Janus Films has picked up North American rights to four of Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas’ features including a restored version of Battle in Heaven ahead of its world premiere in Berlin’s Classics Special.
Other titles in the deal with Coproduction Office include the 2002 Camera d’Or-winning debut feature Japon, 2007 Cannes Jury prize-winning Silent Light whose restoration is planned for later in 2024, and 2012 Cannes best director award-winning Post Tenebras Lux.
Battle in Heaven will screen in 4K resolution with Dolby Atmos sound.
The provocative film is about a driver haunted by the kidnap of a child.
Why sellers are aiming...
Other titles in the deal with Coproduction Office include the 2002 Camera d’Or-winning debut feature Japon, 2007 Cannes Jury prize-winning Silent Light whose restoration is planned for later in 2024, and 2012 Cannes best director award-winning Post Tenebras Lux.
Battle in Heaven will screen in 4K resolution with Dolby Atmos sound.
The provocative film is about a driver haunted by the kidnap of a child.
Why sellers are aiming...
- 2/16/2024
- ScreenDaily
Coproduction Office has acquired international rights to the catalogue of acclaimed post-War East German filmmaker Konrad Wolf. The Paris and Berlin-based company is working with Defa Foundation and Defa Distribution, part of a German government-run group of film studios founded in the late 1940s to restore Wolf’s 14 features to commemorate the centenary of his birth in 2025.
Wolf’s anti-fascist film Sterne (Stars) won him a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1959 and his 1964 feature Divided Heaven captured the complexities of life in divided Germany. His 1971 drama Goya Of The Hard Way to Enlightenment,was a biopic of the Spanish painter.
Wolf’s anti-fascist film Sterne (Stars) won him a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1959 and his 1964 feature Divided Heaven captured the complexities of life in divided Germany. His 1971 drama Goya Of The Hard Way to Enlightenment,was a biopic of the Spanish painter.
- 2/9/2024
- ScreenDaily
For those of us around in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was a wild time for American cinema. You wouldn’t know it by looking at what’s screening at the multiplex today, but once upon a time sex actually existed at the movies. Practically every week there was a new erotic thriller like Unfaithful or an indie drama like Roger Dodger openly dealing with sex, laying it on the table and discussing it as if it were a natural thing to engage with and not run away from as cinema does today.
In fact, sex was so frequently present in the visuals and dialogue of films at the time, that occassionally there were even films that featured real sex. That’s right, unsimulated. Most films of this type were from outside of the United States, but sometimes you’d get some in the US, and we got...
In fact, sex was so frequently present in the visuals and dialogue of films at the time, that occassionally there were even films that featured real sex. That’s right, unsimulated. Most films of this type were from outside of the United States, but sometimes you’d get some in the US, and we got...
- 1/25/2022
- by Mitchell Beaupre
- The Film Stage
Ostinato Cine, one of the high-energy company hubs on Ecuador’s burgeoning film scene, is teaming with Germany’s Rohfilm Productions to co-produce “Alfredo Larón,” the feature film debut as a writer-director of Benjamin Mirguet, an editor on Carlos Reygadas’ “Battle in Heaven” and João Paulo Miranda Maria’s “Memory House.”
Developing and financing features for the international crossover arthouse sector, Rohfilm Productions’ credits include Cannes’ 2021 Un Certain Regard winner “Great Freedom,” Kate Shortland’s “Lore” and Adina Pintilie’s 2018 Berlin Golden Bear winner “Touch Me Not.”
Producing upscale docu-features, such as Bafici 2017 Fipsresci jury winner “A Secret in the Box,” Obstinato also runs a energetic distribution operation in Ecuador.
Ranging from Ecuador to Germany and France and building from a portrait of the protagonist’s life in Ecuador into a far broader reflection on growth, freedom and coming of age, “Alfredo Larón” will be unveiled by Mirguet on Nov.
Developing and financing features for the international crossover arthouse sector, Rohfilm Productions’ credits include Cannes’ 2021 Un Certain Regard winner “Great Freedom,” Kate Shortland’s “Lore” and Adina Pintilie’s 2018 Berlin Golden Bear winner “Touch Me Not.”
