film at the 56th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Nov 6-15) winning the Golden Alexander.
It beat competition from 13 other first and second films screened in this year’s particularly strong international competition section.
The film, awarded the Un Certain Regard top prize earlier this year in Cannes, deals with two brothers, who haven’t spoken to each other for over 40 years though living in neighbouring farms in a remote valley in Iceland raising sheep.
World sales are handled by Polish outfit New Europe Film Sales. It will be released in Greece by Ama Films.
Following a long tradition of Latin American productions sweeping the Thessaloniki awards, features from Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela shared the majority of the other official and side awards...
- 11/16/2015
- by alexisgrivas@yahoo.com (Alexis Grivas)
- ScreenDaily
Francisco Varone has been on a successful world tour with his feature film Road To La Paz (Camino A La Paz) with stops in Busan and Chicago before bringing it back home to his native Argentina for Mar Del Plata and - fortunate for us - not only is there a trailer available but it also exists in an English subtitled version.Halfway between neglect and the belief in fate's paradoxes, Sebastián makes his way in the new stage of his adult life holding on to his few convictions. That is why he only has to see the grill in the patio of the first house he visits with his wife in order to decide to rent it, and after receiving countless wrong-number phone calls asking...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 11/6/2015
- Screen Anarchy
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