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Chicago – The 39th Chicago Latino Film Festival (Clff) opens Thursday, April 13th, 2023, with “Amore y Matemáticas” (Love and Mathematics) at the AMC River East starting at 5:30pm, kicking off a full ten days of 51 features, 35 shorts, parties and events. For more information about Opening Night, click Clff Opening for details.

“Amore y Matemáticas” (Mexico) is directed by Claudia Sainte-Luce (“The Amazing Catfish”), who delivers a droll, offbeat comedy about glories past, consumerism and breaking away from social norms. Back in the day, Billy Lozano (Roberto Quijano) used to be in the one-hit boy band Equinoccio. In present day he is a suburban stay-at-home dad, taking care of his newborn child, occasionally dealing with old fans and taking part in his brother’s get-rich-quick schemes. But when his neighbor from across the street, … a former fan herself … encourages him to resume his music career, Billy finally begins to see a way out of his doldrums.

Feel the beat in a trailer for Claudia Sainte-Luce’s Spanish language comedy Love & Mathematics (Amor y matemáticas). The fifth feature to hail from the woman behind 2013’s dramedy, The Amazing Catfish, is back to make audiences laugh and feel a sense of hope all over again. Penned by playwright and writer, Adriana Pelusi, the feature marks Sainte-Luce’s first time stepping away from the job of screenplay scribe and sticking solely to directing.

2017… The year in which the Mexican Senate came up, out of nowhere, with the National Day of Mexican Cinema, a joke that - rather than an initiative of promotion and recognition - ended up being a vile movie marathon at Cineteca Nacional of overused contemporary films. Was it really necessary to screen yet again Güeros and The Amazing Catfish? The year when it was presented the governmental program Ruta Mx, which failed spectacularly to the promise of premiering 80 films supported with public money within 12 months. The year that saw the new administration of the Mexican Academy starting on the wrong foot, as its president, director Ernesto Contreras, presented at a press conference a workplan full of intentions rather than real proposals; as...

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World premiere of Intimate Lighting restoration, a focus on Mexican female directors, a tribute to Otto Preminger and the first Eurimages Lab Project Award set for 2016 edition.

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) has unveiled the first wave of titles and industry initiatives set for its 51st edition (July 1-9).

The festival, hosted in the picturesque Czech spa town, will world premiere a digital restoration of Ivan Passer’s Intimate Lighting. The bittersweet comedy about an encounter between two former classmates and musicians is described one of the most striking films of the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s.

The 82-year-old director, who was honoured with Kviff’s Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema in 2008, will be present at the premiere on July 2.

Mexican female directors

Semana Santa

Kviff will also spotlight Mexican female directors, screening nine features and one short from the past five years. The filmmakers include Elisa Miller, who won a Palme...

Top brass at the festival, set to run from September 24-October 8, have announced the selections in Focus Mexico.

The films are as follows:

Focus Mexico

The Obscure Spring (Las Oscuras Primaveras)

Ernesto Contreras

Manuela Jankovic’s War (La Guerra De Manuela Jankovic)

Diana Cardozo

González

Christian Díaz Pardo

Asteroide

Marcelo Tobar

The Absent (Los Ausentes)

Nicolás Pereda

Cumbres

Gabriel Nuncio

We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa)

Samuel Kishi

The Well (Manto Acuífero)

Michael Rowe

Güeros

Alonso Ruizpalacios

Cantinflas

Sebastian del Amo

Los Angeles

Damian John Harper

The Amazing Catfish (Los Insólitos Peces Gato)

Claudia Sainte-Luce

The Empty Hours (Las Horas Muertas)

Aaron Fernandez.

Panorama section

Words With Gods (Palabras Con Dioses)

Guillermo Arriaga, Héctor Babenco, Warwick Thornton, Mira Nair, Hideo Nakata, Amos Gitai, Álex de la Iglesia, Emir Kusturica, Bahman Ghobadi

Short Plays

Daniel Gruener, Carlos Reygadas, Fernando Eimbcke, Felipe Gómez, Alejandro Valle, Karim Aïnouz, Marcelo Gomes, Pablo Fendrik, Pablo Stoll, [link...

One of the most anticipated films from Morelia's official Mexican selection is Claudia Sainte-Luce's The Amazing Catfish (Los Insólitos Peces Gato), winner of the Fipresci Discover Award at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. The Amazing Catfish will connect with all kinds of audiences as it deals with a dysfunctional family, having both funny and sensitive parts. I sat down with Sainte-Luce for some minutes to talk about her debut feature length film. Note: The interview contains some spoilers. Twitch: A lot of films based on real life events begin with that legend ("based on a true story"). Why did you decide not to tell this to the audience? Claudia Sainte-Luce: Because (The Amazing Cat-Fish) is full of lies (laughs). Sure, it's based on something...

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In the last wave of Tiff announcements, it’s the Discovery section that we’re most curious about as it normally is loaded up with the rookies, many first-time and second time filmmakers breaking into world film festival circuit programming with genuine gems. Among the 25 plus selected films that make up the programme, we’ve got a handful of U.S. independent films in the likes of Mark Phinney’s Fat, a pair of Us in Progress Paris projects in Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly’s Beneath The Harvest Sky and Tommy Oliver’s 1982, while a newbie filmmaker part of the clan in Gia Coppola makes the trip from Venice Film Festival’s Horizon section to Toronto with the book to film adapation of James Franco Palo Alto (see pic above). Also from Venice, we have the Venice Days included Bethlehem, from Israeli helmer Yuval Adler and an item that...

Festival organisers announced the Discovery, Mavericks and Masters sections, details of the David Cronenberg: Transformation exhibition, a tenth Midnight Madness entry and introduced the Glenn Gould Studio to the festival’s stable of venues.

The programming strands feature new work from Catherine Breillat and on-stage conversations with Spike Jones, Irrfan Khan, Harvey Weinstein and Ron Howard.

The final entry in Midnight Madness will be the world premiere of Alex de la Iglesia’s Witching & Bitching (Las brujas De Zugarramurdi) (Spain-France).

The Glenn Gould Studio will serve as a venue for various public and industry programming during the festival and will function as a main location for the Tiff Industry Conference, set to run from Sept 6-12.

Programming will include the industry conference keynote session, Master Class, Moguls, Mavericks, Telefilm Canada Pitch This! on Sept 9 and the Doc Conference from Sept 10-11.

“As the jewel of the Canadian Broadcast Centre, Glenn Gould Studio...