Eight projects attending Open Doors from Latin America and Caribbean territories are looking to secure international partners through the Projects’ Hub.
Desidia (Bol-Chile)
Dir. Leandro Grillo
Prod co. Trisomia Cine
Desidia is the story of Pyotr and Renato, two young men whose paths cross in the Bolivian city of El Alto during rainy season. Pyotr is Russian-Orthodox from a closed community, forced to travel to El Alto and persuade his uncle to meet his father one last time before he dies. Renato lives with schizophrenia while taking care of his senile godfather. La Paz-born Grillo’s debut feature Procrastinación and short films have screened at international festivals including Bolivia’s Festival de Cine Radical and Brazil’s Festival Internacional Pachamama. He says he is driven “by finding images, people and situations that give me a visceral feeling beyond being conscious or rational”. The urban centre of El Alto is the third character in Desidia, forming the backdrop of a feature that Grillo hopes to shoot on 16mm film. Mounting projects in Bolivia is a complex process, with no state funding available. “We need to propose creative plans to obtain the funds we need to produce, such as co-production strategies,” says producer Alejandra Antequera.
Contact: Alejandra Antequera, producer
Last Of Kings (Peru-Ger-Mex)
Dir. Victor Checa
Prod co. Pierrot Films
Set in a dystopian Peru in 2060, Last Of Kings (El Ultimo Rey) is billed as a coming-of-age vampire western that tells the tale of a 12-year-old boy who rises from the grave after 200 years to a land he no longer recognises. An unexpected visit by two fearless girls from the Sechura desert shakes up his existence. Filmmaker Checa, whose first feature The Shape Of Things To Come (Tiempos Futuros) played at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 2021 and is selected for Open Doors Screenings 2023, says working in a hypothetical future allows him to question where humanity is headed. Checa grew up in Peru’s Piura region, which borders the desert. “The desert is a timeless territory,” says Checa. “It offers the possibility of exploring the encounter between different times — the Peruvian republic’s early years and a not-too-distant future.” Producer Jimena Hospina says obtaining fund backing in Peru is competitive, and private investment is limited for author-driven projects. “Co-producers play a vital role not only in their financial participation but also in their creative contributions to make our films come true,” says Hospina.
Contact: Jimena Hospina, producer
Libertines (El Sal-Peru)
Dir. Leslie Ortiz
Prod co. Groove Productions
Hailing from El Salvador, filmmaker Ortiz aims to portray characters who break the social patterns imposed on them in their homeland. Her debut feature project Libertines (Libertinas) details the story of a 32-year-old mother and her teenage daughter, with a nod to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. “I am interested in demystifying the idealisation of the maternal figure,” Ortiz says. “The young single mother feels as tiny and insignificant as a ladybug, valued only for her role as a caregiver and breadwinner. She finds her freedom when she realises her daughter is no longer her top priority and puts herself first.” Producer Adriana Moran, working with Ortiz for the first time, says: “The journey of making films in El Salvador is filled with financial and technical obstacles, but we have a community that doesn’t give up.”
Contact: Adriana Moran, producer
LOA. Kill Your Masters (Ven-Puerto Rico)
Dir. Carlos Zerpa
Prod co. Mecha
From Venezuela, first-time filmmaker Zerpa landed an Open Doors’ online script consultancy slot last year for animation project LOA. Kill Your Masters (LOA. Mata A Tus Amos). The project, set in late 18th-century Haiti, tells the tale of 14-year-old Rosalie, who grows up oblivious to the suffering of her fellow Black people on a Haiti sugarcane plantation after being adopted by a French couple. When she is traumatised by the death of her best friend, a slave girl, Rosalie runs away, encountering a loa (a spirit of the Haitian vodou tradition) that ignites her thirst for personal revenge and collective justice. “Animation can explore the horrors and the horrifying beauty of war and injustice in ways live-action cinema might struggle to achieve,” Zerpa explains. “With LOA, I aim to carve a canal where the historical and the mythical flow through bold, unapologetic storytelling.”
