EXTRAORDINARIAS PELÍCULAS LATINOAMERICANAS, PORTUGUESAS Y ESPAÑOLAS DURANTE EL FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE DE TORONTO!

 Toronto - La 31ª edición del Festival Internacional de Cine de Toronto se celebrará del 7 al 16 de septiembre del 2006 y será el lugar de estreno internacional y norte americano de 24 películas latinoamericanas, portuguesas y españolas que representan lo mejor del cine hispano y portugués contemporáneo.

 Estas selecciones tienen en común temas de lucha personal, crecimiento, aislamiento y desilusión, y ofrecen una visión íntima de las vidas de sus protagonistas principales, reflejando las tendencias sociales de la cultura española, portuguesa y latinoamericana.

 Para obtener información adicional acerca de horarios y boletas, visite nuestra página web: www.bell.ca/filmfest o llame al 416-968-FILM

Para mayor información de prensa, póngase en contacto con la Oficina de Prensa llamando al 416-934-3200.

 ARGENTINA

NACIDO Y CRIADO Pablo Trapero, Argentina/Italia/Reino Unido

CRÓNICA DE UNA FUGA Israel Adrián Caetano, Argentina

FANTASMA Lisandro Alonso, Argentina

GLUE - HISTORIA ADOLESCENTE EN MEDIO DE LA NADA Alexis Dos Santos - Argentina/United Kingdom

EL RATÓN PEREZ Juan Pablo Buscarini - Argentina/Spain

 

BRAZIL

ANTONIA Tata Amaral, Brazil

O CÉU DE SUELY Karim Aïnouz, Brazil/Germany/France

 

CUBA

LA EDAD DE LA PESETA Pavel Giroud, Cuba

 

MEXICO

EL VIOLIN Francisco Vargas Quevedo, Mexico

DRAMA/MEX Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico

 

PARAGUAY

HAMACA PARAGUAYA Paz Encina, Paraguay/Argentina/The Netherlands/France/Austria/Germany

 

PORTUGAL

JUVENTUDE EM MARCHA Pedro Costa - Portugal/France/Switzerland

TRANSE Teresa Villaverde, Portugal/France/Russia/Italy

BELLE TOUJOURS Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France

 

SPAIN

VOLVER Pedro Almodóvar, Spain

ALATRISTE Agustín Díaz Yanes, Spain

DIES D'AGOST Marc Recha, Spain

AZUL OSCURO CASI NEGRO Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, Spain

EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO Guillermo del Toro - Spain

EL TELÓN DE AZÚCAR Camila Guzmán Urzúa, France/Spain

THE ABANDONED Nacho Cerdá , Spain

 

URUGUAY

LA PERRERA Manuel Nieto Zas, Uruguay/Argentina/Canada/Spain

The Toronto International Film Festival is deeply saddened by the tragic passing last week of Juan Pablo Rebella, a talented young director, producer, and screenwriter whose work in and passion for the art of cinema has touched many.  The Festival is proud to present THE DOG POUND, a film co-produced by Rebella.

 

ESTADOS UNIDOS

BABEL Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA

EL CANTANTE Leon Ichaso, USA

BELLA Alejandro Monteverde, USA

 

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TEATROS:

·       CINEPLEX ODEON VARSITY CINEMAS (Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor Street West , segundo piso)

·       ALLLIANCE ATLANTIS CUMBERLAND CINEMAS ( 159 Cumberland Avenue )

·      FAMOUS PLAYERS PARAMOUNT THEATRE ( 259 Richmond Street West )

·      RYERSON THEATRE ( Ryerson University , 43 Gerard Street East )

·       ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM (100 Queen's Park Circle )

·     AL GREEN THEATRE ( 750 Spadina Avenue -at Bloor)

·     VISA SCREENING ROOM / ELGIN ( 189 Yonge Street )

·     ROY THOMSON HALL ( 60 Simcoe Street )

 

ARGENTINA

NACIDO Y CRIADO Pablo Trapero, Argentina/Italia/Reino Unido

Viernes, Septiembre 8 - 6:30pm (Paramount 1)

Domingo, Septiembre 10 - 3:15pm (Paramount 4)

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 11:15 AM    (Varsity 1)

 

Santiago (Guillermo Pfening) is an upwardly mobile interior designer who runs a very successful business with his wife, Milli (Martina Gusman). They lead a seemingly charmed but predictable life with their daughter - until their tranquility is shattered by a devastating accident.

