With human justice absent in the awful political bloodshed in Central America, Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamente finds payback in cinematic fantasy. A crooked government exonerates a genocidal general, but his estate is besieged around the clock by Mayan-Ixil Indio protesters. Into the house comes a new maid — a tiny young woman who may nevertheless wield supernatural powers. The moody art-horror show is as delicate as The Innocents or a Val Lewton chiller — horror once again becomes an excellent means to address political evil. Slow and deliberate, it reverberates with horror history without copying the classics.
La Llorona (2019)
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1156
2019 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 96 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 18, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: María Mercedes Coroy, Sabrina De La Hoz, Margarita Kenéfic, Julio Diaz, María Telón, Juan Pablo Olyslager, Ayla-Elea Hurtado.
Cinematography: Nicolás Wong
Production Designer: Sebastián Muñoz
Costume Design: Beatriz Lantán
Film Editors: Jayro Bustamante, Gustavo Matheu
Original...
La Llorona (2019)
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1156
2019 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 96 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 18, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: María Mercedes Coroy, Sabrina De La Hoz, Margarita Kenéfic, Julio Diaz, María Telón, Juan Pablo Olyslager, Ayla-Elea Hurtado.
Cinematography: Nicolás Wong
Production Designer: Sebastián Muñoz
Costume Design: Beatriz Lantán
Film Editors: Jayro Bustamante, Gustavo Matheu
Original...
- 10/22/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Exclusive: Oscar nominee Eric Roberts (The Righteous Gemstones) is reteaming with his Runaway Train co-star Danny Trejo as part of the cast of Alone Today, an upcoming crime drama from director Wendy Wilkins, which will also star Shannon Elizabeth and Frank Whaley.
The film tells the story of a woman (Elizabeth) in an abusive relationship with a dirty detective (Roberts) who is helping move sex trafficked girls coming over the Mexican Border. When attempting to save just one truckload before “disappearing forever,” everything goes horribly wrong and she decides to take a different path.
The project hails from Different Duck Films founder Rob Margolies (Bobcat Moretti), who will produce alongside Errol Sack and Julia Verdin. Production is underway in Los Angeles. Roberts is repped by Sovereign Talent Group, Imperial Artists Agency and Miles Anthony Associates in London, manager Eliza Roberts, Empire Agency in Germany and Scott Carlson Entertainment in Canada.
The film tells the story of a woman (Elizabeth) in an abusive relationship with a dirty detective (Roberts) who is helping move sex trafficked girls coming over the Mexican Border. When attempting to save just one truckload before “disappearing forever,” everything goes horribly wrong and she decides to take a different path.
The project hails from Different Duck Films founder Rob Margolies (Bobcat Moretti), who will produce alongside Errol Sack and Julia Verdin. Production is underway in Los Angeles. Roberts is repped by Sovereign Talent Group, Imperial Artists Agency and Miles Anthony Associates in London, manager Eliza Roberts, Empire Agency in Germany and Scott Carlson Entertainment in Canada.
- 3/25/2022
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Montreal-based WaZabi Films selling Spanish-language films at EFM.
Film Movement has acquired North American rights to Justin Lerner’s Guatemala-set gang thriller Cadejo Blanco from Canadian sales agent WaZabi Films. CDC United Network has taken Latin American rights.
The Spanish-language film premiered in Guadalajara and also screened in TIFF Industry Selects and at Tallinn Black Nights in Estonia in 2021. It is about a young woman who travels from Guatemala City to the seaside town of Puerto Barrios to infiltrate a gang and find out what happened to her sister. Karen Martínez stars with Rudy Rodríguez and Juan Pablo Olyslager.
Mauricio Escobar,...
Film Movement has acquired North American rights to Justin Lerner’s Guatemala-set gang thriller Cadejo Blanco from Canadian sales agent WaZabi Films. CDC United Network has taken Latin American rights.
The Spanish-language film premiered in Guadalajara and also screened in TIFF Industry Selects and at Tallinn Black Nights in Estonia in 2021. It is about a young woman who travels from Guatemala City to the seaside town of Puerto Barrios to infiltrate a gang and find out what happened to her sister. Karen Martínez stars with Rudy Rodríguez and Juan Pablo Olyslager.
Mauricio Escobar,...
- 2/10/2022
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
This review of “La Llorona” was first published following its premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
For his third and most tonally adventurous feature to date, socially perceptive writer-director Jayro Bustamante repurposes one of Latin America’s most ubiquitous supernatural legends to fiercely examine genocide against indigenous people in his native Guatemala. Invoking genre narrative devices, the entrancingly evocative “La Llorona” (“The Weeping Woman”) walks between fact and myth to engender a shrewdly frightening piece of political horror.
