In a notable prestige project package from Chile, Gonzalo Maza, co-writer of Sebastian Lelio’s Academy Award-winning “A Fantastic Woman,” has boarded “I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye,” a drama thriller non-fiction series to be directed by Carola Fuentes and produced by Rafael Valdeavellano, re-teaming after their collaboration as co-writers and directors on the admired “Chicago Boys,” (2015) and “Breaking the Brick” (2022).
Both doc features were nuanced studies of the impact of Chicago school of Neoliberal thought on standard economic policy in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile. “Goodbye” turns on another often deleterious mindset, the highly codified and often cruel power dynamics seen in the online representation of fellow high school students.
Set up at the partners’ La Ventana Cine in Santiago de Chile, “I Don’t Want to Say Goodbye,” now in development, is executive produced by director Marcela Said (“Los Perros,” 2017), who has helmed episodes of “Gangs of London,” (2022), “Lupin” (2021) and “Narcos” (2020).
It forms part of a large package of projects being brought onto the market at Ventana Sur by promotion agency Cinemachile and Chile’s Consejo National de Television (CNTV), the latter as part of the ever expanding VS section SoloSerieS.
Maza also co-wrote and produced Lelio’s breakout “Gloria,” which won best actress for Paulina García at 2015’s Berlin and was remade by Lelio as “Gloria Bell,” starring Julianne Moore.
Inspired by the true story of Katy Winter,“I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye” sees her parents engage in a search for justice after Winter, a student at Chile’s Nido de las Aguilas high-school, commited suicide at the age of 16 in May 2018. (more here)
In a flagship deal for the Spanish-speaking world’s ever more global industry, Gonzalo Maza, co-writer of Sebastián Lelio’s Academy Award-winning “A Fantastic Woman,” has been tapped by production powerhouse El Estudio to adapt “Macario,” a novella written by the legendary B. Traven.
Traven’s 1927 novel, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” was given a big screen makeover by John Huston in the 1948 film of the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart, which won three Academy Awards and is often described as Huston and Bogart’s finest work.
The announcement of the new film project was made by El Estudio on the eve of Mexico’s Day of the Dead. That seems no coincidence when it comes to “Macario,” a title which is a Mexico-set literary classic reflecting the pervasive presence of death in Mexican culture.
Coming after El Estudio has acquired the rights to “Macario” from the Traven estate, the movie adaptation is executive produced by Pablo Guisa from Mexico’s Morbido, which signed a production alliance with El Estudio last year. El Estudio’s founding producer-partners Diego Suárez Chialvo, Enrique Lopez Lavigne and Pablo Cruz also exec produce.
A major new independent production player launched at 2020’s Berlin Film Festival, El Estudio has offices in Madrid, Los Angeles and Mexico City.
Maza’s career to date has been focused on Chile, where he co-wrote and produced Lelio’s breakout “Gloria,” which won best actress for Paulina García at 2015’s Berlin and was remade by Lelio as “Gloria Bell,” starring Julianne Moore.
In “Macario,” however, Maza takes on a story which reflects the anti-establishment mindset of B. Traven, which is now believed to be a pseudonym for Moritz Ratheneau, a German anarchist who fled the fall of the short-lived 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic. He ended up in Mexico where he began to write about Mexican’s oppressed indigenous population, decades before it was on the left’s radar.
It’s still to be seen which way Maza will take “Macario.” Traven’s story itself adapts a fairy tale, “Godfather Death,” collected in 1812’s “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.” Transferred to a Mexico still under Spanish rule, it turns on a dirt-poor woodcutter, Macario, who suffers with his family borderline starvation. His simple dream is to eat a whole turkey.
When he finally gets the chance, Death appears and Macario offers to share the turkey. In gratitude, Death grants the peasant the ability to cure the sick. The gift earns him riches. But when he attempts to save the lives of the son and daughter of his land’s ruler, contravening the rules set out by Death, Macario seals his own doom.
