Sanfic Industria Signals Robust Growth in Latin American Film and TV

variety.com:

Anna Marie de la Fuente Chile’s foremost industry forum Sanfic Industria wrapped Friday Aug. 19 with a wealth of prizes doled out to projects from across Latin America and Spain.

Still reeling from the pandemic, the forum’s 11th year saw another hybrid edition but a definite upsurge in attendance. The various sections included WIP Ibero-American, Santiago Lab: Fiction and Documentary, Sanfic-Mórbido Lab, Sanfic Series and the new space created for female producers, Productoras Lab.Most telling, a number of projects from small countries and by women directors as well as upcoming new talent triumphed at the forum this year.Bolivian drama “Diamond,” the feature debut of Yashira Jordan that follows an Indigenous trap-singing teen as she searches for her estranged father, took home the most prizes in the Santiago Lab Fiction section, with three honors, including the BDC Co-Production award.

Guatemala’s “Kicks of Soil” by Indigenous filmmaker Leyzer Chiquin and Chilean Constanza Figari’s second feature, “A Woman Wants to Die,” won two awards apiece.In the Santiago Documentary Lab, docu-fiction hybrid “Erratic Blocks” (“Bloques Erraticos”) the first full-length feature doc of Thomas Woodroffe known for his acclaimed short films “Austral Fever” and “Holding Desire,” cleaned up with three prizes.

It was recently recognized at the Cannes Marché du Film where it won the Pop Up Film Residency Award at the Short Film Corner and before that the Le Lokal prize at the Cinélatino-Rencontres de Toulouse, among others.