07 · 18 · 17 XV years, 15 editions: FICM 2007, 5th edition Share with twitter Share with facebook Share with mail Copy to clipboard The city of Morelia hosted the fifth edition of FICM from October 5 to 14, 2007. On this occasion, the festival was inaugurated with The Orphanage, a film by the Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, produced by Guillermo del Toro, and starring Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo and Geraldine Chaplin. Among the festival's Special Guests were the actor Gael García Bernal, who presented Déficit, his first effort as a director; Oscar-winning Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu; the winner of the Best Director award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival for his movie Post Tenebras Lux, Carlos Reygadas, who presented his film Silent Light during the festival; and Cristian Mungiu, who showed 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Directors of international fame such as Héctor Babenco, who presented El pasado, Stephen Frears, Arthur Penn, and Bertrand Tavernier were also among the Special Guests of this FICM’s edition. Additionally, Mexican actress Lilia Prado, known in Europe as "the perverse ingenue", received a tribute for being one of the actresses with greater erotic and dramatic potential in Mexican cinema. Among the directors who immortalized her are Luis Buñuel, with whom she worked on Mexican Bus Ride (1951) and Illusion Travels by Streetcar (1955); Ismael Rodríguez, director of Las mujeres de mi general (1951); Gilberto Martínez Solares, who directed her in Hot Rumba (1952); and Emilio Fernández, who directed Pueblito (1961). The festival introduced a new section of official competition this year: Mexican Feature Film. In its beginnings, the section was exclusively for filmmakers presenting their first and second films, aiming at boosting the careers of new Mexican talents. Alejandro Ramírez, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Batel and Daniela Michel emphasized that five years after the birth of the festival, the goal of supporting the young Mexican filmmakers had been fulfilled. "The special emphasis that has been placed on the quality, both in organizing and in the works selected, the dominant focus on the filmmakers, the quality of the judges and the prestige of our Special Guests are all hallmarks of this festival". If you want more details on the fifth edition of FICM, click here.
