Peru’s Lima Film Festival celebrates 25th anniversary with tribute to Laurent Cantet

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – French filmmaker Laurent Cantet will be the main guest at the silver jubilee of the Lima Film Festival, which this year celebrates its 25th edition from August 19 to 29, the second in virtual mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

With the slogan “25 years of Latin cinema”, this year’s edition of the Lima event will feature 63 feature and short films and more than 40 meetings with filmmakers, including a master class with Cantet.

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There will be 33 films in the official competition, including 15 in the fiction section, another 15 in the documentary section, and 3 in the “Made in Peru” section, which will present three national premieres of Peruvian films.

Three Argentinean, three Peruvian, two Mexican, two Brazilian, two Colombian, one Chilean, one Costa Rican, and one Dominican film will compete in fiction.

From Argentina will be “El perro que no calla”, “Las siamesas” and “La chica nueva”; from Brazil “Casa de antiguidades” and “Madalena”; and from Colombia “Amparo” and “El alma quiere volar”.

Also competing from Mexico will be “Noche de fuego” and “50 o 2 ballenas se encuentran en la playa”, from Costa Rica “Clara sola”, from Chile “La Verónica”, from the Dominican Republic “Liborio” and the host country will be represented by “Las mejores familias”, “LXI (61)” and “Autoerótica”.

Likewise, the festival organized by the Cultural Center of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (CCPUCP) will have the American “First Cow”, the Russian “Dear Comrades!”, the Mexican “La Civil”, the Dutch “No hay camino” and the African “This is not a burial, it’s a resurrection”.

“We have very recent films, which have been at the Cannes festival just a few weeks ago. Others have also been at the Berlin and Sundance festivals,” said filmmaker Josué Méndez, the festival’s artistic director, on Wednesday.

The festival will open with the presentation of the restored and digitized version of “Cholo” (1972), Bernardo Batievsky starring the soccer player Hugo Sotil, one of the legends of Peruvian soccer.

The film was restored by the film and television archive of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). It will be the first time that a restored Peruvian film is presented in such high-quality conditions.

Among the free access contents of this edition, the public will be able to watch “Not the Science Type”, a North American documentary series directed by Julio Palacio that presents the story of four women scientists who have applied science to change the lives of people around the world.

Likewise, a selection of 20 short films and experimental works that have won incentives from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture between 2019 and 2020 will also be available for free access.