Producing upscale docu-features, such as Bafici 2017 Fipsresci jury winner “A Secret in the Box,” Obstinato also runs a energetic distribution operation in Ecuador.
Ranging from Ecuador to Germany and France and building from a portrait of the protagonist’s life in Ecuador into a far broader reflection on growth, freedom and coming of age, “Alfredo Larón” will be unveiled by Mirguet on Nov.
- 11/30/2021
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Benjamín Mirguet’s “Alfredo Larón,” Niles Atallah’s “Celestial Twins” and Silvina Schnicer’s “The Cottage” feature among 16 projects to be presented at Ventana Sur’s 4th Proyecta co-production forum, a wide-ranging showcase of emerging auteurs and new talents to track from Latin America and Europe.
“Alfredo Larón,” for example, marks the feature debut of Mirguet, the editor of Carlos Reygadas’ “Battle in Heaven,” and also a former Cannes Directors’ Fortnight programmer. Its action takes in a 17-year-old Larón syndrome sufferer’s battle for legal compensation from the Ecuador government and, in a turn of fortune, his happy high-school days in Germany.
Atallah caught attention with “Lucia” at San Sebastián’s 2009 Films In Progress, but all the more for 2017 Rotterdam Tiger Award Special Mention winner “Rey,” edited, as it happens, by Mirguet. A vision of the delirious Orllie-Antoine de Tonnens, who proclaimed himself King of Patagonia in 1860, “Rey” was shot...
“Alfredo Larón,” for example, marks the feature debut of Mirguet, the editor of Carlos Reygadas’ “Battle in Heaven,” and also a former Cannes Directors’ Fortnight programmer. Its action takes in a 17-year-old Larón syndrome sufferer’s battle for legal compensation from the Ecuador government and, in a turn of fortune, his happy high-school days in Germany.
Atallah caught attention with “Lucia” at San Sebastián’s 2009 Films In Progress, but all the more for 2017 Rotterdam Tiger Award Special Mention winner “Rey,” edited, as it happens, by Mirguet. A vision of the delirious Orllie-Antoine de Tonnens, who proclaimed himself King of Patagonia in 1860, “Rey” was shot...
- 11/22/2021
- by John Hopewell and Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
Mexican art cinema in the last two decades has been defined by a confrontational formalist rigor most widely seen in the films of Carlos Reygadas and Amat Escalante. Long takes, static camera shots with elaborate blocking, and sudden acts of cruelty are each stylistic staples. These cinematic devices undoubtedly parallel a collective feeling of suffocation, anxiety, and socio-political tumult brought upon by rampant Narco violence and government corruption.
Influenced by films like Battle in Heaven and Heli, Carlos Lenin’s The Dove and the Wolf sticks relentlessly close to a tormented young couple as they try to deal with the financial hardships and hidden traumas slowly crippling their relationship. While they share a living space, Paloma (Paloma Petra) and Lobo (Armando Hernandez) seem to be hitting that dire stage in every romantic partnership where apathy flourishes. Both work in blue-collar factory jobs with colleagues who are much more adept at...
Influenced by films like Battle in Heaven and Heli, Carlos Lenin’s The Dove and the Wolf sticks relentlessly close to a tormented young couple as they try to deal with the financial hardships and hidden traumas slowly crippling their relationship. While they share a living space, Paloma (Paloma Petra) and Lobo (Armando Hernandez) seem to be hitting that dire stage in every romantic partnership where apathy flourishes. Both work in blue-collar factory jobs with colleagues who are much more adept at...
- 12/16/2020
- by Glenn Heath Jr.
- The Film Stage
The specialty box office is following two paths. High-profile narrative festival premieres such as “The Dead Don’t Die” (Focus), “Late Night” (Amazon) and “Booksmart” (United Artists) play wide quickly. And documentaries like “Pavarotti” (CBS), “Echo in the Canyon” (Greenwich), and “The Biggest Little Farm” (Neon) catch a wave and ride success as they widen.
The old-fashioned arthouse platform release is a challenge but it can work: A24’s acclaimed Sundance debut “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” is showing rare strength among more limited specialized narrative titles. It remains a sign that careful handling of a critically praised film can still find an audience.
