Francesc Relea’s “The Last Witness,” Alejandra Carpio’s “Concert for a Single Voice” and Martín Boulocq’s “Criminal Body” feature in an expanded Sanfic Industria Ibero-American Work In Progress, one of the industry centerpieces at the 20th Santiago Intl. Film Festival in Chile. Usually eight entries, titles were increased to 10 this year, Gabriela Sandoval, Sanfic Industry told Variety, given that submissions were up 50% on 2023.
That reflects the post-pandemic recovery of production in Latin America, plus the ever larger appeal of profile at Sanfic Industria , the key summer film industry event in the region. With Sanfic Industria’s Sanfic Morbido Lab showcasing the powerful build in genre across Spain and Latin America, including this year new projects from Caye Casas and Guillermo Amoedo, Sanfic Ibero-American WIP has genre movies, whether sci-fi “The Clearing” or the movie shot in “Criminal Body.” Featuring five women directors, the Ibero-American WIP underscores the last-decade build in gender parity in Latin American filmmaking, still a work in progress, especially in the directors of movies.
Titles place women front-and-center, fore-fronting a soon-to-be truncated mother-child relationship (“The Days With Her”), women’s “strength and resilience” (“The Beauty of the Moment”), and their passions other than motherhood, uncomprehended by their offspring (“Concert for a Single Voice”). These are films made by resolute cinemato.