We Asked Film Programmers: What Are Your Top 5 Latino Films of 2014?
In the Latino film world, 2014 started off with a bang, a really big one. In January, Alfonso Cuarón took home a Best Director trophy at the Golden Globes for his space odyssey/special effects marvel Gravity. In his acceptance speech (the funniest of the night) the first words he uttered into the microphone were, “Ay guey.” Mexicans across the globe chuckled at that one. Cuarón went on to tell a hilarious story about Sandra Bullock misunderstanding his accent while shooting Gravity in which she thought he said, “I’m going to give you herpes.” What Cuarón actually said was, “I’m going to give you an earpiece.”
A few weeks later, the Chilean film Matar a un hombre (To Kill a Man) was awarded the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Alejandro Fernández Almendras is only the third Chilean director to win the award. Unfortunately, there were no prizes for U.S. Latino films, as only one was in competition, Richard Ray Perez’s Cesar’s Last Fast.
At the Berlinale in February, the road movie/coming-of-age story, Güeros, won the Best First Film prize for its Mexican direcotor Alonso Ruizpalacios. In the black and white stunner, Tomás moves in with his older (and less guero) brother, a student at Mexico City’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His older brother and his brother’s roommate are part of a student strike but their slacker, lethargic state-of-mind takes a back seat when the three go on a journey in search of a once famous singer who has dropped out of the limelight.
In March, at the Oscars, Gravity completely swept the awards ceremony. The film won a total of seven Academy Awards including Best Director for Alfonso Cuarón, making him the very first Latino to take home a directing prize. His fellow classmate at Mexico’s CUEC film school, Emmanuel Lubezki, (actually it was revealed that they were both “asked to leave” before graduating), a multi-nominated cinematographer received his first Oscar win for Gravity. Cuarón also nabbed a bronze statuette for Best Editing.
At SXSW, Diego Luna premiered Cesar Chavez, his first time directing an English-language film. Although it received lukewarm reviews at its premiere earlier in the year at the Berlin Film Festival, he worked hard to promote it at the famed Austin-based fest. Starring Michael Peña as Cesar Chavez, the iconic labor leader, the film chronicles the birth of a movement to fight for a living wage for America’s farm workers. Together with Dolores Huerta (played by Rosario Dawson) Chavez founded the United Farm Workers, a labor union that organized boycotts and hunger strikes. The movie also features America Ferrera and John Malkovich.
A few days later, Diego screened the biopic at the White House. When President Obama introduced the screening of Cesar Chavez, he admitted that he loves Y tu mamá también, the Mexican film that turned Diego into an international star, but that it’s NSFW (Not Safe For White House).
In the summer, at the Cannes Film Festival, there were a handful of high profile premieres: Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, starring Viggo Mortensen, was by far the best reviewed of the bunch, followed by the only Latin American feature to compete in the official selection Damián Szifron’s Relatos salvajes (Wild Tales.) The film, made up of several vignettes, landed a distribution deal with Sony Pictures Classics and became Argentina’s submission for the 2015 Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Out of competition, Gael García Bernal starred in El Ardor as a man who rescues the kidnapped daughter (Alice Braga) of a poor farmer. The Mexican actor/hearththrob also served as part of the jury determining awards. In an unexpected twist, the biggest Latin American film at Cannes turned out to be one of the smallest. The Colombian cortometraje Leidi (directed by Simón Mesa Soto) was awarded the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film.
With the festival season winding down and awards season ramping up, it’s likely next year will start off like a repeat of 2014. The Golden Globe nominations were announced just a few days ago and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu‘s Birdman is leading the pack with nods for directing and screenwriting among other categories. Using the Globes as a reliable predictor for the Academy Awards it will be no surprise if the star-studded picture gets numerous Oscar nominations including another one for Emmanuel Lubezki’s mind-boggling cinematography.
Overall, it was a busy year for Latin American cinema with films premiering and winning prizes at prestigious Class A festivals. U.S. Latino movies, in a repeat of almost every festival cycle, fared much worse. Only one made it to Sundance, and very few American Latino productions scored distribution deals or spots at top-tier festivals. Even still, let’s celebrate the victories.
Just in case you were living under a rock this year and missed it all, we’ve got you covered. Thankfully, there are professionals who get paid to keep track of what Latino movies are receiving accolades, have the most buzz, and got picked up for distribution. We went straight to the experts, film programmers, to ask, “What are your top 5 Latino films of 2014?”