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The Morelia / Sundance Story Lab 2019 announces its participants

-PRESS RELEASE-

Morelia, Michoacán, September 27, 2019

 

The Morelia / Sundance Story Lab 2019 announces its participants

 

For the third consecutive year, the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) and the Sundance Institute International Program get together for the realization of the Morelia / Sundance Story Lab, which seeks to support the improvement of feature film scripts through analysis and creative advice by prestigious international tutors.  

Supported by the experience of the laureate Mexican producer Bertha Navarro, the Story Lab has designed an intensive program of personalized advice, where participants and tutors work together on fundamental themes in their projects’ writing, such as the focus of the story that wants to be told, character development and dramatic structure.

The Morelia / Sundance Story Lab 2019 will receive six projects, four Mexican and two from Latin American filmmakers, since one of the objectives of the workshop is to enrich dialogue among creators from diverse creative contexts.

The projects and participants selected this year are:

  1. Alondra dejó el nido | Mexico | Samuel Kishi and Carlos Espinoza

After the disappearance of their daughter and young granddaughter, Francisca and Francisco, two Mixtec elderly from the region of La Montaña, in Guerrero, who barely speak Spanish decide to enlist as agricultural laborers and begin a journey towards the last place where they know they were: a crop field in the south of the state of Sinaloa.

  1. La hija de todas las rabias | Nicaragua-Mexico | Laura Baumeister

Lilibeth and María live in the immense Managua garbage dump. For María, this place is an amusement park where she makes up games and stories with everything she encounters. After accidentally poisoning the puppies that her mother was raising to sell, the girl is taken to a recycling factory to work.

  1. Los reyes del mundo | Colombia | Laura Mora and María Camila Arias

Rape, Culebro, Sere, Winny, and Nano are five boys from the street of Medellín. Five kings without a kingdom, without law, without a family. In their hands they have old deeds of a land inherited by el Rape, a treasure. Therein lies the possibility of a dream, of finally being able to own a place in the world where they can be free, where they can build their own kingdom.

  1. No nos moverán | Mexico | Pierre Saint-Martin

Socorro is a sarcastic lawyer who lives tormented by the death of her brother Coque. This has brought her problems with her son, Carlos, an unemployed forty-year-old, and with her unwelcome sister, Esperanza, who has not spoken to her in months. Socorro has been feeling ill for some time and, before her family enters her in a hospital, she has decided to fulfill an old unfinished promise: to kill the military man who took the life of her brother Coque on that terrible October of 68.

  1. Sujo: bajo el nombre de un caballo | Mexico | Astrid Rondero

When Josué, a small-time drug dealer is killed he leaves behind Sujo, his beloved five-year-old boy. Sujo will grow up next to his aunt, amid economic struggles and the constant threats of drug dealing. When his father’s destiny has seemed to reach him, Sujo flees to the city, leaving his childhood behind in search of a new life.

  1. Una historia falsa | Mexico | Miguel Lozano y Antón Goenechea

After his mother’s death, Jesús Rosas, a Mexican immigrant in New York must return to his hometown for the first time in 20 years to take over his inheritance. Jesús decides to take his son Raúl so he can know his origins as well as his uncle Arturo. Jesús has to go the the state’s capital to  take care of the paperwork and leaves Raúl and Arturo together. That day, fake news begins to spread on Whatsapp about some children kidnappers.

A group of tutors of recognized prestige, among which stand out Erik Jendresen (United States), Naomi Foner (United States), Gonzalo Maza (Chile),  Gibrán Portela (Mexico) and Laura Esquivel (Mexico), will lead the group sessions and personalized advice with the participating filmmakers and projects.

The Morelia / Sundance Story Lab 2019 is made possible by the generous support of Cinépolis, the Sundance Instituto, the Morelia International Film Festival, the Inter-American Development Bank, Hosting House Congress, Montblanc, Mondavi, and Megacable. It will be carried out from October 18 to 21, 2019 in Morelia, Michoacán.

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