The Cannes Festival and Film Market’s boldest international initiative outside France, as well as Latin America’s biggest movie mart-meet, Buenos Aires’ Ventana Sur runs Dec. 2-6. Co-organized by Argentina’s Incaa film-TV agency, it provides a telling window into Latin American market trends. Here are five takes for 2019:
1. Latin American Headwinds
For most of the past decade, Ventana Sur channeled the energies of the region’s expanding film industries. That era is now over. “Latin America is the world’s worst performing region in terms of economic output,” the Financial Times proclaimed in October. That downturn, and its sluggish growth, plays out throughout the region. Two of Latin America’s three biggest national film industries — Argentina and Brazil — have just hit rather hard walls: The plunging Argentine peso lost 37% of its value against the dollar in just 12 months; and in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has envisaged a 55% cut in public-sector film funding for 2020. Film funding in Mexico, Colombia and Chile is holding, but hardly exploding.
2. Ventana Sur Builds
So is Ventana Sur hurting? Hardly. In good times, the industry has the money to travel; in bad, it needs to. Argentina’s Oct. 27 general elections saw a united Peronist front return to power, and the Vice President-elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner proved eminently film-friendly when she was president. “We don’t have any questions about the future. There are few chances of Ventana Sur not continuing in Argentina,” says Ventana Sur co-director Jerome Paillard. “The support level from Argentina’s film industry is very strong.” Submissions for the event’s two popular pics-in-post showcases, Primer Corte and Copia Final, are up 20% on 2018. The number of tables booked is also up, from 33 to 43, Paillard says.
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3. Buzzy Titles
Lucía Puenzo (“The German Doctor”) and Julio Hernández Cordón (“I Promise You Anarchy”) present new movie projects in Proyecta: “Los Impactados” and “The Day Is Long and Dark (My Friends Are Vampires).” Chilean producer-director Álvaro Ceppi will produce Argentine stop-motion maestro Juan Pablo Zaramella’s sci-fi family fable “Coda.” Brazilian animator-illustrator Wesley Rodrigues (“Viagem na Chuva”) will present “The Bird Kingdom,” a 2D YA fantasy. In pics-in-post competitions Primer Corte/Copia Final, there’s good word on “Restless,” from Paz Fabrega (“Cold Water of the Sea”). Potential Blood Window standouts include Florencia Dupont’s Chilean noir thriller “Aracne” — a standout at Chile’s Sanfic Festival — and Santiago Fernandez Calvete’s “Vurdalak Blood,” a work-in-progress.
4. Repositioning
Ventana Sur’s core identity may, however, be evolving. It launched as a pure sales market. These days, however, producers can tap far more financing co-producing with international equity partners than through straight sales. Ventana Sur launched a successful Proyecta co-production forum last year, and it will repeat in 2019. In a touch of deja vu, Latin America is likely to look once more to Europe for production partners, even as lead producers are on projects with Latin American directors. Ventana Sur will welcome producer delegations from the British Films Institute and France, the latter segueing from the market to Uruguay, which has just signed a co-production treaty with France, Paillard says. The market will also step up networking meets, he adds.
5. Connecting Talent With Demand
“Ventana Sur’s major virtue has been to evolve naturally from a film market,” says Ventana Sur co-director Ralph Haiek. Its major challenge is now connecting talent with demand. “There’s a scarcity of talent and a huge demand for productions,” he says. Ventana Sur’s conferences strand will highlight best cases of audience connection, such as YouTube, as well as highlighting Latino talent via prizes across its multiple categories.