How to assess “Late Night” and “Booksmart”? Amazon’s second weekend expansion — similar to the “Booksmart” opening– yielded a disappointing result a little below the latter title. But it’s too early to predict how audiences are reacting as it propels ahead.
No question,...
The old-fashioned arthouse platform release is a challenge but it can work: A24’s acclaimed Sundance debut “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” is showing rare strength among more limited specialized narrative titles. It remains a sign that careful handling of a critically praised film can still find an audience.
How to assess “Late Night” and “Booksmart”? Amazon’s second weekend expansion — similar to the “Booksmart” opening– yielded a disappointing result a little below the latter title. But it’s too early to predict how audiences are reacting as it propels ahead.
No question,...
- 6/16/2019
- by Tom Brueggemann
- Indiewire
Transcending the metaphysical impenetrability of “Post Tenebras Lux” and evading the unrestrained grotesqueness of “Battle in Heaven,” illustrious Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas has spawned his most narratively accessible and emotionally open work to date, “Our Time” (“Nuestro tiempo”), an unhurriedly paced three-hour study of marital anguish caused by idealist parameters of love.
Told with his signature epic visuals — wide shots of majestic landscapes captured under stunning natural light — that lend grandeur to the intimate, the film is personal in essence, even if specifics differ from the director’s off-set life. That line between the personal and the autobiographical might blur a bit; “Our Time” was shot on Reygadas’ family ranch in the small Mexican state of Tlaxcala near Mexico City, with him, his wife Natalia López, and their children cast as lead actors.
Before we meet the couple in disarray, a sun-dappled sequence of children and adolescents engaged in rowdy...
Told with his signature epic visuals — wide shots of majestic landscapes captured under stunning natural light — that lend grandeur to the intimate, the film is personal in essence, even if specifics differ from the director’s off-set life. That line between the personal and the autobiographical might blur a bit; “Our Time” was shot on Reygadas’ family ranch in the small Mexican state of Tlaxcala near Mexico City, with him, his wife Natalia López, and their children cast as lead actors.
Before we meet the couple in disarray, a sun-dappled sequence of children and adolescents engaged in rowdy...
- 6/14/2019
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
Carlos Reygadas's Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007) are showing April and May, 2019 on Mubi in the United States as part of the series What Is an Auteur?Battle in HeavenEmerging six years after Post Tenebras Lux (2012), Our Time, the latest film from Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas, offers an unsparing account of a marriage in crisis. Starring the director and his real-life spouse Natalia López (and their children), the film depicts a couple navigating the difficult terrain of an open relationship. Characteristically, Our Time disavows many of the conventions of cinema, adopting an approach that mirrors non-fiction filmmaking to capture the beauty and intimacy of the daily life of the couple and their clan. Shifting his gaze from the human drama at the center of the narrative to the rich environment of the family’s ranch and its surroundings, the director asks challenging questions about the nature of romantic...
- 4/21/2019
- MUBI
Finalists include five from Asia and five from Europe.
The 6th Ties That Bind: Asia - Europe Producers Workshop has announced ten finalists for this year – five from Asia and five from Europe.
The producers will work together on developing their projects over two events.
The first will take place during the Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, April 29-May 3. The second, during the Busan International Film Festival (Oct 2-11).
Here are the finalists (further details below):
Karim Aitouna (France)
Women of the Weeping River, Hautlesmains Productions
Dir: Sheron Dayoc
Joenathann Alandy (Philippines)
Hypothalamus, Outpost Visual Frontier
Dir: Dwein Baltazar
Valérie Bournonville (Belgium)
Walkers, Tarantula
Dir: Olivier Meys
Weronika Czołnowska (Poland)
Baby, EasyBusyProductions
Dir: Kei Ishikawa
Antonin Dedet (France)
Black Stones, Neon Productions
Dir: Gyeong Tae Roh
Justin Deimen (Singapore)
Lanun, Silver Media Group
Dir: Chua Jingdu
Julius Ponten (Netherlands)
Fatu Adil, Habbekrats
Dir: Jim Taihuttu
Alina Yan Qui (China)
Mazu, Guardian of the...
The 6th Ties That Bind: Asia - Europe Producers Workshop has announced ten finalists for this year – five from Asia and five from Europe.
