Interview: Tatiana Huezo on Mexico's Oscar contender "Prayers for the Stolen" (now streaming)

by Nathaniel R

After several shorts and a few documentaries including the highly acclaimed Tempestad, which won her the Best Director Ariel back home in Mexico, filmmaker Tatiana Huezo didn't rest on her laurels. She wanted to take a risk. She set herself an "ambitious challenge" for her first narrative feature, adapting the award winning novel "Prayers for the Stolen" by Jennifer Clement about young girls living in the mountains who are in continual danger of abduction and worse from the cartels.

The risk paid off when her film debuted to immediate praise at Cannes where it won a Special Mention in Un Certain Regard. Prayers for the Stolen, now streaming on Netflix, was then selected as Mexico's Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film. We were privileged to sit down with the director recently to discuss her film and the Oscar race. This interview was conducted with a translator though Tatiana Huezo slipped into English once, with joyful laughter to say "Nooo, it's too much!" when the topic of Oscar submissions came up... 

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New International Contenders: "The Hand of God" and an extremely hot Instagram star

by Nathaniel R

Time to check in again with Oscar submissions as five more countries join the fray. The highest profile new entry is Italy's The Hand of God by Paolo Sorrentino. He triumphed in this category eight years back with The Great Beauty (2013) which ended the longest drought -- seven years -- that Italy has ever had in this particular competition. If The Hand of God snags the nomination, Sorrentino will have performed this feat twice since Italy hasn't been nominated since. Sorrentino joins Iran's Asghar Farhadi (A Hero) as the only International contender this season who has already led a film to victory in this category.  The Hand of God is a memoir about Sorrentino's teenage years and a family tragedy. He's been campaigning enthusiastically since Cannes, recently attending the Middleburg Film Festival to receive an International Spotlight prize.

Other new contenders are after the jump...

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Best International Film: Brazil's "Private Desert", Iceland's "Lamb" and more...

Since I last piped up on the Best International Feature Film race at the upcoming Oscars, Italy released their finalist lists, and the following five countries have also picked their ponies:

BRAZIL
They're sending Aly Muritiba's Private Desert about a suspended policeman who is looking to meet his internet love. She's vanished but he finds a man who offers to connect the would-be lovers. It premiered at Venice...

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Armenia, Canada, Colombia, and Peru announce their Oscar submissions

by Nathaniel R

DRUNKEN BIRDS

We have four more submission for Oscar's Best International Feature Film race to share.

CANADA
Remember that nude asshole boyfriend "Fermin" from Alfonso Cuarón's Roma who knocked our heroine up and then abandoned her? The actor who played him, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, could be back in the International Feature Oscar race. Guerrero headlines this year's Canadian Oscar submission Drunken Birds, which is about a man on the run from a cartel leader who relocates to Quebec and hopes to find a woman there who fled from the same cartel. The film, in French and Spanish, comes from Canadian director Ivan Grbovic and just played TIFF...

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Nathaniel in Venice: It's a brutal world but men sure make it worse!

Nathaniel reporting from Venice, final days...

On day one Parallel Mothers set the theme that Venice would be about death. Not Death in Venice, mind you (different movie). And now the death of my Venice trip as I'll be flying across the Atlantic as you read this back to NYC. Power of the Dog  (also on the first day of the fest) also revealed that you would not be able to escape films examining toxic masculinity. So here are three more doing the latter, one from Italy and two from Mexico.

The Catholic School (Stefano Mordini)
This mainstream Italian film which premiered out of competition belongs to the ever popular “true crime” genre. It seeks to analyze the environment that led to an infamous rape/murder committed by three upper class school boys in 1975 that set the Italian nation on edge...

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