GUADALAJARA – Berlinale Teddy recipient “The Way He Looks” (pictured), San Sebastian’s Golden Seashell winner “Bad Hair” and “Tom at the Farm,” which scooped Venice’s Fipresci award for best film in competition are among 18 fiction features up for Guadalajara Fest’s Maguey Prize.
Gearing up for its third edition – and a sign of how LGBT competitions are finally establishing a foothold or more major prominence at major Latino events – Guadalajara will also honor the Berlin Festival’s Weiland Speck, Divine and Ruby Rich and Roberto Espejo with individual Maguey Prizes.
Breaking taboos, the Festival also feature a 13-title section curated by Berlin Porn Fest director Juergen Bruening.
A feel-good account of a blind teenager’s first love produced by Sao Paulo’s Lacuna Filmes, Daniel Ribeiro’s feature debut “The Way He Looks,” which is sold by Films Boutique, also scooped the Fipresci Berlin Panorama section Int’l Federation of Film Critics award.
Mariana Rondon’s account of a nine-year-old-boys growing obsession with slicking his hair, part of his nascent gay sexuality “Bad Hair” has proved one of the biggest sales hits to date at L.A.-based FiGa Films.
Popular on Variety
Produced – and sold strongly – by Nathanael Karmitz’s MK2, “Tom at the Farm” was described by Variety as “kinky queer noir” and Canadian Xavier Dolan’s “most accomplished, enjoyable and commercially viable work to date.”
Sold by Le Pacte, “The Dune,” which received glowing reviews at San Sebastian, marks Israeli Yossi Aviram’s debut in the tale of man’s attempted reconciliation with his ageing gay father.
Figuring among other potential Maguey highlights is praised debut “Land of Storms,” a gay love affair and study of homophobia where helmer Adam Csaszi barely put a foot wrong, Variety wrote.
Starring Max Riemelt (“The Wave”), Katharina Schuttler (“Oh Boy”) and Hanno Koffler (“Krabat”), love triangle tale “Free Fall,” from Germany’s Stephan Lacant, opened the Berlinale’s 2013 Perspectives on German Cinema. Israeli Yarin Mozer’s 1989-set “Snails in the Rain,” a story of a man’s increasingly confused sexuality, was first seen at the Montreal World Film Fest,
Further Maguey contenders include Chris Mason Johnson’s AIDS-themed “Test,” an American Dramatic Feature and Screenwriting winner at Outfest, Nejc Gazvoda femme love affair tale “Dual,” which played East of the West at Karlovy Vary, and its winner, “Floating Skyscapers” a stylish coming-out film from Poland’s Tomazs Wazilewski.
Also in the running are Cory Krueckeberg’s raunchy NYC nightscene-set “Getting Go: the Go Doc Project,” Cannes Un Certain Regard player, “Sarah Prefers To Run,” which topped Mexico’s Baja Fest last November, “Four Moons,” a multi-story feature, already picked up for international sales by Habanero Film Sales.
The Maguey docu spread features “Ignasi M.” a portrait of an irrepressible optimist, despite everything, by Ventura Pons, Barcelona’s most resilient auteur, whose movies date back to 1978’s ”Ocana, an Intermittent Portrait,” a milestone in Spain’s post-Franco cinema.
