Days of Cinema

The 5th Morelia Film Festival starts tomorrow, I've been going to the festival since its first edition and I have seen the transformation of the third most important festival in the country, just after Guadalajara and FICCO. I currentely live in Mexico City, but I was actually born in the beautiful capital of the Mexican state Michoacan. Even though the list of films is HUGE, it is always impossible to see more than 20 films. Last year I was able to catch 15 films, from those I considered 4 films as 'outstanding': "Broken Sky", "The Road to Guatanamo", "Volver" and "News From Afar."

Last year I was able to touch Guillermo Del Toro, I know that sounds so minimal, but hey he is a great director, or at least when he's not directing Hollywood films. The competition is divided in 4 sections, all awarding Mexican productios: Best Mexican Short, Best Short from Michoacan, Best Documentary and for the first time Best Mexican Feature. The films in competition I'm mostly looking forward are the Toronto winners "Cochochi" and "La Zona", hopefully I'll be able to catch both of them.

The 'premiere' screenings will bring better selections, many titles from Cannes and Venice. I will be writing my thoughts in this blog, but I was delighted to get an invitation from Carlos Reyes, from the excellent blog Cine Azteca. I know about 2 people visit my blog and colaborating at his blog will hopefully bring more visitors to my blog, not to mention that he 'hooked' me up with the fest and I got special privaleges, more movies!

These is the list of films I'm looking forward the most:

1. My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar Wai)
2. La Zona (Rodrigo Pla)
3. Cochochi (Israel Cardenas y Laura Guzman)
4. Ser Isla (Eun-Hee Ihm) (seen it, but supposely there is an 'extended' version?)
5. Ladrones Viejos, Las Leyendas del Artegio (Everardo Gonzalez)
6. Voleurs de Chevaux (Micha Wald)
7. El Pasado (Hector Babenco)
8. The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)
9. Luz Silenciosa (Carlos Reygadas)
10. Moliere (Laurent Tirad)

others: "Paranoid Park" (Van Sant), "Bug" (Friednick), "Year of the Nail" (Cuaron) and "A Portrait of Diego" (Figueroa & Lopez)