Have you heard of the Platino Awards?
Friday, March 17, 2017 at 2:00PM 
Though The Film Experience likes to track key foreign awards (examples include the Césars, Goyas, and the Golden Horse, in addition to the massive Oscars circus, those groups proliferate just like American precursors do. I've lost track of how many awards that Asian cinema, for example, has. But how about South America? The Platino awards are relatively new. They're now in their fourth year honoring films from the Ibero-America region, which is to say primarily Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, i.e. former territories of Spain and Portugal, plus those countries for good measure.
Here's why we should start paying attention to them: in their short existence they've given Best Film to a truly outstanding picture every single time: Chile's Gloria (2014) an amazing study of a divorcee rebuilding her romantic life with an Oscar worthy performance by Paulina García (we nominated her here); Argentina's rowdy, funny, Oscar nominated and deeply pleasurable anthology Wild Tales (2015); and Colombia's mystical wonder Embrace of the Serpent (2015) which you already know we're wild about.
Penelope Cruz is one of 37 women vying for a Best Actress nomination (for her new film Queen of Spain)
We don't have the nominee list yet as the ceremony isn't until July. Like the Oscars, they only allow a certain number of contenders from each country (2 or 3 in their case as opposed to Oscar's 1 film per country rule) but their long list includes a lot of Oscar submissions from the past season. Some highlights include Chile's playful fictionalized biopic Neruda, Brazil's critical sensation Aquarius, Almodovar's Julieta, the fantasy A Monster Calls, Paraguay’s father daughter road trip movie called Guaraní, and at least three LGBT titles: Chile's Rara which is an LGBT family drama, the Venezuelan Oscar submission From Afar, and the Cuban political drama Santa & Andres. You can see the complete longlist for Best Film here which will be narrowed down to 5 nominees soon. There are 37 women vying for the Best Actress nomination but we'd be shocked if both Emma Suarez from Julieta and Sonia Braga from Aquarius didn't make it.
Reader Comments (2)
They have nominated films from all over Ibero-America, not only from South America, although their three Best Picture winners have been from South America and I suspect that this year will be repeated with Neruda. I have followed them since their first year in 2014 because I like the idea to recognize the powerful cinema of the region.
Although there are things that need to be corrected as in production (they have musical numbers that have nothing to do with cinema) and about the nominations as voters vote to choose the nominees in all categories so the nominees for Best Film dominate the Technical categories.
Of course all countries could register all the films they wanted (not only two or three) then there was a vote that reduces the number of contenders that we are coming, then there is another vote and we choose 20 contestants in each category (this will be announced April 4) then there is another vote to choose five nominees in each category that will be announced in May.
The Queen of Spain bombed BIG TIME in Spain. It bombed so bad that its producing corporation, Atresmedia, heavily linked to the extreme right (Franco's heir), blamed on a supposed boycott to the film director's, Oscar-winning Fernando Trueba, from the right-wingers, because he publicly joked about not feeling being spaniard himself (if that supposed boycott was real, why would have the very same kind of people boycotting the film, financed it, including several laughs about Franco?). Most people that actually saw the film agreed that the main reason of its disastrous box office and reviews, was that it is simply a bad film, specially a bad sequel to one of Trueba's bests, "La Niña de tus Ojos"... most of the cast returns in this one and the best analysis i've read, summarizes that acting is good, but the film seems incoherent, rushed and depending too much on audience's suspension of disbelief because they assumed they would love the characters since the first film... which regretfully, most spaniards did forgot, despite being so good and a Goya-sweeper.
I haven't seen it, and I have to say that the trailer looked horrendous, uninspired and failed completely to make me interested in ever watching the film itself, unless it crosses my view on a bored afternoon in front of the tv...