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MIRADASDOC 2020 MiradasDoc Market

Ten documentary projects being presented at MiradasDoc Market

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- Until Friday 7 February, Tenerife is playing host to the International Documentary Film Market, attended by a plethora of African, Latin American and European filmmakers

Ten documentary projects being presented at MiradasDoc Market
2 vellas, 7 gatos e 3 máquinas de coser by Marta Pérez Pereiro

As part of the MiradasDoc festival, Guía de Isora (Tenerife) is hosting the MiradasDoc Market International Documentary Film Market, coordinated by David Baute. The event started on Monday 3 February and is set to unspool until 7 February. “It’s back after two trying years, consolidating its commitment to non-fiction film that’s being made in Africa and Latin America. Our responsibility to serve as a platform and a launch pad for projects that are starting to take their baby steps, and to provide distribution options to the ones that are already completed, remains paramount,” Baute stated. And so, this Friday will see the presentation of the ten projects selected from among the 120 that were submitted: the teams behind them will be able to show them off during pitching sessions, in front of a committee of experts. There, they will be seeking funding through co-production or pre-purchasing agreements.

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Three of these hail from the host country, Spain. 2 vellas, 7 gatos e 3 máquinas de coser, which will be helmed by Marta Pérez and produced by Agallas Films, will tell the story of Cris and her mother, who, since 1990, have been sewing at Cabana Moda Trans, a family-run workshop in São Paulo for transvestites and transsexuals. They provide multi-coloured undergarments, bathing suits and designer wear for customers in Brazil and for emigrants in Spain, Italy and Portugal. Bienvenidos a España, staged by Making DOC, will be directed by JA Moreno Amador and will follow a group of refugees who arrive in Seville, where they are hosted by a centre for asylum seekers and those in search of international protection; it is there that they will have to forge a new life. Meanwhile, the title Absolución (by 416 Studio), from the Canary Islands, will be directed by Juan Alfredo Amil Rodríguez, who will show how he is morbidly obese and needs an operation. In order to fight his fear, he decides to film it.

Hailing from Italy is An Italian Youth [+see also:
film review
interview: Mathieu Volpe
film profile
]
(5e6 Srl), directed by Mathieu Volpe, which kicks off in Gardone, a town in the north of the country. At the age of 25, Sokuro returns from Burkina Faso, where he married a young woman from his village. While he waits for her to join him in Italy, he returns to his usual routine in the flat he shares with his siblings.

Three African projects will be participating: hailing from South Africa is A Suitcase of Memories by Zinzi Nkenene, produced by Natives at Work, which is about a Zimbabwean rock band from the 1970s that melded funk with folk tunes. Five decades later, the group’s surviving members are taken to various places that conjure up memories of the past and cast shadows of their present. From Mali comes Les Oubliés, helmed by Ousmane Samassekou, with production duties entrusted to L’Echangeur: following the occupation of the north of the country by armed groups in 2012, foreign forces tried to put a stop to the violence and a peace agreement was signed; however, no reconciliation was forthcoming. And from Burkina Faso comes Paris Is My Garden by Mamounata Nikièma, staged by Les Films de la Pluie, which centres on a school teacher who gives up the chalk and the blackboard to devote himself to trading cars between Europe and Africa.

Finally, a further three are rocking up from Latin America. Puerto Escondido (Chile) will be pitched by its director, Gabriela Paz Ybarnegaray, and production company Tonina Sur Films: this is a documentary constructed from the contradictions that the Bolivian people feel in their notion of the sea. The Colombian doc Tres hermanas is set to be directed by Joyce Ventura and is being produced by Cine Cinco, and it will show how a filmmaker and her sisters, on the cusp of old age, explore various feelings, opposing visions and conflicts as they face this stage of their lives. Lastly, Brazil will be represented by Pedreiras by Brunna Laboissière, staged by Artemísia Films, which reveals how, under the streets of Paris, 300 kilometres of underground passages reflect the city above like a mirror: Samir and Jafar go down there regularly – just for fun.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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