Five-time Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola being honored in-person will be one of the highlights of the 22nd annual Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), which opens Friday and runs through Oct. 27 in the Michoacán capital.
The American director, screenwriter and producer is scheduled to receive the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Film Archive Medal for his invaluable contributions to universal cinema, including “Patton,” “The Godfather” trilogy and “Apocalypse Now.”
In addition, the FICM will pay tribute to the 85-year-old with its sixth Award for Artistic Excellence — which was given to the director-actress Jodie Foster last year and previously to luminaries such as American icon Robert Redford, French director Claire Denis and Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, himself a five-time Academy Award winner.
Coppola will receive the latter award on Tuesday when presenting his ambitious new “Megalopolis,” which received a seven-minute standing ovation after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The US $120 million dystopian epic is about a visionary architect trying to rebuild New York City after a devastating disaster in the near future.
The festival’s opening night film on Friday is “Emilia Pérez” from multiple award-winning French director and screenwriter Jacques Audiard, who is scheduled to walk the red carpet along with two of the film’s stars, Karla Sofía Gascón and Adriana Paz.
A musical odyssey set primarily in a vibrant, pulsating Mexico City, the film weaves together the stories of four women. One of them is a cartel leader (Gascón) who lives publicly as a man but dreams of starting a new life as “Emilia Pérez.” To do so, she hires a struggling lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to help carry out her longtime plan to fake her death and transition to living as Emilia.
Described as a Spanish-language French musical crime comedy — based on an Audiard opera libretto of the same name — the film premiered earlier this year at Cannes, where it won the Jury Prize and its four lead female actresses (the three above plus Selena Gomez) received a combined best actress award.
It is scheduled for a Nov. 1 release in select theaters and then a Nov. 13 debut on Netflix.
Overall, the FICM — one of the world’s preeminent film festivals — will screen hundreds of films from Mexico and around the world at several venues in Morelia’s historic downtown and at a Cinépolis VIP theater. Cinépolis, which traces its roots to a single theater in Morelia in 1971, is once again a major underwriter of the festival.
There will also be virtual screenings through the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE) at nuesrtrocine.mx.
María Novaro, general director of the Mexican Film Institute, noted the FICM has “an annual average of 250 features over the past four years, [placing] it among the 12 most diverse and vigorous film [festivals] in the world.”
A wide range of Mexican features, short films and documentaries will be presented, and there are 14 categories of official prizes, several for Mexican films and one for films produced in Michoacán. Many workshops and forums will be held, including one about Indigenous filmmaking in Mexico.
This year’s festival will pay tribute to late Mexican film director Ismael Rodríguez, known for his collaborations with actor Pedro Infante and for shaping the Época de Oro, or Golden Age of Mexican cinema from the 1930s to the early 1960s.
Several Rodríguez movies, including “Los tres García” (1947) and “Los hermanos del Hierro” (1961), will be screened, as will a newly restored version of Emilio Fernández’s classic “María Candelaria” (1943).
Many of the older films are shown for free in an open-air pop-up cinema in the city’s main square.
Some of the most anticipated new films this year include Netflix-bound “Pedro Páramo” (based on Juan Rulfo’s literary masterpiece), “Disclaimer” (a star-studded psychological thriller by Cuarón) and “Nightbitch” (a horror-comedy about a suburban mom-under-pressure who thinks she’s transforming into a dog).
Other Mexican features to look for include “Sujo,” nominated by Mexico for the Academy Awards’ best international feature film; “La cocina” (“The Kitchen”) by award-winning director Alonso Ruizpalacios; “El hijo de su padre” (“The Son of His Father”); and “Violentas mariposas” (“Violent Butterflies”).
They are among the nine films in competition for best Mexican feature.
The full lineup of films can be downloaded from the FICM website, as can a guide to screening times and locations.
Attendees also will want to check out how to buy tickets, as there are several major changes. Advance tickets are now only available two days ahead of each screening, and seats are no longer reserved. Ticket holders will have to line up before each show and then race to any open seats.
Let the frenzy begin!
Mexico News Daily
