Honoring the Best Latin American Films of the Year, co-presented by NALIP!

THE CLUB (Chile), JAUJA and THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE (Argentina),
LOS HONGOS (Colombia), and WHITE OUT, BLACK IN (Brazil)
Vie for the Award for Best Film

Twenty-nine films from twelve countries have been nominated in the sixth annual edition of the Cinema Tropical Awards, honoring the best of Latin American cinema of the year in six different categories: Best Feature Film; Best Documentary Film; Best Director, Feature Film; Best Director, Documentary Film; Best First Film; and Best U.S. Latino Film.

The five films competing for the Cinema Tropical Award for Best Feature Film of the Year are: The Club by Pablo Larraín (Chile), Jauja by Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), Los Hongos by Oscar Ruiz Navia (Colombia), The Princess of France by Matías Piñeiro (Argentina), and White Out, Black In by Adirley Queirós (Brazil).

The five nominees for Best U.S. Latino Film of the Year are: The Book of Life by Jorge Gutierrez,East Side Sushi by Anthony Lucero, Mala Mala by Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, and We Like It Like That by Mathew Ramirez Warren.

The winners of the 6th Annual Cinema Tropical Awards will be announced at a special evening ceremony at The New York Times Company headquarters in New York City on Wednesday, January 20, 2016. The winning films will be showcased as part of the Cinema Tropical Festival at Museum of the Moving Image,February 25-28, 2016, celebrating the organization's 15th anniversary.

The candidates were culled from a comprehensive list of films created by a nominating committee composed of 12 film professionals from Latin America, the U.S., and Europe. All the films under consideration had a minimum of 60 minutes in length and premiered between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015.

COMPLETE LIST OF NOMINATIONS:

Best Feature Film
• The Club / El club (Pablo Larraín, Chile, 2015) 
• Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina, 2014) 
• Los Hongos (Óscar Ruiz Navia, Colombia, 2014)
• The Princess of France / La princesa de Francia (Matías Piñeiro, Argentina/USA, 2014)
• White Out, Black In / Branco Sai, Petro Fica (Adirley Queirós, Brazil, 2014)

Best Director, Feature Film
• Nicolás Pereda, The Absent / Los ausentes(Mexico, 2014)
• Gabriel Mascaro, August Winds / Ventos de Agosto (Brazil, 2014)
• Pablo Larraín, The Club / El club (Chile, 2015)
• Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas,Sand Dollars / Dólares de arena (Dominican Republic/Mexico/Argentina, 2014)
• Paz Fábrega, Viaje (Costa Rica, 2015)

Best First Film
• 600 Miles (Gabriel Ripstein, Mexico, 2015) 
• The Fire / El incendio (Juan Schnitman, Argentina, 2015)
• Ixcanul (Jayro Bustamante, Guatemala, 2015) 
• She Comes Back on Thursday / Ela Volta Na Quinta (Andrés Novais Oliveira, Brazil, 2014) 
• Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) / Videofilia (y otros síndromes virales) (Juan Daniel F. Molero, Peru, 2015)

Best Documentary Film
• A Committee Chronicle / Crónica de un comité (José Luis Sepúlveda and Carolina Adriazola, Chile, 2014)
• Identification Photos / Retratos de Identificaçao (Anita Leandro, Brazil, 2014)
• Invasion / Invasión (Abner Benaim, Panama, 2014)
• Last Conversations / Últimas Conversas(Eduardo Coutinho, Brazil, 2015) 
• Monte Adentro (Nicolás Macario Alonso, Colombia/Argentina, 2014)

Best Director, Documentary Film
• Maíra Bühler and Matias Mariani, I Touched All Your Stuff / A Vida Privada dos Hipopótamos (Brazil, 2014) 
• Karina García Casanova, Juanicas (Mexico, 2014) 
• Betzabé García, Kings of Nowhere / Los reyes del pueblo que no existe (Mexico, 2015)
• Aldo Garay, The New Man / El hombre nuevo (Uruguay, 2015) 
• Christopher Murray, Propaganda (Chile, 2014)

Best U.S. Latino Film
• The Book of Life (Jorge Gutierrez, USA, 2014) 
• East Side Sushi (Anthony Lucero, USA, 2014)
• Mala Mala (Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles, USA/Puerto Rico, 2014) 
• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon USA, 2015) 
• We Like It Like That (Mathew Ramirez Warren, USA, 2015) 

2015 JURY:
Amalia Córdova, film programmer and scholar; Aaron Cutler, film critic and programmer; Paul Dallas, film critic; Vanessa Erazo, Film Editor, Remezcla; Michelle Farrell, film scholar; Sandra Kogut, filmmaker; Dominic Davis, film programmer, Rooftop Films; David Schwartz, Chief Curator, Museum of the Moving Image; Diana Vargas, Artistic Director, Havana Film Festival New York.

2015 NOMINATING COMMITTEE:
Fábio Andrade, Revista Cinética, Brazil; Juan Pablo Bastarrachea, Cine Tonalá, Mexico; Consuelo Castillo, DOCTV Latinoamérica, Colombia; Fernando del Razo, Riviera Maya Film Festival, Mexico; Vanessa Erazo, Film Editor, Remezcla, USA; Luis Gonzalez Zaffaroni, DocMontevideo, Uruguay; James Lattimer, Berlinale's Forum, Germany; Alicia Morales, Lima Film Festival, Peru; Joel Poblete. SANFIC, Chile; Andrea Stavenhagen, San Sebastian Film Festival, Spain; Charles Tesson, Critics' Week, Cannes, France; Raúl Niño Zambrano, International Documentary Film Festival - IDFA, Netherlands.

