From Our Community Desk:
NINTH ANNUAL HOLA MEXICO FILM FESTIVAL, PRESENTED BY DishLATINO, TO TAKE PLACE JUNE 7-11 AT REGAL LA LIVE STADIUM 14, CINEPOLIS PICO RIVERA AND LA PLAZA DE CULTURA Y ARTES
Largest Festival Of Mexican Cinema Outside Mexico
Will Feature 20 Films and 35 Screenings Over Five Days
Program To Kick Off With “La Vida Inmoral De La Pareja Ideal” and Close With Hip Hop Documentary “Somos Lengua” and a Musical Performance By La Banda Bastón
Full Schedule and Tickets Now Available at http://holamexicoff.com/2017-schedule/
The ninth annual Hola Mexico Film Festival (www.holamexicoff.com) presented by DishLATINO, the largest festival of Mexican cinema outside of Mexico, will run June 7-11 with screenings taking place at the Regal LA Live: A Barco Innovation Center in downtown Los Angeles as well as Cinepolis Pico Rivera and La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, it was announced today by Samuel Douek, Director of Hola Mexico Film Festival.
The festival will open on Wednesday, June 7 with Manolo Caro’s hilarious comedy “La Vida Inmoral De La Pareja Ideal” and close on Sunday, June 11 with the U.S. premiere of Kyzza Terrazas’ Mexican hip-hop documentary “Somos Lengua” (Speaking Tongues), followed by a musical performance featuring La Banda Bastón, whose frontman appears in the film. This year’s lineup includes the U.S. premieres of newly-emerging filmmaker Ana Cristina Barragan’s award-winning “Alba”; Noe Santillan-Lopez’s action blockbuster “Purasangre”; Pedro P. Ybarra’s romantic comedy “El Que Busca Encuentra” and newcomer Miguel Calderón’s “Zeus.” Other notable titles include “Un Cuento De Circo & A Love Song” (A Circus Tale & A Love Song), directed by and starring Academy Award nominee Demian Bechir and co-starring Eva Longoria; Sebastian Cordero’s award-winning “Sin Muertos No Hay Carnaval”; Tatiana Huezo’s acclaimed documentary “Tempestad” and “La Region Salvaje” (The Untamed), from renown filmmaker Amat Escalante (Heli).
Douek said, “Our ninth annual Hola Mexico Film Festival truly has something for everyone who loves movies, with some of Mexico’s most acclaimed and popular fiction and non-fiction films of recent years from award-winning filmmakers and talented newcomers, along with five U.S. premieres. Thank you to our presenting sponsor DishLATINO and amazing group of brand partners, many of which we’re thrilled to welcome for the very first time.”
Featuring 20 films, the festival will include 35 screenings of which the majority will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker. The films fall into one of four categories: Mexico Ahora, comprised of recent Mexican narrative films of various genres never before shown in the U.S.; Documental, an impressive program of Mexican documentaries; Nocturno, a sampling of Mexican horror films; and Nuestras Voces, exceptional works of new filmmakers.
Additional sponsors this year include returning sponsors CineLatino, Heineken and FOX, and for the first time, Toyota, Delta/Aeromexico, HBO, Telemundo, Pantaya, Pantelion, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
All films will be shown in Spanish with English-language subtitles. Listed below are all of this year’s festival selections, by category:
MÉXICO AHORA
LA HABITACIÓN
Tales of Mexico
Dir. Carlos Carrera, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Carlos Bolado, Ernesto Contreras, Alfonso Pinedo Ulloa, Alejandro Valle, Iván Ávila Dueñas, Natalia Beristáin
Cast: Irène Jacob, Kaori Momoi, Kristyan Ferrer, Sofía Espinosa, Noé Hernández, Francisco Barreiro
Mexico/Poland 2016, 120 min
This film is composed of eight different stories directed by eight young, up-and-coming Mexican directors. What ties them together is that all occur in the same apartment in Mexico, over the course of a hundred years. The apartment witnesses the personal lives and secrets of its inhabitants during the march of Mexico’s history––the Mexican Revolution, the years of anti-Chinese campaigns, the 1968 massacre of students at Tlatelolco, the 1985 earthquake, and the current day––all woven together into an elegant, powerful tapestry.
