The film won three awards: Best Screenplay, Best Fiction Feature Film and Best Artistic Direction
By EFE / 14ymedio
HAVANA TIMES – The Mexican film ‘Tótem’, by Lila Aviles, was the big winner at the awards gala of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana after winning three awards this Friday.
The film won the Coral for Best Screenplay, Best Fiction Feature Film and Best Artistic Direction on the awards night of the 44th edition of the festival. The Argentine film ‘Los criminales’, (The Delinquents) by Rodrigo Moreno, also won three awards: Best direction, Best photography and Best editing.
The award ceremony, held at the Charles Chaplin cinema, was the culmination of the festival, which since December 8 screened hundreds of films in the Cuban capital and which will officially ends on Sunday.
Among other recognitions, ‘El mundo de Nelsito’ won the best poster category, by Cuban Vladimir Perez. Likewise, in the second edition of the Arrecife award, for the work that best reflects the reality of the LGBTIQ+ community, the award went to the Franco-Colombian production Transfariana, by Joris Lachaise.
With the slogan “Green Light: Action!”, the event featured 199 films selected in competition from a total of 19 countries – the most represented were those from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Chile – in categories such as fiction short films, operas prima, documentaries and animated works.
A series of tributes were also made during the festival, such as to Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutierrez Alea, co-director of ‘Fresa y chocolate’, the only film from the island nominated for an Oscar and which in 2023 marked the 30th anniversary of its release; to the Spanish-Mexican director Luis Buñuel; to the French actor and director Max Linder and the Cuban caricaturist Juan Padron.
Within the framework of the festival, the Cuban Film Poster Center was inaugurated, a place that exhibits part of the collection registered in May on the Memory of the World list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
This edition of the festival was under the shadow of the clash between the filmmakers and the Cuban Government over censorship.
The unrest became evident after the censorship of the documentary ‘La Habana de Fito’, a work directed by Juan Pin Vilar – and which tells the anecdotes in the Cuban capital of the Argentine artist Fito Paez – at the beginning of the year, and the broadcast in June of a non-final version of that film on state television, without the authorization of its director.
These two events marked the founding this summer of the independent Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers, which denounced the censorship of two of its films at the festival.
During these days of the festival, at least two filmmakers criticized the situation they are facing and the attitude of the cultural authorities.
After the screening of ‘Landrian’ – a documentary that talks about the work of Nicolás Guillen Landrian, one of the pioneers of Cuban cinema and who ended up in exile – its director, Ernesto Daranas, assured that censorship is still exercised in Cuba today”.
Similarly, director Orlando Mora Cabrera criticized during the presentation of his short film ‘Brujo Amor’ that the Havana festival “should be a more plural, more inclusive and fairer space. When it censors, it not only excludes the artist, the voice of the people is also silenced”.
To see the complete list of prize winners and mentions click here.
Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.
