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).
Mauricio Osaki’s The Paths of My Father, Angeles Cruz’s Nudo Mixteco and Joan Gómez Endara’s The Red Tree screen at San Sebastian’s Films in Progress which drinks from the seemingly bottomless well of new talent in Latin America – all six of the pix-in-in-post are first features.
Sourced from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay, the titles also draw a telling portrait of Latin America and beyond: the ever more connected globalized structures of its film financing and story telling and a world ravaged by broken families.
Take The Paths of My Father. It is produced by Brazil’s Dezenove Som e Imagens and Poland’s Kraków Film Claster, but set and shot in Vietnam turning on 11-year-old Vy who wants to escape to her hometown and reconnect with her roots; her father wants to give her away.
Nudo Mixteco centers on three indigenous women’s doubts and fears as they battle for more freedom in their lives and sexuality. Actress Angeles Cruz, star of Lucía Carreras’ Tamara and the Lady Bug, directs; writer-director Carreras (Leap Year, See You Dad) produces with Lola Ovando and Cruz.
Co-produced by In Vivo Films and Viso Producciones, Joan Gómez Endara’s debut feature The Red Tree follows Eliécer, charged with taking his half-sister to the city in search of her mother.
In Agustín Banchero’s Hilda’s Short Summer, Hilda, a lonely woman in a small town, sets about improving her home to receive her son. He cancels at the last minute. Tarkiofilm and Arissas produce.
Produced by Corpulenta Producciones and Avanti Pictures, Non Distinguishing Features is directed by Mexican Fernanda Valadez, who produced The Darkest Days of Us. It follows a mother searching desperately for her son, missing on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Brazil’s Polo MS Cinema E Vídeo Me and Raccord Produçoes Artísticas e Cinematográficas co-produce Magdalena, from Brazil’s Madiano Marcheti, about three strangers coming together after the tragic discovery of a dead trans woman in a soybean field.
John Hopewell, Jamie Lang