 

CRÓNICA DE UNA FUGA Israel Adrián Caetano, Argentina

Viernes, Septiembre 8 - 9:15 PM (PARAMOUNT 4)

Domingo, Septiembre 10 - 12:30 PM (PARAMOUNT 4)

 

The 1976 coup d'état that led to Argentina 's military regime - which remained in place until 1983 - is infamous for the thirty thousand people who "disappeared." Israel Adrián Caetano's Chronicle of an Escape (Crónica de una Fuga) chronicles the escape of four young men from a detention camp where they had been kept for over three months, subject to both physical and psychological torture. Theirs is one of the most chilling experiences imaginable.

 

FANTASMA Lisandro Alonso , Argentina

Miercoles, Septiembre 13 - 3:30 PM (PARAMOUNT 4)

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 9:00 PM CUMBERLAND 2)

 

Alonso's third film brings together the main characters from his two quasi-documentary features, Freedom's Misael Saavedra and Los Muertos's Argentino Vargas, moving them from the Argentine outback to Buenos Aires, where they attend a re-staged premiere of Los Muertos.

 

GLUE - HISTORIA ADOLESCENTE EN MEDIO DE LA NADA Alexis Dos Santos - Argentina/United Kingdom

Jueves, Septiembre 14 - 8:15 PM (VARSITY 3)

Sabado, Septiembre 16 - 11:45 AM (CUMBERLAND 1)

 

Fifteen-year-old Lucas (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) is having a tough time at home: his parents keep splitting up because his father can't be faithful. Still, Lucas seems more concerned about bodily changes - he's constantly inspecting himself for improvements - and getting laid. He spends most of his time with his best friend, Nacho (Nahuel Viale), playing in a band, riding their bikes and obsessing about sex. When they meet Andrea (Ines Efron), the three soon become fast friends. Some of the film's most magical moments feature the trio together; their inane comments, awkward silences, silly laughter and quasi-philosophical musings feel so natural, you'll be transported back to your own youth.

 

EL RATÓN PEREZ Juan Pablo Buscarini - Argentina/Spain

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 6:15 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

Sabado, Septiembre 16 -  2:15 PM  (ISABEL BADER THEATRE)

 

Lucía (Delfina Varni) is a little girl who, as young ones will, loses a tooth. Her mother, Pilar (Ana María Orozco), a successful but overworked architect, and Santiago (Fabián Mazzei), her father, an unemployed chef, reassure her about the fate of her tooth: as is traditional, the Hairy Tooth Fairy (in the form of a debonair mouse named Pérez) will come and collect the tooth, and leave some money in its place.

 

What Lucía doesn't know is that there is a very complex but rewarding "recycling" system for baby teeth, created by Pérez. He collects them, then hundreds of other little mice clean, shape and polish them into pearls, which are then traded to a jeweler named Morientes, who exchanges them for their weight in gold. This gold, of course, is what Pérez leaves for the children - it's perfect. But on his routine rounds, while just about to collect Lucía's tooth, Pérez is kidnapped by scoundrels who wish to hijack the fortune. Lucía gets wind of this and, along with her cousin Ramiro (Nicolás Torcanowsky), sets out to save the Hairy To oth Fairy for children everywhere.

 

BRAZIL

ANTONIA Tata Amaral, Brazil

Viernes, Septiembre 8 - 9:00 PM (ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM)

Domingo, Septiembre 10 - 4:15 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 9:45 AM (CUMBERLAND 1)

 

Dynamic, vibrant and life-affirming, Tata Amaral's third feature, Antonia, describes the ups and downs of a group of female rappers living on the outskirts of São Paolo. Their love of performing and creating music together - despite the many obstacles presented by being poor, black and female in a male-dominated profession - is inspiring.

 

O CÉU DE SUELY Karim Aïnouz, Brazil/Germany/France

Sabado, Septiembre 9 - 6:30 PM (PARAMOUNT 2)

Lunes, Septiembre 11 - 8:45 AM (PARAMOUNT 3)

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 9:00 PM (VARSITY 4)

 

For Suely in the Sky, Aïnouz moves to a very different setting: the expansive, empty landscape of northeastern Brazil . After two years of living in São Paulo , Hermila returns to her village in northeastern Brazil with her newborn son, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her husband. Time passes slowly here and the wait becomes an even heavier burden as she slowly realizes that she's been abandoned. Her feelings of humiliation and failure are palpable, and there is no anonymity to be had in this village. Her distress increases as she renews a relationship with an old boyfriend, João Miguel (João Miguel), before realizing that she can't - and probably doesn't want to - relive the past.