The producers will work together on developing their projects over two events.
The first will take place during the Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, April 29-May 3. The second, during the Busan International Film Festival (Oct 2-11).
Here are the finalists (further details below):
Karim Aitouna (France)
Women of the Weeping River, Hautlesmains Productions
Dir: Sheron Dayoc
Joenathann Alandy (Philippines)
Hypothalamus, Outpost Visual Frontier
Dir: Dwein Baltazar
Valérie Bournonville (Belgium)
Walkers, Tarantula
Dir: Olivier Meys
Weronika Czołnowska (Poland)
Baby, EasyBusyProductions
Dir: Kei Ishikawa
Antonin Dedet (France)
Black Stones, Neon Productions
Dir: Gyeong Tae Roh
Justin Deimen (Singapore)
Lanun, Silver Media Group
Dir: Chua Jingdu
Julius Ponten (Netherlands)
Fatu Adil, Habbekrats
Dir: Jim Taihuttu
Alina Yan Qui (China)
Mazu, Guardian of the...
- 3/26/2014
- by hjnoh2007@gmail.com (Jean Noh)
- ScreenDaily
Finalists include five from Asia and five from Europe.
The 6th Ties That Bind: Asia - Europe Producers Workshop has announced ten finalists for this year – five from Asia and five from Europe.
The producers will work together on developing their projects over two events.
The first will take place during the Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, April 29-May 3. The second, during the Busan International Film Festival (Oct 2-11).
Here are the finalists (further details below):
Karim Aitouna (France)
Women of the Weeping River, Hautlesmains Productions
Dir: Sheron Dayoc
Joenathann Alandy (Philippines)
Hypothalamus, Outpost Visual Frontier
Dir: Dwein Baltazar
Valérie Bournonville (Belgium)
Walkers, Tarantula
Dir: Olivier Meys
Weronika Czołnowska (Poland)
Baby, EasyBusyProductions
Dir: Kei Ishikawa
Antonin Dedet (France)
Black Stones, Neon Productions
Dir: Gyeong Tae Roh
Justin Deimen (Singapore)
Lanun, Silver Media Group
Dir: Chua Jingdu
Julius Ponten (Netherlands)
Fatu Adil, Habbekrats
Dir: Jim Taihuttu
Alina Yan Qui (China)
Mazu, Guardian of the...
The 6th Ties That Bind: Asia - Europe Producers Workshop has announced ten finalists for this year – five from Asia and five from Europe.
The producers will work together on developing their projects over two events.
The first will take place during the Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, April 29-May 3. The second, during the Busan International Film Festival (Oct 2-11).
Here are the finalists (further details below):
Karim Aitouna (France)
Women of the Weeping River, Hautlesmains Productions
Dir: Sheron Dayoc
Joenathann Alandy (Philippines)
Hypothalamus, Outpost Visual Frontier
Dir: Dwein Baltazar
Valérie Bournonville (Belgium)
Walkers, Tarantula
Dir: Olivier Meys
Weronika Czołnowska (Poland)
Baby, EasyBusyProductions
Dir: Kei Ishikawa
Antonin Dedet (France)
Black Stones, Neon Productions
Dir: Gyeong Tae Roh
Justin Deimen (Singapore)
Lanun, Silver Media Group
Dir: Chua Jingdu
Julius Ponten (Netherlands)
Fatu Adil, Habbekrats
Dir: Jim Taihuttu
Alina Yan Qui (China)
Mazu, Guardian of the...
- 3/26/2014
- by hjnoh2007@gmail.com (Jean Noh)
- ScreenDaily
Mexico’s film industry broke records last year. Box office attendance reached an all-time high and due in part to increased public funding, local productions rose to more than 70 feature films. Yet, as is true in all of Latin America, Hollywood blockbusters edged out national films. Less than 10% of ticket sales were from Mexican movies. Still, there is much to be optimistic about. The amount of female filmmakers is on the rise along with increased budget allocations for state film financing. The vast majority of Mexican cinema is government funded (about 80%) and with more money comes greater opportunities for emerging artists to breakthrough. As part of this recent revival in Mexican cinematic production a new generation of directors have emerged, pushing boundaries, challenging stereotypes, and raising the international profile of Mexican films.
