Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
In one of the first deals to go down at the 63rd San Sebastian Festival, Todo Cine Latino, the speciality label of Paul Hudson’s Los Angeles- based Outsider Pictures has inked U.S. rights to Colombian Cesar Acevedo’s “Land and Shade.”
An outstanding Latin American big fest winner in a year of multiple big fest wins, “Land and Shade” took Cannes 2015 Camera d’Or for best first feature, plus a Visionary Prize and France’s Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize (SACD) in Critics’ Week. Deal was sealed at San Sebastian on Monday between Hudson and Agathe Valentin, the new head of sales at Paris- based Pyramide Films, one of Europe’s premier art film production-distribution-sales houses.
A somber drama about a Colombian family wrestling a pitiful living out of sugarcane plantation, which is destined to disappear, as their form of subsistence existence, Acevedo’s debut is produced by Diana Bustamante for Colombia’s Burning Blue is a Latin America-Europe co- roduction structure which takes in the Netherlands, Chile, Brazil and France. “Land and Shade” is intimately linked to the San Sebastian Festival where it was a highlight of the 2nd Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum, winning a second-prize special mention at the meet. It now plays in Horizontes Latinos, San Sebastian’s Latin American showcase.
“The film is so topical and continues our acquisition of Colombian films which started with producer Diana Bustamente’s ‘Crab Trap’ and now continues with ‘Land and Shade,’” Hudson said.
John Hopewell