“I’ve been a die hard fan of this story for a long time, Macario is present every year at Día de los Muertos almost as a rite. We are honored to be able to work with Gonzalo in bringing this amazing story back to the screen,” said Cruz.
“I feel very lucky for the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of B. Traven, in a story so close to the heart of Mexico, and to be able to bring it into our times, to make it resonate with themes that concern and excite us today,” Maza added, hinting at how he might adapt Traven’s tale.
Originally published in German in 1950, the story, whose English title was “The Healer,” was honored by The New York Times as the best short story of the year in 1953. It was adapted into a film in 1960 by Mexican director Roberto Gavaldón which played Cannes competition and became the first Mexican movie to be nominated for a best foreign-language picture Oscar.
“We are delighted that Pablo, Gonzalo and the team at El Estudio will be introducing ‘Macario’ to new generations,” said Malu Montes de Oca, Traven’s stepdaughter.
“My stepfather had a unique empathy for Mexico’s culture and people. The original movie could only be enjoyed by a limited audience in Spanish.”
“You will remember that Albert Einstein said that if he had to go to a desert island he would not take with him any book that was not written by B. Traven. New production and distribution technologies will enable this timeless story to be seen in many languages and formats around the globe,” she enthused.
Photo: Gonzalo Maza on the set of “Ella es Cristina”. Photo credit: Angelina Dotes.
The Man Who Writes Women: Chile’s Gonzalo Maza speaks about his Directorial Debut ‘Ella Es Cristina’
Sounds and Colours speaks to the screenwriter behind the Oscar-Winning A Fantastic Woman about his directorial debut Ella Es Cristina.
Gonzalo Maza is a Chilean screenwriter, film critic, producer and director. Together with director Sebastián Leilo, he co-wrote the screenplay for Una Mujer Fantastica (A Fantastic Woman, 2017) about a transgender woman who becomes the suspect for her boyfriend’s accidental death. The film won Chile its first Oscar in the category Best International Feature Film in 2018.
A long-time collaborator with Leilo, Maza also wrote the screenplay for Gloria (2013) about a 58-year-old divorcee navigating the singles scene (which won Paulina García the Silver Bear award for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 2013, and which Leilo later remade into English as Gloria Bell, starring Julianne Moore) and The Year of the Tiger (2011).
Ella es Cristina (This is Cristina, 2019) is Maza’s directorial debut. It explores how the romantic entanglements of two long-time, thirty-something friends, impacts on their relationship.
Sofia Serbin de Skalon caught up with Gonzalo Maza for a Zoom chat during the last edition of the Raindance Festival in London where Ella es Cristina was screened.
I’ve read that you describe yourself as anti-male. The definition in Spanish would be anti-machista. It’s interesting to me because that is what I felt Gloria, A Fantastic Woman and Ella es Cristina have in common: they show what it is like for a woman to navigate a machista world.
Yes, of course, although I think I’ve evolved since then in my thinking, and I’d say that I’m now more anti-male as opposed to anti-machista. It’s easy to be anti-machista. Machismo is a very aggressive way of understanding the world. It’s attached to a very primitive view. It’s embarrassing.
I understand. But what I found interesting, as a Latin American, was that I recognised the worlds you were showing in the films, especially the male characters that embody a type of machismo that is very Latin. I know a lot of people like these male characters! So for me it was very specifically Latin.
I’ve been living here in London for four years. Ella es Cristina was filmed before I came here. It took me a long time to edit it and it didn’t come out in Chile until July 2019. Then it was shown in festivals in Mexico, Sweden and Miami. So the whole thing was a super slow process in which I feel I’ve evolved.
The film started as an idea for a comedy. I wanted to make a comedy about women in their thirties (a little younger than me: I’m 45). I had a lot of friends who were like that and it made me laugh. What started off making me laugh then didn’t make me laugh. In the beginning it seemed as if all these women were all a little bit lost in their lives. They were all talented or intelligent or funny – they had a lot to offer – with a lot of attributes. But they were all going out with horrible guys. [Laughs.] Really horrible.