Carlos Reygadas
He didn’t start making films until he was in his thirties and remarkably his three feature films Japón, Batalla en el Cielo, and Luz Silenciosa (Silent Light) (Isa:Bac Films) all premiered at Cannes. His films deal with serious topics like love, spirituality, and death. And in the face of criticism, continues to defend his choice of depicting explicit sex scenes in Batalla en el Cielo and animal cruelty in Japón. His most recent feature is the much blogged about Post Tenebras Lux, an official selection at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Natalia Almada
She makes haunting, poetic, hypnotic and pensive documentaries. Her films have reached top-tier festivals like Sundance, Cannes, New Directors/New Films and have played at MoMA, The Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Biennial. All Water Has a Perfect Memory, Al Otro Lado, El General, and her most recent film El Velador (The Night Watchman) are infused with her unique perspective. Coming from a bicultural family--she was born in Mexico to a Mexican father and American mother--she is able to highlight contradictions in both worlds using striking imagery and meditative silences.
Nicolás Pereda
Since 2007, he has proven to be a prolific artist, having directed five feature-length films: ¿Dónde están sus historias? (Where Are Their Stories?) (Isa:FIGa Films), Juntos (Together) (Isa:FIGa Films), Perpetuum Mobile (Isa:Ondamax Films), Todo en fin el silencio lo ocupaba (All Things Were Now Overtaken by Silence) (FIGa Films), and Verano de Goliat (Summer of Goliath) (Isa: FIGa FIlms). Pereda uses many of the same actors and characters in his films, including Gabino Rodriguez and Teresa Sanchez, who are not professional actors. He mixes fiction with documentary in fractured narratives that depict the absurdity that occurs in everyday life. Though only in his twenties he has had at least ten retrospectives of his films at cinemas and archives around the world. In 2010 his film Verano de Goliat (Summer of Goliath) was awarded the Orizzonti award for best film at the Venice Film Festival.
Jonás Cuarón
Son of the Academy Award nominated director Alfonso Cuarón, (Children of Men, Y tu mamá también) Jonás Cuarón stepped out of his father’s shadow and burst onto the scene with Año Uña (Year of the Nail).The film takes a year’s worth of photos Cuarón took of spontaneous everyday events, that he later assembled to create a fictional narrative. Using only still photos and the original subjects’ narration of events, the dialogue switches between English and Spanish, and the film between reality and fiction. The film’s opening explains that though the story is fictional, the people and the moments frozen in time by the photographs are very real.
Carlos Reygadas
He didn’t start making films until he was in his thirties and remarkably his three feature films Japón, Batalla en el Cielo, and Luz Silenciosa (Silent Light) (Isa:Bac Films) all premiered at Cannes. His films deal with serious topics like love, spirituality, and death. And in the face of criticism, continues to defend his choice of depicting explicit sex scenes in Batalla en el Cielo and animal cruelty in Japón. His most recent feature is the much blogged about Post Tenebras Lux, an official selection at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Natalia Almada
She makes haunting, poetic, hypnotic and pensive documentaries. Her films have reached top-tier festivals like Sundance, Cannes, New Directors/New Films and have played at MoMA, The Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Biennial. All Water Has a Perfect Memory, Al Otro Lado, El General, and her most recent film El Velador (The Night Watchman) are infused with her unique perspective. Coming from a bicultural family--she was born in Mexico to a Mexican father and American mother--she is able to highlight contradictions in both worlds using striking imagery and meditative silences.
Nicolás Pereda
Since 2007, he has proven to be a prolific artist, having directed five feature-length films: ¿Dónde están sus historias? (Where Are Their Stories?) (Isa:FIGa Films), Juntos (Together) (Isa:FIGa Films), Perpetuum Mobile (Isa:Ondamax Films), Todo en fin el silencio lo ocupaba (All Things Were Now Overtaken by Silence) (FIGa Films), and Verano de Goliat (Summer of Goliath) (Isa: FIGa FIlms). Pereda uses many of the same actors and characters in his films, including Gabino Rodriguez and Teresa Sanchez, who are not professional actors. He mixes fiction with documentary in fractured narratives that depict the absurdity that occurs in everyday life. Though only in his twenties he has had at least ten retrospectives of his films at cinemas and archives around the world. In 2010 his film Verano de Goliat (Summer of Goliath) was awarded the Orizzonti award for best film at the Venice Film Festival.
