4th Sebastiane Latino Award Finalists

The coming edition of the San Sebastian Festival will include screening of the winner of the Sebastiane Latino Award, presented by the Basque gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual association, GEHITU.

The Award goes to the Latin American feature film released during the previous year to best defend the demands and values of lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual people.

The Sebastiane Latino Award Jury, composed of members of GEHITU, has selected as finalists the films Amores Urbanos, Mãe só há uma, Nunca vas a estar solo, Rara, Santa y Andrés and Uio: sácame a pasear. Four of the six finalist films are directed by women.

This fourth edition of the award renews its support of Latin American cinema at the San Sebastian Festival, an event well known for its backing of Latin American productions. In addition to presenting the award to the winner, to be announced on the 18th, the 2nd Meeting of Ibero-American LGBT Film Festivals will also take place at the coming edition of the Festival.

No surprise when I say the most interesting film is the one from Ecuador as was not aware of film and is unusual to find a lesbian interest film made in Ecuador; on top, film already has won some local production awards. Interesting.

Amores Urbanos (Restless Love), Vera Egito, Brazil
Amores Urbanos is a comedy-drama telling the tale of three friends who live in the same building in the city of São Paulo. Julia, Diego and Micaela are young anti-heroes who deal with their ups and downs in love and work with humour and heaps of personality.



Mãe só há uma (Don't Call Me Son), Anna Muylaert, Brazil
On discovering that he was stolen as a child by the woman he thought was his mother, Pierre (also known as Felipe) must face up to the consequences of his mother’s actions and try to deal with his biological family.



Nunca Vas a Estar Solo (You'll Never Be Alone), Alex Anwandter, Chile
After the violent assault of his gay teenage son Juan, a withdrawn manager at a mannequin factory, struggles between paying his son’s exhorbitant medical bills and his last attempt at becoming partner with his boss. As he runs into dead-ends and unexpected betrayals, he discovers that the world he thought he knew was waiting to be violent with him too. Juan has already made too many mistakes, but his son can still be saved.



Rara, Pepa San Martín, Chile and Argentina
A story taking its inspiration from the real-life case of a Chilean judge who lost custody of her children for being a lesbian, narrated from the point of view of her eldest daughter, Sara, aged 13. The screenplay is based on a true story which could be told as a tale of lawyers and courts, of lawsuits, plaintiffs, defendants and victims, but is, instead, the story of a family.



Santa y Andrés, Carlos Lechuga, Cuba, France and Colombia
1988, Andrés is a homosexual writer with counterrevolutionary ideas. He lives confined by the government in a cabin deep in the mountains of eastern Cuba. When a political meeting is about to be held they send Santa, a local girl, to keep an eye on him for three days. Although the odds seem to be stacked against them, they soon realize that they have far more in common than they thought.



Uio: Sácame a Pasear (UIO: Take Me For a Ride), Micaela Rueda, Ecuador, Mexico and Colombia
Sara is in her last year of high school, doesn't have many friends and is trapped between a dominating mother and an inattentive father. But everything changes when she meets Andrea, her new schoolmate, and the two become involved in a secret intimate relationship.




To read the news at the official site go here, available only in Spanish.