 

CUBA

LA EDAD DE LA PESETA Pavel Giroud, Cuba

Miercoles, Septiembre 13 - 8:30 PM (VARSITY 2)

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 2:15 PM (PARAMOUNT 2)

 

Havana , 1958, the year that culminates in the triumph of the Revolution. Ten-year-old Samuel (Iván Carreira) has just arrived in town with his recently divorced mother, Alicia (Susana Tejera). They make a striking pair: from their demeanour it seems she is the child and he the adult. They take up residence in the house of his eccentric grandmother Violeta (Mercedes Sampietro), and Samuel is introduced to a new, mysterious world: Violeta's house has rooms where entry is prohibited and cupboards filled with images of the saints.

 

MEXICO

EL VIOLIN Francisco Vargas Quevedo, Mexico

Jueves, Septiembre 14 - 6:45 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

Sabado, Septiembre 16 - 9:15 AM (CUMBERLAND 1)

 

Francisco Vargas Quevedo's debut feature, The Violin, expanded from his well-received short of the same name, is a tender and exceptionally poignant drama. Set in a small Mexican village during the uprisings of the seventies, the film portrays the tensions between the peasants and military in the Guerrero region. Shot in stunning black and white and unfolding with a dreamlike languor, it transcends traditional social commentary. The Violin is a tribute to the curative nature of art, as well as a beautiful story about a father's love for his family and the sacrifice of an unlikely hero.

 

DRAMA/MEX Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico

Miercoles, Septiembre 13 - 8:45 PM  (PARAMOUNT 1)

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 2:45 PM (VARSITY 2)

 

Decadent, has-been tourist paradise Acapulco , now a second-rate destination for the "all-inclusive" vacationer, provides the ideal atmosphere for Gerardo Naranjo's engrossing second feature, Drama/Mex. As the title implies, dramatic impetus à la Mexicana is the underlying force of the film, albeit with a very contemporary slant. Several stories are deftly interwoven, each one transferred to the next by returning to an earlier moment in time, then jumping forward again, building momentum and tension throughout the film.

 

PARAGUAY

HAMACA PARAGUAYA Paz Encina, Paraguay/Argentina/The Netherlands/France/Austria/Germany

Viernes, Septiembre 8 - 12:30 PM (PARAMOUNT 4)

Martes, Septiembre 12 - 7:30 PM (CUMBERLAND 1)

Sabado, Septiembre 16 - 9:15 AM (VARSITY 3)

 

This is an intense and astonishingly unconventional film; its non-linear narrative unfolds through extremely long takes and mesmerizing scenes. The majority takes place on a hammock in the Paraguayan countryside, where a mature couple (Ramón del Río and Georgina Genes) sits together talking, drinking tetere and waiting for their beloved son to return from the ruinous Chaco War with Bolivia . Shot with a stationary camera, the scene perfectly captures the couple's intimate rapport. The viewer becomes increasingly involved in the film, mesmerized by the pair's chemistry, progressively identifying with and understanding their pain.

 

PORTUGAL

JUVENTUDE EM MARCHA Pedro Costa - Portugal/France/Switzerland

Jueves, Septiembre 14 - 5:15 PM (VARSITY 2)

Sabado, Septiembre 16 -  8:45 AM (VARSITY 2)

 

Lisbon 's Fontaínhas neighbourhood no longer exists. It has been demolished and many of the inhabitants whom filmmaker Pedro Costa portrayed in his two previous films, Bones and In Vanda's Room, have been forced to move to Casal Boba, a housing development far from the city centre. The third instalment in his series about those living on the city's outskirts, Colossal Youth offers a multi-layered commentary on gentrification, loss, isolation and rejection. In this hybrid of fiction and documentary, Costa follows Ventura ( Ventura ), a slum dweller and victim of this forced relocation - and a gentle soul - on his rounds of the city, visiting the people and places that he loves.

 

TRANSE Teresa Villaverde, Portugal/France/Russia/Italy

Jueves, Septiembre 14 - 9:30 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

 Sabado, Septiembre 16 - 2:45 PM (VARSITY 1)< o:p>

 

The trafficking of women for sexual exploitation is an injustice occurring worldwide. Teresa Villaverde's latest feature, Trance, deals with this disastrous situation in a specifically Eastern European context. With the lure of Western Europe writ large, young women are tricked or forced into a type of indentured slavery and made to prostitute themselves. They are often drugged and "broken in" before being sold. This is the horrific experience of Sonia (Ana Moreira), a Russian émigrée in her early twenties and a dreamer who bravely chases after a better future. She leaves her family and poverty in St. Petersburg and heads west, toward opportunity and freedom.

 

BELLE TOUJOURS Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France

Miercoles, Septiembre 13 - 3:30 PM (PARAMOUNT 4)

Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 9:00 PM CUMBERLAND 2)

 

Belle toujours is master filmmaker de Oliveira's ingenious tribute to two cinematic greats, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière. A sequel to Buñuel's Belle de jour, his film reunites the two main characters thirty-eight years later in Paris . Michel Piccoli is again cast as the acrimonious Henri, the keeper of the one secret Séverine is desperate to discover.

