[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]CANADA SHOWCASE: CONTEMPORARY CINEMA
Closet Monster
Cinemex 16:00
The monsters we carry with us
Stephen Dunn has been awarded at international festivals like Tribeca, Toronto and Munich for short films like Life Does not Scare Me, We Wanted More and Swallowed. The director, who stunned Sundance with a clever series of erotic short films called Pop-Up Porno, which is included in the Midnight Madness program, brings to us his first feature Closet Monster, which premiered at TIFF, where he won Best Canadian Film, which he repeated at Atlantic, Melbourne Queer and Toronto Inside Out festivals.
With an evident aesthetic and thematic influence of Xavier Dolan’s The Imaginary Lovers, a triumphant love in the void, the use of slow and musical camera that turns scenes into small video clips, as well as the master Cronenberg in his most psychedelic moments And related to Donnie Darko by the growing psychopath of an adolescent misfit, Closet Monster is a jewel destined to become cult movie.
The film is autobiographical and recounts the experiences of the director, who grew up as a gay teenager in Newfoundland and Labrador, a small province of Canada, where he witnessed a series of crimes stemming from internalized homophobia. Stemming from a double infantile trauma, the discovery of his homosexuality and his separation from his parents, the protagonist battle his inner demons, his sexual drives and his professional ambitions.
Equipped with a visual splendor close to poetic symbolism, Closet Monster confronts us with the monster hiding in the closet, a reference to childish fears, but also repressed homosexuality. These atavisms and terrors are the motors that drive the story of a young man following a stormy path to self-acceptance.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
OFICIAL SELECTION: GUANAJUATO
10:00 hrs. – Auditorio de la UG
The essence of a state
One of the spinal chords of GIFF is the Official Selection Guanajuato, which rewards the most outstanding short films, both documentary and fiction, from this state. Many of the filmmakers who have gone through this selection have, over time, achieved an outstanding place within the national and international film industries.
A talent platform that allows the screening and promotion of Guanajuato films, this year the festival presents fifteen films that, use a great variety of techniques through different approaches and help us know the essence of one of the richest states in history and cultural production in the country.
On this year’s journey we will go through the story of a marriage of kidnappers who take advantage of their earnings to make their daughter a dream party for her 15th birthday. We will bare witness to the emotional instability derived from a desire that goes beyond blood. We will go through collective madness. We will feel the astonishment of a catastrophic discovery. We will talk about life and death, suffer the ravages of a bad joke, rise in arms together with a group that seeks autonomy and tranquility, reflect on the damage we have caused nature, pity characters who strive to survive at all costs and we will be frightened by the most chilling perversions stemming from all that is man, in this world and this region.
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TRIBUTE SHOWCASE: PETER WEIR
Master & Commander
Cinemex 20:00 hrs
Visual preciousness and historical accuracy
The Guanajuato International Film Festival honors Peter Weir, director of the “Australian New Wave” a movement called so by the press, which included actors such as Mel Gibson and Judy Davis and directors such as George Miller and Gillian Armstrong, who left the country in the early 80’s to achieve a success that meant the recognition of Australian cinema worldwide. With a balance that is reached only through thematic depth, dedication and technical gifts, Peter Weir is the architect of a cinema located at the right intersection between industry and creative nerve that has left a film legacy impossible to forget. To celebrate our international tributee, awarded at the Golden Globes, Acedemy Awards, BAFTA, Caesar, Berlinale, Cannes, Hamburg and Warsaw, GIFF has selected five of his most significant films to be exhibited throughout the festival. Today we look at the ambitious production that was Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Master and Commander (2003) represented a multi-million dollar Hollywood adventure to adapt with ellegance, narrative amazement, historical rigor and visual wonderment, a saga of twenty-one novels written by Patrick O’Brian. Weir handles it with great care, studying the time period in which the film unfolds for months, embarking on ships built on a natural scale to achieve the greatest possible realism. The most important thing was to get the details right, to offer a feeling of closeness with the impossible and exciting idea of traveling to the past, so that whoever sees the film can get a glimpse of what it was like on a ship 200 years ago. A fleeting glance, and then the door closes.
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TRIBUTE SHOWCASE: FATIH AKIN
Soul Kitchen
Sala Euquerio Guerrero 20:00 hrs
A handful of smiles for an unpredictable world
For being an intercultural referent, a director who dares to set a tone in the film industry, breaking any border that undermines the idea of cultural communion; an essential character in the new German cinema, thanks to his outstanding vision of social events, portrays the intense atmosphere that surrounds immigration, distinctions and generational clashes of our present day immersed in full globalization. The Guanajuato International Film Festival in its twentieth edition, is honored to pay a well-deserved tribute to Fatih Akın, winner of the Bronze Leopard in Locarno, the Bávaro Film Award, the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI in Berlinale and the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes.
The pluricultural environment in which he grew up gave Fatih the key to address stories about radical collisions in terms of social distance, advocating the integration of immigrants and giving voice to outsiders, those without anything, those who are exempt from all the most travelled roads and eager for an encounter that heals this distant and banal similarity. To bring the audience closer to this stalwarth of cinema, GIFF has selected five films that have launched him to fame, and today we talk about Soul Kitchen.
Soul Kitchen is a story about family and friends, love, trust, loyalty and the struggle to protect something called home in an increasingly unpredictable world. Fatih Akin brings together some of the best actors from his previous films: Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu and Birol Ünel, to present us a comedy with a very fine humor, seductive music and a story that unravels with the right tone.
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