LA REGIÓN SALVAJE
The Untamed
Dir. Amat Escalante
Cast: Ruth Ramos, Simone Bucio, Jesús Meza, Eden Villavicencio
Mexico 2016, 100 min
Alejandra, her distant husband Ángel, and her brother Fabián are locked in a domestic triangle marked by machismo, homophobia, repression, and lies. Then a fascinating young woman named Verónica enters their lives, arriving at the hospital where Fabián is a nurse. She tells them that there is something living in a remote cabin in the nearby hills that will bring them unimaginable pleasure and satisfaction. It will be an encounter with their darkest impulses and sexual instincts, with both the alien and the deeply human.
SIN MUERTOS NO HAY CARNAVAL
Such Is Life in the Tropics
Dir. Sebastián Cordero
Cast: Daniel Adum Gilbert, Andrés Crespo Arosemena, Diego Cataño Elizondo, Maya Zapata, Antonella Valeriano, Erando González, Víctor Aráuz
Ecuador/Mexico/Germany 2016, 100 min
Emilio, a young man born into wealth, has inherited land and needs to evict a community of 250 families occupying it. He has an agent to help him: the very same double-dealing lawyer who is collecting money from the squatters to help with community improvements. But the squatters, sensing treachery, won’t let themselves so easily be torn from the land that is all they have. And the wealthy Emilio is caught in his own troubles over an accidental death caused by a stray bullet. Here in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, the struggle between social classes is laid bare, and the tensions among haves and have-nots build inexorably towards violence.
PURASANGRE
Dir. Noé Santillán-López
Cast: Hernán Mendoza, Joaquín Cosio, Mauricio Argüelles, Luis Roberto Guzmán, César Rodríguez, Adrián Vázquez
Mexico 2016, 104 min
To pay off a debt to a cruel gangster, a team of five men performs a daring heist, successfully robbing a huge sum from the racetrack. All they need to do is lay low and hide the money for a few years. But things don’t go as planned, and the detective Manolo instigates a manhunt to capture them one by one. In a game of wits and violent force played out between tough streets and cruel prisons, Manolo is determined to get the crucial information shared between all five men. But the men are equally determined to do everything possible to stay free and alive.
UN CUENTO DE CIRCO & A LOVE SONG
A Circus Tale & A Love Song
Dir. Demián Bichir
Cast: Demián Bichir, José Ángel Bichir, Julio Bracho, Eva Longoria, Arcelia Ramírez, Ana Claudia Talancón, Juan Carlos Colombo
Mexico 2016, 114 min
Refugio is a romantic dreamer who grew up in the circus in Mexico, remaining there years after his father abandoned it. Now, spurred by the desire to search for a long-lost love, he has journeyed to the streets of New Orleans. Here he will come face to face with the past, and with new dreams and destinies.
TREINTONA, SOLTERA Y FANTÁSTICA
Dir. Chava Cartas
Cast: Bárbara Mori, Marimar Vega, Jordi Mollà, Héctor Bonilla
Mexico 2016, 98 min
Inés is a columnist in her thirties who breaks up with her long-term boyfriend. Embracing her newfound independence, she’s thrown into existential crisis. What is a single woman in her thirties supposed to do and be? In this Mexican box office hit, Inés is catapulted into the comic, recognizable mishaps that come with being caught between her career and her biological clock, between the pressure and advice being dished out by everyone she knows. It’s a journey to find herself, and hopefully find love into the bargain.
LA VIDA INMORAL DE LA PAREJA IDEAL (Opening Presentation)
Dir. Manolo Caro
Cast: Cecilia Suárez, Manuel García-Rulfo, Ximena Romo, Sebastián Aguirre, Andrés Almeida, Eréndira Ibarra, Natasha Dupeyrón,
Mexico 2016, 91 min
Lucio and Martina had a passionate romance during their youth at a strict Catholic high school. 25 years later, they unexpectedly run into each other in the city of San Miguel de Allende. Their immediate reaction is to each pretend to be married happily––even if it’s all lies. As they try to maintain their false images in a comedy of errors, we find out just what happened between the young couple so long ago.