 

SPAIN

VOLVER Pedro Almodóvar, Spain

Viernes, Septiembre 8 - 9:30 PM (ROY THOMSON HALL)

Sabado, Septiembre 9 - 9:30 AM (RYERSON)

 

As is so often the case in Almodóvar's work, the resilience, inventiveness and strong spirits of his female characters enable them to transcend every challenge that comes their way.The tempestuous winds in La Mancha are said to make its denizens insane; they are also alleged to have caused the wildfires that, years ago, orphaned Raimunda (Cruz) and Sole (Lola Dueñas). Raimunda now lives a workaday life in Madrid but her routine is about to be seriously destabilized: around the same time that she finds herself in a crisis involving her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) and her deadbeat husband, Raimunda's long-dead mother, Irene (Carmen Maura, another ret urning Almodóvar favourite), begins making appearances in their hometown.

 

ALATRISTE Agustín Díaz Yanes, Spain

Martes, Septiembre 12 -  9:00 PM (RYERSON)

Jueves, Septiembre 14 - 12:00 PM (PARAMOUNT 1)

 

Based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte's best-selling series of novels, Agustín Díaz Yanes's new film beautifully brings the life and times of the legendary Captain Diego Alatriste to the screen. Grandly paced, Alatriste conveys the grimness of an era rife with warfare, but also memorializes the courage of those who resisted injustice. The film is languidly elegiac in tone and Díaz Yanes frequently employs a painterly effect; his funereal compositions are astonishingly reflective of Velázquez. The riveting Viggo Mortensen is ideally cast as Alatriste, a noble soldier of very few words and very large actions.

 

DIES D'AGOST Marc Recha, Spain

Miercoles, Septiembre 13 -  6:00 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

 Viernes, Septiembre 15 - 12:30 PM (PARAMOUNT 4)

 

The ruggedly beautiful Catalan interior and the spectre of the Spanish Civil War play central roles in Marc Recha's meditative August Days. Fraternal twins Marc and David (played by Marc and David Recha themselves) take off on a road trip in their caravan, exploring the interior during its sunny, languid August lull. It's a rambling journey with no real itinerary, depicted through stills of their trip and coloured by encounters with the local people and fellow travellers. The intimacy of their brotherly love can be felt in the narration by their younger sister.  

 

AZUL OSCURO CASI NEGRO Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, Spain

Lunes, Septiembre 11 - 6:15 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

Miercoles, Septiembre 13 - 10:00 AM (CUMBERLAND 2)

Sabado, Septiembre 16 - 9:00 AM (VARSITY 6)

 

The ruggedly beautiful Catalan interior and the spectre of the Spanish Civil War play central roles in Marc Recha's meditative August Days. Fraternal twins Marc and David (played by Marc and David Recha themselves) take off on a road trip in their caravan, exploring the interior during its sunny, languid August lull. It's a rambling journey with no real itinerary, depicted through stills of their trip and coloured by encounters with the local people and fellow travellers. The intimacy of their brotherly love can be felt in the narration by their younger sister.

 

FICCIÓ Cesc Gay, Spain

Sabado, Septiembre 9 - 8:00 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

Lunes, Septiembre 11 - 12:15 PM (CUMBERLAND 2)

Sabado, Septiembre 16 - 2:15 PM (CUMBERLAND 1)

 

Alex (Eduard Fernández) is approaching forty. An experienced filmmaker, he is trying to complete his latest script, so he leaves Barcelona to stay at the home of his friend Santi (Javier Cámara) in the Catalan Pyrenees. There, he meets violinist Monica (Montse Germán), who is there visiting another friend, Judith (Carme Pla). Over dinner, the four reflect on their lives, the decisions they've made and who they have become.

 

EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO Guillermo del Toro - Spain

Domingo, Septiembre 10 - 3:00 PM (VISA SCREENING ROOM / ELGIN )

Miercoles, Septiembre 13 - 11:45 AM (VARSITY 8)

 

The year is 1944. Young Ofélia (Ivana Baquero) is forced to move into her stepfather's home, now that her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), is about to give birth. She hates her new life and her new father, the tyrannical Captain Vidal (an incredibly creepy performance by Sergi López). He is intent on snuffing out the brave maquis, rebel forces who, despite all odds, refuse to allow their spirits to be crushed by the fascists. Ofélia finds an ally in Mercedes (Maribel Verdú), Vidal's servant, who is secretly helping the rebels. She also discovers a labyrinth near the house and meets its grotesquely fawnlike keeper, Pan (Doug Jones), who gives her three dangerous tasks to complete.