01 · 27 · 15

Mexico at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival

Mexican cinema will be well represented this year at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale). Alongside 10 new Mexican productions, the festival will also present the classic film Cuatro contra el mundo (1950), directed by Alejando Galindo. The film is presented in collaboration with the Filmoteca de la UNAM, Fundación Televisa, the Cineteca Nacional and FICM.

Daniela Michel, FICM’s Director General, who is attending the festival from the 5th – 12th of February, will be present at the first screening of Cuatro contra el mundo. The film was part of a program of Mexican Film Noir from the Golden Age that screened last year at the 12th edition of FICM. A restored version will screen twice, on the 12th and 13th of February, as part of the Berlinale’s Forum section.

This year, the Forum section also offers a wide variety of recent Latin American cinema, including films from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico that explore ideas of violence – political, institutional and domestic. Both La maldad / Evilness (2015) - by Mexican director Joshua Gil - and Violencia (2015) - a Mexican-Colombian co-production directed by Jorge Forero - will be screened as part of this section. Both are first films and both will have their world premiere in Berlin.

Latin America will also be at the forefront of NATIVe, a section dedicated to indigenous cinema. The section will open on the 6th of February with a screening of the documentary Eco de la Montaña / Echo of the Mountain (2014), directed by Mexican filmmaker Nicolás Echevarría, which was also screened at the 12th edition of FICM in 2014. Other Mexican documentaries that will screen in this section include: Bankilal (2014), directed by María Dolores Arias Martínez; Silvestre Pantaleón (2011), by Roberto Olivares and Jonathan Amit (the film won Best Documentary at the 9th edition of FICM that year); Yvy Maraey (2013), by Juan Carlos Valdivia (Official Selection a the 11th FICM), and Koltavanej (2013), directed by Concepción Suárez Aguilar.

The Panorama Special section of this year’s Berlinale will be opened by the film 600 Millas (2015), the first film from Mexican director Gabriel Ripstein. The film will compete for the festival’s Best First Film prize, to be selected by a jury including Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke, American documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, and Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko.

The Berlinale Generation section, which is dedicated to films firmly situated within a specific cultural and political context, will include the world premier of Mexican/Guatemalan co-production La casa más grande del mundo (2015), directed by Ana V. Bojórquez and Lucía Carreras.

Finally, the Berlinale’s Official Competition section will include veteran British director Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015), a co-production between the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Mexico.

For more information about the 65th Berlin International Film Festival visit their website: www.berlinale.de/en