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 In a year when space blockbuster "Gravity" is tipped to bring
Oscar glory to Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, smaller
international productions with strong Latin American artistic
input are increasingly making their mark.
In 2009, Llosa won the festival's prize for best film, the
Golden Bear, for her Spanish-language "The Milk of Sorrow".
This time her film is in English, reflecting a trend not only in
Latin American movies, where the financing may come from
American, European and other international sources. The casting,
production values and even "mentoring" is also increasingly
globalised.
The film was shot in Canada and billed as a French, Spanish and
Canadian production, with an international cast including Irish
actor Cillian Murphy as the falconer, the American actress
Jennifer Connelly as his mother and French actress Melanie
Laurent as a documentary journalist.
"The world is becoming smaller," Murphy said at a post-screening
news conference. "Stories are universal and if you tell the
story well, hopefully it appeals" to everyone.
Llosa, the niece of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, said
the only thing that had changed in her directing style was the
language: "For me I didn't see a marked difference from the way
we work in Peru."
"It generally was an open process, the actors opened their
hearts to me ... and the very fact that I could sit with them
and tell them the story was like a dream come true," she said.
EVOLUTION IN LATAM CINEMA
The changes in Latin American cinema were underscored at Berlin
by the involvement of veteran American director Martin Scorsese
as executive producer of a sophisticated Spanish-language
Argentine competition entry, director Celina Murga's "La Tercera
Orilla" (The Third Side of the River").
"There is a certain evolution of Latin America during the last
10 years, things have changed," Juan Villegas, the film's
producer, said.
With the increasing international involvement in the continent's
cinema, "festivals are showing more movies from Brazil, Mexico,
Argentina", he added.
The film, which has yet to screen in Argentina, is highly
critical of the country's macho culture, showing a well-off
doctor who is essentially a polygamist, living with two
families, and the impact of that on his eldest son Nicolas.
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 Set in the provinces, it shows the teenager burdened
by the responsibility he takes on for his siblings and mother, as
his father Jorge always returns to his other family at night.
Nicolas becomes suffocated by his authoritarian
father, who wants him to follow in his footsteps, become a doctor
and look after the ranch. When Jorge takes him to a grim strip club
and urges him to fondle one of the women, he sits in silence,
waiting until he can leave.
"This movie is all about a macho society, a conservative society — especially in (Argentina) the father you see in this movie is rather
typical," Murga said. "He is ... the male hero who wants to force
his son to be in a real man's world."
She said that Scorsese, whose films include testosterone-fuelled
titles like "Raging Bull" and "The Wolf of Wall Street", had
provided her with a male perspective.
"It was very helpful to get this male angle on the
world," she said. "It was of course also a challenge for me to work
with him, I wanted to pick up certain aspects of his work and
further develop these."
Another Argentine film screened earlier in the week, "Historia del
Miedo" (History of Fear) by young director Benjamin Naishtat,
portrays a gated community in the suburbs of Buenos Aires where the
wealthy inhabitants are in a permanent state of paranoia.
The film is like a parody of a thriller, where very little action
takes place but even a blackout — which is common in Argentina — is
enough to create utter hysteria.
The Brazilian competition entry "Praia do Futura" also has an
international feel, portraying a budding gay relationship between a
German dirtbiker, played by German actor Clemens Schick, and a
Brazilian lifeguard played by Brazilian Wagner Moura.
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
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