Los Cabos winners “Habitacion,” “Carrion” head to Cannes

PanARMENIAN.Net - Eight-part “La Habitación”, Sebastian Hiriart’s “Carrion” and Ricardo Silva’s ‘William, el Nuevo Maestro de Judo,” all winners at Los Cabos in Progress last November, will now segue from Mexico to Cannes to feature in the Cannes Film Market pix-in-post initiative Los Cabos Goes to Cannes, Variety reports.

They will be accompanied by Astrid Rondero’s “The Darkest Days of Us,” chosen by the Tribeca Film Institute from Los Cabos 2014 lineup to feature in the TFI’s Latin American Fund initiative.

Much expanded, and a highlight of this year’s Cannes Film Market – the Goes To Cannes work-in-progress initiative kicked off with just one showcase in 2013 – the Goes to Cannes showcases feature brief introductions to excerpts from films presented by their producer and/or director.

Los Cabos Goes to Cannes kicks off an eight-strand program of movies in rough-cut tapping into some of world’s fastest-growing events – Los Cabos, Panama – regions – Central America, Mexico – and movie types: International animation and genre, catered for by the Fantasia Fest’s Frontières Intl. Co-Production Market and an at least quartet of titles from the Annecy International Film Festival.

Set up at Mexico’s Machete Producciones, whose credits include two of Mexico’s most notable debuts in recent years — Michael Rowe’s “Leap Year” and Diego Quemada Diez’s “La jaula de oro” – set in the same bedroom down the years, “La Habitacion” won a Fox Plus Cabos in Progress Prize at the 4th Los Cabos Festival in November.

“Carrion” reps the third feature from Hiriart whose 2010 debut, a magic realist parable “A Stone’s Throw Away,” won admirers, then directed the multi-part “Filosofia Natural de Amor,” a black comedy about animal instinct underlying disparate couples’ sexual relations. In “Carroña,” which also played Cabos in Progress last year, Hiriart portrays a couple who travel to a tropical resort to reboot their relationship. It transforms, however, into a love triangle with a violent closure.

A project at Los Cabos in 2014 and a 2015 Tribeca Film Institute Latin American Fund grantee, Astrid Rondero’s “The Darkest Days of Us” tracks a woman who returns to her hometown of Tijuana, a city that forefronts what she fears t be true about the world, as her return reawakens painful childhood memories.

“William, el Nuevo Maestro de Judo” (aka “El Fracaso”) marks the second feature from Ricardo Silva, whose debut, “Navajazo,” was a big festival breakout. It took the Cabos in Progress prize at 2015’ Los Cabos in Progress. A startling hybrid mix of fiction and documentary set in Tijuana,

”William” weaves a reflection on the challenges of immortality as a Swede – described in a report as a semi-God – remembers his past lives. Paulina Valencia once more produces.