Dec 14, 2018 10:58am PT

‘The Good Intentions,’ ‘Two Little Birds,’ ‘Immaculate’ Win Big at Ventana Sur

‘Good Intentions,’ ‘Two Little Birds,’ ‘Immaculate’ Win at Ventana Sur

BUENOS AIRES — “The Good Intentions,” the first feature of Argentina’s Argentina’s Ana García Blaya, won two industry prizes, including the top European Vision Prize, at the 2018 10th Ventana Sur, which wraps Dec. 14 in Buenos Aires. It shared a third.

The award sweep, for a title in pix-in-pose section Primer Corte, was always on the cards. The father-daughter drama – in which a young girl, shunted between her divorced parents, has to choose between gong to live abroad with her mother or staying with her feckless father – played to applause and even, reportedly, some tears at an industry screening Thursday.

“It’s a portrait of a 2.0 family,” said Bruno Deloye, at France’s Cine + Club, which adjudicated the prize with Le Film Français’ Francois-Pier Pelinard-Lambert and Louise Ronzet from UDI, the latter two representing TitraFilms and Gomedia.

Deloye added: “The relationship between two parents and the three children is crazy, but very well observed. The mix with Super-8 movies is well done.”

Popular on Variety

Produced by Juan Pablo Miller at Tarea Films, Nos’ Joaquin Marques and Juana Garcia Blaya at Bla Bla, “The Good Intentions” announces a directorial and writing talent to track. Not for nothing, García Blaya studied and then worked with Pablo Solarz, one of Argentina’s preeminent screenwriters.

Also scoring at Primer Corte was Uruguayan Matías Ganz’s “Los Indefensos,” which took Le Film Français prize, awarded by Pelinard-Lambert and Markus Duffner. An unusual genre blender, “Los indefensos” takes in social satire before climaxing as a heart-in-mouth thriller, said Pelinard-Lambert.

In Animation! one star entry was Peru’s Amazon-set adventure tale “Ainbo,” pre-sold by Edward Noeltner’s Cinema Management Group to, remarkably, 23 international distributors. Ventana Sur’s animation juries and sponsors may well have decided it did not need prizes.

The biggest prize in the section – flights, accommodation at April’s Quirino Awards in Spain’s Tenerife and Mexico’s Pixelatl Festival – went to “Two Little Birds” from Alfredo Soderguit and Alejo Schettini, director and animation director/co-writer of “Anina,” a 2013 Bafici Audience Award winner. A comedic reflection on human behavior, encapsulated in the rivalry of two minute birds, reportedly winningly animated, “Two Little Birds” is produced by “Anina” backer Palermo Estudio and Can Can Club, whose directors include celebrated Argentine animator Juan Pablo Zaramella.

In a third market strand, genre and fantastic film forum Blood Window, prizes were spread widely. One buzzed-up title and winner was “Immaculate,” from Argentina’s Gonzalo Calzada (“Resurrection”), which received the Sitges Pitchbox Prize from the Sitges Fantastic Film Festival, an invitation to complete in a pitching session at the legendary genre event which was M.C.-ed last year by Guillermo del Toro and this by Ron Perlman.

The second film in a trilogy of possessed virgins which kicked off with “Luciferina,” the film follows 19-year-old Natalia on a journey into the jungle to find a mystical plant.

More to come on other prizes.

VENTANA SUR INDUSTRY PRIZES, 2018

PRIMER CORTE

EUROPEAN VISION PRIZE

“The Good Intentions,” (Ana García Blaya, Argentina)

LE FILM FRANÇAIS PRIZE

“Los indefensos,” (Matías Ganz, Uruguay)

SOFIA FILMS PRIZE

“Santuario,” (Joshua Gil, México)

MAYOR CINE AWARD

“The Good Intentions,” (Ana García Blaya, Argentina)

ANIMATION! AWARDS 2017