EL QUE BUSCA ENCUENTRA
Dir. Pedro P. Ybarra
Cast: Ana Brenda Contreras, Claudio Lafarga, Esmeralda Pimentel, Erick Hayser, Martín Altomaro
Mexico 2017, 93 min
As children, Marcos and Esperanza met by chance when they both got lost at the soccer stadium, and they fell in love. Now they’ve gone twenty years without seeing each other again, but both of them are suddenly stirred by memories of their long-lost love and decide to seek each other out. In this romantic comedy, the hard part isn’t finding each other: it’s finding out whether chance and destiny will keep them together this time, or pull them apart.
LA CARGA
The Load
Dir. Alan Jonsson Gavica
Cast: María Valverde, Horacio García-Rojas, Gerardo Taracena, Eric Francés, Eusebio Lázaro, Tenoch Huerta
Mexico 2016, 94 min
It is the end of the 16th century in New Spain: the violence and slavery brought by Spanish conquest are ravaging the indigenous people of what will one day be Mexico. When a Spanish woman with noble blood agrees to be a witness in defense of a rebellious indigenous town, she and a tameme––an indigenous porter––must flee. Pursued by soldiers on a perilous journey across the vast landscape of New Spain, the two confront the complex tensions between them and the bonds that begin to grow.
¿CÓMO MATAR A UN ESPOSO MUERTO?
Dir. Conrado Martínez, Joel Núñez
Cast: Mara Escalante, Eduardo España, César Évora, Francisco Gattorno
Mexico 2017
Carolina’s overbearing, ruthless husband caused her distress and difficulty while he was alive––and even after his death, he has decided to keep on ruining her life. In a raunchy, absurd comedy inspired by true events, she will do whatever it takes to get out from under his shadow once and for all.
EL PELUQUERO ROMÁNTICO
The Romantic Barber
Dir. Iván Ávila Dueñas
Cast: Antonio Salinas, Carlos Valencia, Brenda Castro, Larissa Wanke, Fernando Bezerra
Mexico/España 2016, 93 min
Victor is a neighborhood barber in Mexico City. Recuperating from the death of his mother, he fills his days with comfortable routines and a nostalgic love of old romantic music and classic black-and-white films. This uneventful life is changed when Victor ends up in Rio de Janeiro. In a style both charming and sensitive, the film follows the adventures of this old-fashioned man expanding his world.
DOCUMENTAL
SOMOS LENGUA (Closing Presentation)
Speaking Tongues
Dir. Kyzza Terrazas
Cast: Manotas, Claudio Yarto, Mike Díaz, Yoga Fire, Tabernario, Rabia Rivera
Mexico 2016, 86 min
A polyphonic portrait of the independent hip-hop and rap scene in Mexico. For young people who’ve been offered little or nothing by society, there is refuge, creative liberation, community, strength, and survival to be found in their passion for the word. From Guadalajara to Mexico City, Monterrey to Tijuana, this documentary lets the rappers speak for themselves and draw us into their raw worlds with freestyle and rhyme.
TEMPESTAD
Tempest
Dir. Tatiana Huezo
Mexico 2016, 105 min
This documentary follows parallel stories about the shattering human consequences of corruption and impunity in Mexico. Miriam was arbitrarily accused of human trafficking and incarcerated in a violent prison in northern Mexico without evidence. Adela is a professional clown whose daughter disappeared years ago, and who has received death threats for trying to find her. Guided by these women’s voices, this film explores what it means to find emotional strength in the face of violence, injustice, and helplessness.
NAVAJAZO
Dir. Ricardo Silva
Cast: Richard Lewis, Amador Granados, Yareni García, El Muerto de Tijuana
Mexico 2014, 75 min
In this edgy, in-your-face documentary with tinges of fiction, we meet men and women living at the bottom of the social pyramid in the border city of Tijuana. Addicts, prostitutes, pornographers, killers, video actors, and a ghoulish, doom-preaching street performer: all are shown in a candid, unvarnished struggle to survive within a landscape close to apocalyptic.
EL CHARRO DE TOLUQUILLA
Dir. José Villalobos
Cast: Jaime Agustín García Domínguez
Mexico 2016, 90 min
Jaime García Domínguez is a charro––a Mexican cowboy––who lives up to the image portrayed in classic films: riding horses, singing mariachi, dressing the part, and proud to be a tough guy and a womanizer. He has also contracted HIV. In addition to his treatment regimen, he copes with the disease by embracing his constructed macho image with gusto. Meanwhile, he negotiates his relationships with his young daughter, who was miraculously born without HIV, and her mother, with whom he is reluctant to settle down. This documentary is a remarkable and stereotype-breaking character study of a man finding his own path between contradictions.
