As the 27th Guadalajara Film Festival bore down on its close this week, Friday’s narco blockades threw some confusion on the event. Visitors wondered whether Saturday’s closing ceremony would go on as scheduled, with a few Friday night red carpet and party events suspended. However, when the Saturday sun broke, the festival went forward unabated.
The Hilton Hotel played host to the awards ceremony, where Kuno Becker won Best Actor for his starring role in “Espacio Interior” (Interior Space) in which he plays a man trapped in a cell. Everardo Gout took Best Director for his film, “Días de Gracia” (Days of Grace), but the big winner this year was the U.S./Mexican production “Mariachi Gringo,” which won Best Mexican Feature Film and provided the platform for Martha Higareda to grab the Best Actress award. The film, directed by Tom Gustafson and filmed in Guadalajara and Mexico City, follows an American (Shawn Ashmore) as he discovers and falls for the land of Mariachi culture, helped along toward this helpless end by a breathtaking señorita—an outlandish tale to be sure.
Higareda said they already have ambitions to exhibit the film at other festivals, including San Sebastian in Europe. She added that it’s important to expose the world to this film now because it shows the “other side” of Mexico, the “magic that is beautiful and is in Guadalajara.”
In the gloaming of Saturday, filmmakers, organizers and event supporters who had been working the weeklong festival gathered at the Plaza Bicentenario for the closing ceremony and fiesta.
Friday’s events were clearly on the minds of the attendees, with many of them expressing lament and words of encouragement for Guadalajara and Mexico. Diego Luna and his wife, Camila Sodi, were on hand, as well as members of the Mexican rock group Café Tacvba and other celebrities.
The celebrity interviews and other events at the Expo Guadalajara were popular this year, and the Premio Maguey (gay film prize) was such a success in its inaugural year, festival organizers are contemplating breaking it off into its own festival, though that decision has not been made yet. In all, the festival brought around 142,000 people to see 281 films.
What else might edition 28 of the Guadalajara Film Festival bring? Ivan Trujillo, director of the festival, spoke to Spanish-language daily Milenio about building more exhibition rooms in the Expo next year so that they could cut Cinepolis out of the festival. He remarked that because of the commercials they show and other factors, the cinema chain doesn’t fit well with the festival.
Start preparing for long, silent stares into the black void of the unguarded soul, because next year’s invited “country” has also been chosen: Scandanavia.