Every year, the Guanajuato International Film Festival pays tribute to people who have left their mark in Mexican and world cinema, and we’ll have a Guest Country of Honor that has made its own mark in world cinema. This year, the festival will pay tribute to premier actor Eric del Castillo (born in Guanajuato, with a career that spans 400 movies) actress Jacqueline Andere and Guadalupe Ferrer, director of Filmoteca UNAM. Our Guest Country of Honor is Turkey, which celebrates its centennial in filmmaking this year.
NATIONAL TRIBUTE: Eric del Castillo
was born on July 22, 1934 in Room 11 of Hotel Juarez and now, after a 60-year career in which he has killed 200 men on screen and fought El Santo in Santo vs. El Estrangulador, he returns to the land where, according to an indigenous custom, his umbilical cord was “buried in a well”.
WOMEN IN FILM AND TELEVISION: The festival pays tribute to actress Jacqueline Andere, who starred in Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (which will be shows at GIFF this year) and Yesenia, as well as Televisa’s Soy Tu Dueña. The festival also pays tribute to Guadalupe Ferrer, director of Filmoteca UNAM, which has the mission of rescuing, restoring, preserving and storing the memory of Mexico’s cinema history.
TURKEY, GUEST COUNTRY OF HONOR: Through its film institutions and special deliveries, Turkey will celebrate its cinematic centennial by showing a highlighted selection of its filmography. Among them we will show a Gala Event of “Sivas” by director Kaan Müjdeci (who will be present), about an 11-year-old boy who rescues a sheepdog named Sivas and then uses him to impress his classmates. We will also show Cannes’ 2014 Palm d’Or winner Winter Sleep, directed by Nuri Bilgé Ceylan, about three people stuck together at a hotel in Anatolia (the hotel’s owner, his wife and his sister) due to the snow that falls in winter. Actress Melisa Sözen will be present. We will also show Ceylan’s earlier film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, about a group of men in search of a dead body in the Anatolian Steppe. Finally, we will show Glimpses from the Ottoman Empire, a silent film showcase with live music by Turkish group Baba Zula.