Jonás Cuarón
Son of the Academy Award nominated director Alfonso Cuarón, (Children of Men, Y tu mamá también) Jonás Cuarón stepped out of his father’s shadow and burst onto the scene with Año Uña (Year of the Nail).The film takes a year’s worth of photos Cuarón took of spontaneous everyday events, that he later assembled to create a fictional narrative. Using only still photos and the original subjects’ narration of events, the dialogue switches between English and Spanish, and the film between reality and fiction. The film’s opening explains that though the story is fictional, the people and the moments frozen in time by the photographs are very real.
- 5/9/2012
- by Vanessa Erazo
- Sydney's Buzz
LONDON -- Tartan Films and Tartan USA owner and chairman Hamish McAlpine said Friday that Tartan Films managing director Laura De Casto will add oversight of Tartan USA to her current responsibilities here. De Casto will be managing director of Tartan's U.S. theatrical and home entertainment distribution outfit effective immediately and will primarily oversee the L.A. operation from the Tartan offices in London. Set up in July 2004, Tartan USA's releases to date include Oldboy, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Battle in Heaven.
- 7/28/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- Star Gazing They are everywhere. In hotel lobbies, at the screenings and walking around the streets….it’s a little different when red carpets are replaced with tuqs, serpentine scarfs and boots that are knee high. Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep Read review here. Carlos Reygadas' Battle in Heaven (Batalla En El Cielo)Read review here. Nathaniel Hornblower’s Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That Read review here. ...
- 1/22/2006
- IONCINEMA.com
COLOGNE -- Ang Lee's cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain and George Clooney's '50s era political drama Good Night, And Good Luck are among the nominees disclosed Tuesday for Best Non-European Film at the European Film Awards. The European Film Academy also announced nominations for Jim Jarmusch's sardonic comedy Broken Flowers and Paul Higgis' Crash, an unblinking look at race relations in Los Angeles. Other nominees include Fernando Meirelles' adaptation of John le Carre's The Constant Gardener; Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallee's coming-of-age feature C.R.A.Z.Y.; Sarah Watt's Aussie drama Look Both Ways; Gavin Hood's Tsotsi, an expose of South African gang life; and Carlos Reygadas' sexually explicit Cannes competition entry Battle In Heaven.
- 11/15/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
MADRID -- The 53rd annual San Sebastian International Film Festival announced Friday that it has brought together 12 favorites of the past festival season for its Zabaltegi-Festival Top sidebar. The section includes Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers and Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know. Other films included are: Woody Allen's Match Point, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's Inside Deep Throat, Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now and Carlos Reygadas' Batalla en el Cielo. Abel Ferrara's Mary will open the event.
- 8/26/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Carlos Reygades' Batalla en el Cielo was one of the highly touted Competition film as the Festival de Cannes got under way, but it proves to be a disappointing turn-off. The film deliberately works against most cinematic expectations.
Actors -- or to be accurate, nonactors -- do not even try to communicate any meaning. Scenes are drained of emotions. The cityscape of modern-day Mexico City is observed with documentarylike scrutiny but without any particular point of view.
Batalla en el Cielo -- or Battle in Heaven -- may win more festival dates, but despite the inclusion of graphic though unerotic sex scenes it will be tough to find an audience for a film so determined to puzzle and annoy but not to enlighten.
The movie opens with a scene of fellatio involving a young, attractive woman and an overweight, older and unattractive man. We later learn that Marcos (Marcos Hernandez) works for Ana's father and has been her chauffeur since she was in grade school. Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz) works in a brothel, less for the money, which she clearly does not need, than for the need or thrill of prostituting herself.
Marcos and his doltish wife (Berta Ruiz) have apparently kidnapped the baby of a friend for ransom but the infant has accidentally died. Marcos confesses this to Ana, which he says makes him feel better. Hard to tell though since Reygadas has actors deliver lines in monotones while posed compositionally in awkward and unrealistic postures. The exception is Mushkadiz, who is allowed to act naturally.