The Cinema Tropical Awards are presented in partnership with The New York Times Company’s Latino Network, Museum of the Moving Image, and National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP), and are made possible with the support of the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York and Full Circle Post. Media Sponsor: Remezcla and LatAm cinema. Hotel Sponsor: Hôtel Americano. Special thanks to Andrea Betanzos.

For more information visit

About Cinema Tropical and the Cinema Tropical Awards:
New York-based Cinema Tropical (CT) [www.cinematropical.com] is the leading presenter of Latin American cinema in the U.S. Founded by Carlos A. Gutiérrez and Monika Wagenberg in 2001 with the mission of distributing, programming and promoting what was to become the biggest boom of Latin American cinema in decades, CT has brought U.S. audiences some of the first screening of films such as Amores Perros and Y Tu Mamá También. Through a diversity of programs and initiatives, CT is thriving as a dynamic and groundbreaking 501(c)(3) non-profit media arts organization experimenting in the creation of better and more effective strategies for the distribution and exhibition of foreign cinema in this country. The Cinema Tropical Awards were created in 2010 to honor excellence in Latin American filmmaking, and it is the first international award entirely dedicated to honoring the artistry of recent Latin American cinema. In its inaugural year, the Awards were given to the Ten Best Latin American Films of the Aughts.

By: Kara Brown

                                                                                                                                          Image Credit: Getty 

Universal Pictures grossed $6.7 billion at the box office this year in large part due to its studio chairman, a half-Egyptian woman who embraces diversity. When is Hollywood going to understand that is almost always a winning game plan?

Donna Langley was named The Hollywood Reporter’s Entertainment Executive of the Year for good reason. Universal’s 2015 slate included Furious 7, Jurassic World,Pitch Perfect 2, Trainwreck, Straight Outta Compton and Minions. Langley was also responsibly for successfully wooing Fifty Shades of Grey author EL James to the studio.

Notably, Langley has worked to produce diverse projects and isn’t concerned with the pandering of young white men that gives us shit like five differentTransformers movies:

With films like Compton, Trainwreck and Pitch Perfect, Langley has shown an uncommon willingness to embrace diverse material in terms of race and gender and not to set her sights only on the usual audience demographic: young, white males. Producer Will Packer says Langley didn’t blink at casting the film Ride Along with two African-American leads, Hart and Ice Cube. “She made it very clear she didn’t want this to be a small urban film — urban in the way the industry sometimes compartmentalizes projects,” says Packer. “You have a lot of talk in this town about how things should be handled. She actually gave the film the support it needed financially.” The film grossed $155 million; a sequel is in the works for next year.

She was also able to recognize the potential of Straight Outta Compton, which went on to become the highest grossing music biopic of all time.

Another decision that was all Langley: putting up $30 million to makeStraight Outta Compton. The project had been dropped by New Line, which balked at that budget for a hard-R racially charged movie about the world of gangsta rap. But when its producers brought it to Langley, she saw its crossover potential. “I told her there was no way to make this movie without controversy,” says Ice Cube, whose story (about the founding of N.W.A) is told in the film. “She was, like, ‘I know,’ which is what I wanted to hear. She was down to take whatever licks this movie would bring and didn’t squirm or get squeamish.”

Langley is an unusual bright star in the deep dark abyss that is the condition of women—let alone truly powerful women—in Hollywood. Universal currently has 20 percent of the market share, and this year’s box office numbers broke records. It has been proven time and time again that films starring women and people of color can and do make money when given the chance. Donna Langley clearly has that figured out but, as usual, we’re all still waiting for the rest of Hollywood to catch up.

Check This Out At: JEZEBEL

If you didn’t catch our early sneak peek in June at the Summit, catch it next week in a special sneak peak in Los Angeles!

"American Horror Story: Hotel" was one of four television shows that California's… more

SUZANNE TENNER/FX

 The local film and television industry won a hard-fought battle when Gov. Jerry Brown approved legislation to more than triple California’s film tax credit in August 2014. The expanded incentives program went into effect in July and has already started to pay dividends.

The new legislation increased the program’s budget from $100 million annually to $330 million and opened up the state's film incentives to big-budget movies and network TV dramas as well as indie films and cable shows. Movies and TV shows can get 15 percent or more of their budget reimbursed, with 5 percent bonuses if they relocate from another state; shoot outside the L.A. area; or hire musicians or visual effects workers in-state.

In addition, the new program divvies up its total budget among different types of productions so they're not all competing against each other. Under the new system, 40 percent of the funding goes toward new TV dramas, movies, miniseries and ongoing series; 35 percent to feature films; 20 percent to TV shows relocating from out-of-state; and 5 percent to indie films.

Under the old program, the $100 million annual budget was distributed by a lottery system. The new one employs a "jobs ratio" that takes into account how many jobs a production will create as well as how much those jobs will pay.

The first TV shows to receive tax credits under the expanded incentives program went into production over the summer, and the effect on the local economy was immediate, with on-location production of scripted series surging 54.5 percent in the third quarter. Incentive-backed projects comprised 20.8 percent for dramas, 8.6 percent for sitcoms, and 33.6 percent for pilots.

The film tax credit drew 254 applications, with the California Film Commission awarding benefits to 11 movies: eight studio projects — including a sequel to “The Conjuring” and Dax Shepard’s untitled “CHiPS” comedy — and three indies.