ETIQUETA NO RIGUROSA
No Dress Code Required
Dir. Cristina Herrera Bórquez
Cast: Víctor Manuel Aguirre Espinoza, Víctor Fernando Urías Amparo
Mexico 2016, 92 min
The Supreme Court of Mexico has declared gay marriage legal, and Víctor and Fernando hope to be the first gay couple to be married in their home state of Baja California. But these two stylists from Mexicali, despite being adored by their clients, meet a wave of intolerance and a series of obstacles placed in their path by local authorities. This is the story of their battle to demand their rights with persistence and dignity.
NOCTURNO
1974
Dir. Victor Dryere
Cast: Diana Bovio, Rolando Breme, Guillermo Callahan, Blanca Alarcón, Rubén González
Mexico 2016, 82 min
A set of 8 mm film reels, discovered in an abandoned house, reveals the buried truth of a horror story that occurred in the 1970s. In the grainy found footage, a newlywed couple begin to experience disquieting events that may indicate supernatural possession. Their plunge into the grip of the demons within the human soul, and perhaps outside it, is relentless and terrifying.
TENEMOS LA CARNE
We Are the Flesh
Dir. Emiliano Rocha Minter
Cast: Noé Hernández, Diego Gamaliel, María Evoli
Mexico 2016, 77 min
Brother and sister Lucio and Fauna wander a post-apocalyptic city in ruins. They are offered shelter by a mad but charismatic hermit who is constructing a new world of his own in an abandoned building. Under his influence, they sink into dark, transgressive behavior that will reach unthinkable extremes. This disturbing, explicit descent into hell is a warped reflection of our own society’s atrocities.
MADRE
Dir. Aaron Burns
Cast: Daniela Ramírez, Aida Jabolin, Matías Bassi, Cristóbal Tapia Montt
Chile/Mexico 2016
Diana Prieto is pregnant, and stretched to her limit trying to take care of her son Martin, a severely autistic boy who has violent outbursts. Then she discovers a caregiver from the Philippines named Luz, who works wonders with Martin, turning his behavior around completely. But disquieting details begin to add up. With growing terror, Diana realizes that the woman she has brought into her own home seems to be drawing her son into a malevolent web of black magic––unless it’s her own sanity unraveling.
NUEVAS VOCES
ALBA
Dir. Ana Cristina Barragán
Cast: Macarena Arias, Pablo Aguirre, Amaia Merino
Mexico/Ecuador/Greece 2016, 94 min
This subtle, moving drama follows eleven-year-old Alba into her adolescent coming-of-age. When her mother is hospitalized with a serious illness, the painfully shy Alba has to go live with her father Igor, whom she barely knows. She must grow up in this difficult situation, learning to deal with her privileged schoolmates and her emotionally withdrawn, defeated father.
ZEUS
Dir. Miguel Calderón
Cast: Daniel Saldaña, Ana Terán, Diana Sedano, Paris Roa, Mauricio Calderón
Mexico 2016, 105 min
Joel is an unemployed man who lives in an unhealthy codependent relationship with his successful mother. Obsessed with falconry, he spends most of his time with his cherished hawk, Zeus. But when a secretary named Ilse starts to show interest in him, the relationship will lead to the loss of the supports Joel uses to deal with the outside world. Faced with the disintegration of his private reality, he is thrown alarmingly out of balance.
About Hola Mexico Film Festival
The biggest Mexican film festival outside of Mexico, the Hola Mexico Film Festival was established in Los Angeles in 2008 and has always strived to bring the best and brightest talents in Mexican cinematography. Spanning comedies, dramas, horror and documentaries, the festival plays the highest quality films in a festive atmosphere, including after parties, outdoor concerts and culinatry events. Sponsors are: DishLATINO, Toyota, Cine Latino, Delta/Aeromexico, HBO, Telemundo, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Pantaya, Heineken, Pantelion, and FOX. For more information and ticket sales visit http://holamexicoff.com.
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