Natural Phenomena tells the story of Vilma, a young nurse who lives in the late 80s on an isolated farm in a Cuban town
EFE (via 14ymedio), Geneva, 24 November 2024 — The Cuban film Natural Phenomena, by Cuban Marcos Antonio Díaz Sosa and Isla Negra, by Chilean director Jorge Riquelme Serrano, were awarded at the Latin American Film Festival in Geneva, which ends its 26th edition this Sunday.
Always sensitive to social cinema that treats human rights from different perspectives, the jury awarded Isla Negra for being a “bold and moving work that addresses a theme that is still very little treated, that of the exile of entire populations because of the exploitation of their lands,” said the organization.
Riquelme closes with this production, premiered exclusively at the festival, a trilogy that began in 2016 with Camaleón, his debut film, and continued in 2019 with Algunas bestias.
With the Young Jury Award for Natural Phenomena, Díaz Sosa’s debut as a director, the festival joins the voices of those who oppose the Cuban regime, “a dictatorship that keeps its people in a dramatic situation and exercises arbitrary and uneducated censorship against artistic creation and critical thinking.”
“The work captivates with its representation of a strong and determined woman, who faces personal and social challenges while seeking to emancipate herself in a context that limits the possibilities”
“The work captivates with its representation of a strong and determined woman, who faces personal and social challenges while seeking to emancipate herself in a context that limits the possibilities,” said the jury, composed of eleven high school students from Geneva accompanied by the Argentine director Pablo Briones.
Natural phenomena tells the story of Vilma, a young nurse who lives in the late eighties on an isolated farm in a Cuban town
The 10-day festival was attended, among others, by the Spanish director Fernando Trueba, whose penultimate film, the animated documentary They Shot the Pianist, was screened this Saturday at the Grütli cinema that hosts the festival.
Filmar, one of the biggest events in Spanish cinema outside Spanish-speaking countries, showed 39 feature films from 15 Latin American countries.
Directed since 2017 by Vania Aillon, the festival has had, as in previous editions, a special love for social cinema, with a good number of films dedicated to issues such as the environment, freedom of expression, the situation of minorities and indigenous peoples, and the fight for equality.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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