Uruguays Scrappy Filmmakers Impact Globa

Uruguay, Latin Americas second-smallest country, has produced two World Cup champion teams, and now the country is rallying behind its film business.

This year, debutant director Fede Alvarez topped U.S. charts with his Evil Dead remake while international festivals, including Berlin and Cannes, are programming more Uruguayan pics.

Uruguayan cinema burst onto the festival scene in 2001 when Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stolls slacker comedy 25 Watts snagged a Rotterdam Tiger Award. Three months later, Beatriz Flores Silvas social comedy Tricky Life bowed in Uruguay, selling nearly 140,000 tickets, a record number at the time.

Watts helped put Uruguayan film onto the international arthouse map, and Life built up Uruguayan audiences appetite for local movies, recalls 25 Watts producer Fernando Epstein. But we quickly realized the only way to produce was via international co-production.

The local population already had an international sensibility, thanks for an immigrant influx after the Spanish Civil War and World War II, and this outlook helped inform local artists, says helmer-producer Esteban Schroeder of shingle La Suma.

In 2008, the government passed a film law that created the Uruguayan Film and Audiovisial Institute (Icau), which handles a $5 million annual fund for pic projects. The fund has backed more than 300 projects, per Icau director Adriana Gonzalez.

Film budgets averages $600,000-$700,000; local financing hits, at best, $300,000-$350,000 per pic. Icau funds have allowed filmmakers to establish a financing base for their productions, says Alejandra Trelles, Uruguay film fest programmer.

Also, theres hope that public funding will increase. Political authorities are realizing the economic potential of film, says producer Mariana Secco at Salado Media.

Uruguayan filmmakers have proved adept exploring financing opportunities, tapping into pan-regional co-production fund Ibermedia, the San Sebastian-Toulouse Films in Progress, Cannes LAtelier workshop.

Being a small place has made us more aggressive in securing financing abroad, says Secco, whos co-producing Alvaro Brechners Mr. Kaplan with Germanys Razor and Spains Baobab.

In recent years, co-production opportunities with Brazil or Argentina have grown, says Schroeder, who produced Walter Tourniers stop-motion Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe with Disneys Buenos Aires-based Patagonik.

Uruguayan B.O. for foreign and local films is growing, up 14% last year to $18.1 million, per Francisco Armas, at exhibition group MovieCenter.

A wider range of genres, from toons (Selkirk, Anina) to thrillers (La casa muda, gangland B.O. hit Reus) to docs (Aldo Garays El casamiento, Sebastian Bednariks Mundialito) also suggest film industry growth.

Uruguay is now discovering its own identity. Documentaries, Uruguayans stories, have an audience, says director Ana Pita (Prisoner).

With U.S. majors taking a 79.6% market share, however, the immediate challenge for Uruguays biz is distribution.

This year will see a 30-screen digital cinema network including five screens in Uruguay launch in Latin America, backed by pan-regional trade org Mercosur, attack head-on one of Latin American films biggest problems: pan-regional circulation of films, says Epstein, whos also director of the networks programming office.

FILMMAKERS TO TRACKEleven Uruguayan filmmakers making their marks at home and on foreign screens

robbydfaのブログ

ブログの説明を入力します。

Uruguays Scrappy Filmmakers Impact Globa