The scenes between Marcos and his wife are the stiffest in the film. Their lovemaking scene challenges us not to feel sorry for the actors.
Diego Martinez Vignatti's camera often holds a single static angle for awhile, yet other times indulges in hey-look-at-me tracking shots and one 360-degree panorama of the city. Reygadas ratchets up ambient sounds sometimes to ear-splitting noise levels. Source music ranging from pop to liturgical is often designed to clash with a particular scene.
The strongest character is Mexico City itself. Shot on gray days or with overexposure, the city comes off as soulless as the other personalities in the movie only its congestion, pollution and noise seem to induce a zombielike insanity in the characters.
Catholic and Christian symbols and paintings are everywhere, but religion seems to have no impact on the amoral fools that populate this film.
The act of violence that serves as a climax is as senseless as everything that has gone before it. The movie ends where it began with a final shot of the fellatio artist doing what she does best.
BATALLA EN EL CIELO
BAC Films
Credits: Writer/director: Carlos Reygadas; Producers: Philippe Bober, Carlos Reygadas, Jaime Romandia, Susanne Marian; Director of photography: Diego Martinez Vignatti; Editors: Benjamin Mirguet, Adoracion G. Elipe, Nicolas Schmerkin. Cast: Marcos: Marcos Hernandez; Ana: Anapola Mushkadiz; Marcos' wife: Berta Ruiz; David: David Bornstein; Viky: Rosalinda Ramirez.
No MPAA rating, running time 98 minutes.
Actors -- or to be accurate, nonactors -- do not even try to communicate any meaning. Scenes are drained of emotions. The cityscape of modern-day Mexico City is observed with documentarylike scrutiny but without any particular point of view.
Batalla en el Cielo -- or Battle in Heaven -- may win more festival dates, but despite the inclusion of graphic though unerotic sex scenes it will be tough to find an audience for a film so determined to puzzle and annoy but not to enlighten.
The movie opens with a scene of fellatio involving a young, attractive woman and an overweight, older and unattractive man. We later learn that Marcos (Marcos Hernandez) works for Ana's father and has been her chauffeur since she was in grade school. Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz) works in a brothel, less for the money, which she clearly does not need, than for the need or thrill of prostituting herself.
Marcos and his doltish wife (Berta Ruiz) have apparently kidnapped the baby of a friend for ransom but the infant has accidentally died. Marcos confesses this to Ana, which he says makes him feel better. Hard to tell though since Reygadas has actors deliver lines in monotones while posed compositionally in awkward and unrealistic postures. The exception is Mushkadiz, who is allowed to act naturally.
The scenes between Marcos and his wife are the stiffest in the film. Their lovemaking scene challenges us not to feel sorry for the actors.
Diego Martinez Vignatti's camera often holds a single static angle for awhile, yet other times indulges in hey-look-at-me tracking shots and one 360-degree panorama of the city. Reygadas ratchets up ambient sounds sometimes to ear-splitting noise levels. Source music ranging from pop to liturgical is often designed to clash with a particular scene.
The strongest character is Mexico City itself. Shot on gray days or with overexposure, the city comes off as soulless as the other personalities in the movie only its congestion, pollution and noise seem to induce a zombielike insanity in the characters.
Catholic and Christian symbols and paintings are everywhere, but religion seems to have no impact on the amoral fools that populate this film.
The act of violence that serves as a climax is as senseless as everything that has gone before it. The movie ends where it began with a final shot of the fellatio artist doing what she does best.
BATALLA EN EL CIELO
BAC Films
Credits: Writer/director: Carlos Reygadas; Producers: Philippe Bober, Carlos Reygadas, Jaime Romandia, Susanne Marian; Director of photography: Diego Martinez Vignatti; Editors: Benjamin Mirguet, Adoracion G. Elipe, Nicolas Schmerkin. Cast: Marcos: Marcos Hernandez; Ana: Anapola Mushkadiz; Marcos' wife: Berta Ruiz; David: David Bornstein; Viky: Rosalinda Ramirez.
No MPAA rating, running time 98 minutes.
- 5/18/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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