Firmly established as a vibrant Mexico-U.S.-Canada fest/industry meet, Baja California’s Los Cabos International Film Festival is branching out, establishing strategic alliances with the Tribeca Film Institute, Halifax’s Strategic Partners and the Moscow Fest.
Priming projects at its newly-created 12-project Film Co-production Forum, which bows this year, Los Cabos will select a U.S. project from Tribeca’s Industry Meetings last April and a Canadian project from the Halifax Atlantic Festival’s upcoming Strategic Partners’ co-pro meeting in September.
For the Forum, it will also access a Russian movie in development, which has North American co-production elements, sourced from June’s Moscow Fest Moscow Business Square.
In a quid pro quo, three Mexican projects awarded development funding by Los Cabos’ in-house Gabriel Figueroa Film Fund will be invited to attend the next upcoming Tribeca, Moscow and Halifax events.
First up for selection abroad, traveling to the Moscow Business Square, is “Inzomnia,” from Mexican animation pioneer Luis Tellez, which participated in last year’s GFFF open call. A stop-motion animated feature, its dystopian story mixes a future world and a mythological past.
With these three-part partnerships, “Los Cabos Film Festival advances in its goal of shortening distances between producers and filmmakers from Mexico, U.S. and Canada, both between each other and with the rest of the world,” said Los Cabos director, Alonso Aguilar-Castillo.
In further signs of dynamic growth, Los Cabos announced at Berlin that it was adding two days to its festival, which will run Nov. 11-15, and unveiled its new Co-Production Forum.
The 3rd Los Cabos event will put up $280,000-plus in prizes, lead by its Gabriel Figueroa Fund that will once more offer two Labodigital Awards, each worth $51,200 in production services, for two Mexican movies. Also on offer: Seven $5,000 cash prizes for Mexican features in development.
A vibrant second edition channeled and rode the fast-building wave of cross-border link-ups between the U.S. and Mexico industries, and now Mexican and Canadian production sectors.
The 2nd Los Cabos Fest saw a flurry of variegated industry announcements. Among the latest industry deals advanced at Los Cabos, Jorge Michel Grau and Mayra Espinosa Castro’s Velarium Arts and Andrew Corkin’s Uncorked Productions announced via Variety at Cannes that they will produce Grau’s upcoming “Yamaha 300,” in a pact developed in Baja.
In another co-pro pact, Mexico’s Machete Films is co-producing triple-story drama “X Quinientos,” from Juan Andres Arango (“La Playa”), that is also produced by Montreal-based Peripheria Productions and Septima Films in Colombia. Peripheria’s Yanick Letourneau and Machete’s Edher Campos first met at Los Cabos.