Sadistic military dictator General Enrique Monteverde (Julio Diaz), a fictionalized incarnation of the country’s former president Efraín Ríos Montt, stands accused of sanctioning the murder of thousands of Maya Ixil people in the Central American nation between 1982 and 1983. Battling health complications but still refusing to accept any fault, Monteverde is found guilty thanks to the courageous testimony of Ixil women still mourning their dead. Bustamante shoots the courtroom as a spiritual confessional devoid of natural light.
For his third and most tonally adventurous feature to date, socially perceptive writer-director Jayro Bustamante repurposes one of Latin America’s most ubiquitous supernatural legends to fiercely examine genocide against indigenous people in his native Guatemala. Invoking genre narrative devices, the entrancingly evocative “La Llorona” (“The Weeping Woman”) walks between fact and myth to engender a shrewdly frightening piece of political horror.
Sadistic military dictator General Enrique Monteverde (Julio Diaz), a fictionalized incarnation of the country’s former president Efraín Ríos Montt, stands accused of sanctioning the murder of thousands of Maya Ixil people in the Central American nation between 1982 and 1983. Battling health complications but still refusing to accept any fault, Monteverde is found guilty thanks to the courageous testimony of Ixil women still mourning their dead. Bustamante shoots the courtroom as a spiritual confessional devoid of natural light.
- 3/4/2021
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
Summoning nature’s earth-shaking forces — first volcanic eruptions, now earthquakes — to serve as resounding signifiers of instability, Guatemalan auteur Jayro Bustamante’s two features to date roar as sobering assessments of systematic marginalization in a society unwilling to broaden its viciously narrow status quo. First, “Ixcanul” objected to corrosive misogyny and racism; now homophobia is the target in his sophomore social drama “Tremors,” which had its North American premiere last March at the Miami Film Festival and opens theatrically Friday.
Bustamante’s social pariah, a white man from the upper crust of society, is far removed, at least in obvious parallels, from the teenage indigenous woman chastised by her community for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the director’s debut. Their personal hells, however, emanate from the same phallocentric well of hatred. In both instances, Bustamante lets his embattled protagonists unravel without the empty promise of a fortunate resolution.
A masculine fellow by all traditional parameters,...
Bustamante’s social pariah, a white man from the upper crust of society, is far removed, at least in obvious parallels, from the teenage indigenous woman chastised by her community for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the director’s debut. Their personal hells, however, emanate from the same phallocentric well of hatred. In both instances, Bustamante lets his embattled protagonists unravel without the empty promise of a fortunate resolution.
A masculine fellow by all traditional parameters,...
- 11/29/2019
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
"Do you believe that we have the right to be happy if it hurts other people?" Film Movement has debuted an official Us trailer for the acclaimed Guatemalan drama Tremors, not to be confused with the monster movie cult classic of the same name. Originally titled Temblores in Spanish, the film is about the coming out of an evangelical patriarch, which shatters his family, his community and uncovers a profoundly repressive society. This first premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, and has stopped by numerous other major festivals including Seattle, Outfest, San Sebastián, Athens, Vancouver, London, and Chicago. Starring Juan Pablo Olyslager, Mauricio Armas, Diane Bathen, María Telón, and Sergio Luna. This has been receiving rave reviews from critics, who say it has "extraordinary nuance [and] compassion." Definitely worth a look. Here's the official Us trailer (+ intl. trailers & posters) for Jayro Bustamante's Tremors, from YouTube: When the handsome and...
- 10/21/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Guatemalan writer-director Jayro Bustamante broke out with the 2015 drama “Ixcanul,” set on an active volcano. Here he returns with “Tremors” (the English translation of “Temblores”), equally volcanic in its emotional insight about an affluent, religious family torn asunder after patriarch Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslager) reveals that he’s been in a relationship with another man. Below, check out the first trailer.
Here’s the rest of the synopsis of the film, which is being distributed by Film Movement in the U.S. on November 29:
“What follows is a tale of passionate romance, immense inner conflict, and devastating tragedy. Separated from his wife, his children, and his life of Evangelical tradition, Pablo initially finds a sense of freedom. But how long can he sustain this new and exciting life when he’s fired from his job and his religious creed begins to take over again? Filled with gorgeous and breathtaking cinematography,...
Here’s the rest of the synopsis of the film, which is being distributed by Film Movement in the U.S. on November 29:
“What follows is a tale of passionate romance, immense inner conflict, and devastating tragedy. Separated from his wife, his children, and his life of Evangelical tradition, Pablo initially finds a sense of freedom. But how long can he sustain this new and exciting life when he’s fired from his job and his religious creed begins to take over again? Filled with gorgeous and breathtaking cinematography,...