Contact: Carlos Zerpa, director/producer
Milky Way (Costa Rica-Uru)
Dir. Paz Fabrega
Prod co. La Mayor Cine
Milky Way (Vía Láctea) will be Costa Rican film director, screenwriter and producer Fabrega’s fourth feature. A family drama, the script tells the story of a couple who live in a beach town with their daughter, where they run a small hotel. When her mother dies, the woman decides to go back to the city to finish her degree but does not want her husband and daughter to come with her. “I’ve become interested in stories about women who regret having children,” Fabrega says. “What troubles me is the guilt and shame around this experience, which usually leads to not being able to talk about it or deal with the consequences. I want to be able to understand every character without overlooking the harm they inflict on each other.” Producer Federico Moreira says the film is a critique of the nuclear family — not an absolute rejection of the concept, but an involved, hopeful search for new ways of looking at old problems.
Contact: Paz Fabrega, director/producer
Pantasma (Nic-Costa Rica-Hon)
Dir. Gloria Carrion
Prod. Leonor Zuniga
Prod co. Centroamericana
Pantasma is billed as a hybrid coming-of-age documentary, blending stop-motion animation, archive footage and photographs. The project is based on Felix Vijil’s unpublished book Del Fuego Y De La Sangre, a personal memoir of his experience in the Contra War in 1980s Nicaragua, and on interviews with former Contra fighters now living in exile in Costa Rica and Honduras. For Nicaraguan filmmaker Carrion, this feature-length documentary is personal: Vijil is her husband and a former member of the Sandinistas, and in 1985 her uncle was assassinated by the Contras in Pantasma. “As a daughter of former Sandinista revolutionaries, I feel the need and the responsibility to understand how a revolution that was meant to liberate and transform the country could be used decades later to fuel the current dictatorial and violent regime of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.” Independent cinema is prohibited by law in Nicaragua and independent voices in the country are persecuted and imprisoned. “Faced with this reality, Gloria and I had to go into exile, her to Canada and me to Costa Rica,” explains producer Leonor Zuniga.
Contact: Leonor Zuniga, producer
Raised By Goats (Jam)
Dir. Gibrey Allen
Prod. Nadean Rawlins
Prod co. Raw Management Agency
Jamaican filmmaker Allen’s Raised By Goats is the product of his drive “to tell full, intimate and authentic stories exploring the richness of culture and identity in Jamaica”. A suspense drama set in rural Jamaica just before its independence from the UK in 1962, Raised By Goats tells the tale of an isolated 23-year-old widow coming to terms with her grief amid the mysticism and lore of Jamaica’s Blue Mountains; she meets a withdrawn goat herder and develops a relationship. Allen made the film following a meeting with its producer Nadean Rawlins at Open Doors in 2022, where he showed his first feature Right Near The Beach. “Though we have the stories, skills and technical resources, access to public and private funding is extremely limited in Jamaica,” says Rawlins.
Contact: Nadean Rawlins, producer
Three Bullets (Dom Rep)
Dir. Genesis Valenzuela
Prod co. Colectivo Cinematográfico 81
Set up as a hybrid documentary using narrative strategies from fiction, documentary and essay cinema, Three Bullets (Tres Balas) will explore the case of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Perez who, in 1992, was murdered at the age of 33 by four neo-Nazis in Spain. It was labelled the country’s first racist and xenophobic hate crime. The attack was hatched as a warning to all members of the migrant community to which Perez belonged, rather than targeting her specifically. “I was 33 when I started researching this story over a year ago,” says artist and filmmaker Valenzuela. As an Afro-Caribbean immigrant who lived undocumented in Spain for a time, Valenzuela says: “If I have to put it into one word, I could say the verb ‘emancipate’ inspires me to make this film.” Producer Wendy P Espinal asserts that despite a flourishing film industry in the Dominican Republic after 10 years of tax incentives and support from the film commission, “the challenges of auteur cinema are the same the world over. It is hard to get funding and distribution for the projects tackling the most complex and politically challenging topics.”
Contact: Wendy P Espinal, producer
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