By Robert Koehler
We’re an hour away from the awards announcement in Guadalajara, so rumors are flying. In the Ibero-American competition, will it be Colombian veteran Victor Gaviria for his Berlin-debuting Portraits in a Sea of Lies, or Javier Rebollo for his masterfully witty Woman Without Piano? Or perhaps a wild card like Esmir Filho and his imaginative The Famous and the Dead? (Others in the conversation include Natalia Smirnoff’s Puzzle and Paz Fabrega’s Tiger-winning Agua fria de mar.)
The Mexican field, as usual, is a whole lot shorter: The race appears to be between Nicolas Pereda’s Perpetuum Mobile, Carlos Carrera’s De la infancia and Maria Novaro’s The Good Herbs, largely because no other films are conceivable for any sort of recognition. This hasn’t stopped some ridiculous awarding here in the past; in Guadalajara, come awards time, anything is possible. I’ll be back with the results soon, and then some consideration of one of the festival’s most interesting trends: The new generation of female South American non-fictionists…..