- 10/20/2019
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Guatamalan writer-director Jayro Bustamante had a dream debut with “Ixcanul” in 2015: The richly textured folk drama premiered in Competition at Berlin and won him the Alfred Bauer Prize, before going on to healthy international arthouse exposure. So it’s surprising that Bustamante’s subsequent work, while amply delivering on his first feature’s promise, has been comparatively sidelined in major festival programs. Earlier this year, his superb gay drama “Tremors” was demoted to Berlin’s lower-profile Panorama section; now “La Llorona,” his swift, thrilling, genre-expanding follow-up, has unspooled on the Lido in the external Venice Days sidebar — duly winning the top prize. By any measure, Bustamante’s latest is meaty, adventurous auteur cinema that would be of prime competition standard at any major fest: A nervy alternative horror film in which political ghosts of the past mingle with more uncanny phantoms, it ought to be the filmmaker’s most widely distributed work to date.
- 9/16/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
“Love knows nothing improper,” chides a zealous preacher in “Tremors.” Ostensibly, she says it to an entire rapt church; more pointedly, she’s addressing mild-mannered family man Pablo, as he’s dragged through a terrestrial hell for the cardinal sin of falling in love with another man. What’s the greater impropriety, then: same-sex love or the victimization of its practitioners, to the point of denying them jobs or access to their children? As the latest in a long line of films to examine the hypocrisy-laden clash between gay rights and evangelical Christian ethos — including the recent U.S. double bill of “Boy Erased” and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” — this strong second feature from Guatemalan talent Jayro Bustamante doesn’t ask new questions, but its sensuous, reverberating atmospherics find fresh, angry ways to answer them.
Premiering in Berlin’s Panorama strand, “Tremors” is a weighty, promise-fulfilling follow-up to a dream debut.
Premiering in Berlin’s Panorama strand, “Tremors” is a weighty, promise-fulfilling follow-up to a dream debut.
- 2/15/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
There are any number of movies about gay men trying to liberate themselves from the long shadow of heteronormative oppression — a regrettably, enduringly relevant premise — but few have been told with the extraordinary nuance or compassion of Jayro Bustamante’s “Tremors.”
The Guatemalan drama begins where a previous iteration of this drama might have left off. Rather than argue for the hero’s basic humanity, Bustamante moves the goalposts forward by reframing the stakes. There’s never any doubt that Pablo has the right to be with the man he loves, the question is whether the happiness that would bring is worth the hurt that would come with it. And it’s a question that only Pablo can answer for himself.
From its rain-drenched prologue to its pensive final shot, “Tremors” explores whether self-identity is more legibly defined by what people are, or what they are not. Must we shed...
The Guatemalan drama begins where a previous iteration of this drama might have left off. Rather than argue for the hero’s basic humanity, Bustamante moves the goalposts forward by reframing the stakes. There’s never any doubt that Pablo has the right to be with the man he loves, the question is whether the happiness that would bring is worth the hurt that would come with it. And it’s a question that only Pablo can answer for himself.
From its rain-drenched prologue to its pensive final shot, “Tremors” explores whether self-identity is more legibly defined by what people are, or what they are not. Must we shed...
- 2/12/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Tremors (Temblores)
Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante (under his label La Casa de Producción) reteams with France’s Tu Vas Voir and Spain’s Film Factory Entertainment for his sophomore film Tremors (Temblores), including producers Gerard Lacroix, De Jesus Peralta Orellana Marina, Nicolas Steil, Edgard Tenenbaum and co-producer Olivier Pere through Arte France Cinema (with France’s Memento Films and Luxembourg’s Iris Prods also on board). Leaving behind the rural isolation of 2015’s Ixcanul for the religious bigotry of the urban center in Guatemala City, Tremors stars Juan Pablo Olyslager, Maria Telon, Diane Bathan, Pedro Javier Silva Lira, and Mauricio Armas and features the cinematography of Luis Armando Arteaga (of Ixcanul and the 2018 Paraguayan hit The Heiresses).…...
Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante (under his label La Casa de Producción) reteams with France’s Tu Vas Voir and Spain’s Film Factory Entertainment for his sophomore film Tremors (Temblores), including producers Gerard Lacroix, De Jesus Peralta Orellana Marina, Nicolas Steil, Edgard Tenenbaum and co-producer Olivier Pere through Arte France Cinema (with France’s Memento Films and Luxembourg’s Iris Prods also on board). Leaving behind the rural isolation of 2015’s Ixcanul for the religious bigotry of the urban center in Guatemala City, Tremors stars Juan Pablo Olyslager, Maria Telon, Diane Bathan, Pedro Javier Silva Lira, and Mauricio Armas and features the cinematography of Luis Armando Arteaga (of Ixcanul and the 2018 Paraguayan hit The Heiresses).…...
- 1/4/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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