Diego Cespedes: Celebs Rumors

Anna Marie de la Fuente Led by a special screening slot for celebrated documentarian Patricio Guzman’s “My Imaginary Country,” plus Directors’ Fortnights “1976”  and a new short by 2018 Cinéfondation prizewinner Diego Céspedes in Critics’ Week, Chile boats the biggest presence of any Latin American country at Cannes.“Our cinema is a living and pulsating entity, a cinema full of risky auteurist viewpoints that are capable of expressing our particular experiences in a universal way and at the same level playing field as bigger filmmaking territories, says CinemaChile executive director Constanza Arena, taking note of Chile’s strong showing.“The directors of a new wave of Chilean cinema take on powerful themes with deep socio-historical weight, but with fresh stylistically innovation, whether it’s political trauma in ‘1976’ by Manuela Martelli, or the LGBTQ+ theme in ‘Las Criaturas que se Derriten Bajo el Sol’ by Céspedes. With their daring, they are pushing forward a new generation of Chilean and Latin American cinema,” Arena observes.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Giancarlo Nasi’s Quijote Films, one of the lead producers of Chile’s current Oscar entry “White on White,” has closed a co-production deal with France’s Les Valseurs at the American Film Market for “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” the first feature from Diego Cespedes, the Cannes Festival’s 2018 Cinefondation first prize winner.Mexico’s Varios Lobos, led by Pablo Zimbron, is also a co-producer.In addition, the pact includes the financing and co-production of a short film by Cespedes, with a budget that exceeds $116,000 (€100,000), making it one the most expensive short films to be ever made in Chile’s cinematic history.