That was my starting point. An exploration. Trying to understand why that was the case. That was my first question. And my first response was that they were lost. But when I started making the film and editing it with Andrea Chignoli, we started to find that the film was going into a subject that was a lot more serious. I hadn’t really seen that before. I only saw it when I started working with her. We re-filmed some scenes and that’s when the real film emerged. I realised it was actually quite sad. It was much sadder than I had ever imagined.
Yes, exactly. That’s what I wanted to say because Gloria is also sad. It shows a generation older than us who no longer have their youthful beauty and that power, and who are negotiating with what they have left. But then you see these younger girls who seem to have it all and they are still making terrible choices.
In Ella es Cristina, what I thought was interesting was that Susana’s mother is the one who seems to have it figured out with her younger lover. Why was that? Was there a message there? Or was it a contract?
It was a contrast. Because I also don’t like the idea of women as victims.
Not victims, but in these three films you seem to be showing something real: that for the modern woman these are the problems that they’re now facing in relationships. Perhaps before a Latin American women might have put up with more. Now they are asking for more.
That’s what I thought was funny. That is the illusion and you would have thought that would happen. You would think women are more empowered now and that they are asking for more and that men would stop being so brutish but actually the women are still carrying on with the same idiots; nothing has changed.
When I showed the film in Sweden there was a feminist march in the street the same day of the screening. The women were shouting: don’t beat us, don’t kill us. And then at the Q&A the moderator stated that this was a Latin problem. I said: I don’t think so; let’s ask the women in the audience. I think the problem is all over the world. And of course people laughed.
We are just scratching the surface of the problem. And it appears in the most grotesque way, in comedy. And it’s not that I want to position myself in a certain way, it interests me as a screenwriter. Man is in crisis. In a deep crisis. And this crisis that he finds himself in, is because he is losing power. Not even a lot of power, it’s just a little bit. But it’s enough to put him in crisis.
The empowerment of women and the whole movement of #NiUnaMenos. It’s a struggle on both sides. Men feel as if they are losing power, and women feel that they are being empowered and they still haven’t finished negotiating their territory.
Exactly, exactly.
It’s as if no one is very clear on what their roles are now. That is what I think is interesting.
Exactly. And so the only thing they hold on to, well, men now are victimising themselves so much. They seem surprised. But also, machismo is still there but in a more private form: the bad jokes, etc, they’re still there. On WhatsApp, say, like in the fathers’ groups from school. The difference now is that there is more hypocrisy.
But that is a problem. Because if it hides underground it becomes worse.
Exactly. It’s terrible. But I have to look at it with humour.
You know another reason we have to laugh? Because masculinity is very ridiculous. Because everyone in power is ridiculous. The kings are ridiculous, the presidents are ridiculous. White men are ridiculous. Everything seems ridiculous. And we as men are intensely ridiculous. And that is funny to me. I find it humorous to laugh at that. But it is at a cost. It isn’t free.
I was going to ask. How do your friends, or the men in the audience who have seen the film, respond to it?
Badly. [Laughs.]
What about your close friends?
My close friends are like… Ah, ok. Yeah it is quite amusing. Whatever. But nobody wants to admit to being like that.
But on the side of the women, it is much more emotional to see the response. On the one hand, there’s laughter: like they might say: I went out with someone like that once. And then the other response is terrible, a girl might say: Cristina makes me angry, she is so dumb, she doesn’t realise. A friend who is telling you to wake up, and then you end up arguing with your friend instead of going against the guy.
My interpretation of Cristina was that she was a woman who couldn’t be alone. She goes from one bad relationship to another. Maybe it is a question of self-esteem too. Her friend Susana seems to have more self-esteem and tells her own boyfriend to get lost. Maybe Susana also wants to be in a relationship and suffers for not being in one but at least she has the strength to say she is not going to stay in a situation that is bad for her. While with Cristina it just seems that she puts up with her lot.
But both paths are bad.
Yes and that’s what’s sad. Because neither of them wins. The mother is the one who is winning. You have to aim to be like the mother. [Laughter.]
So… Another question: why did you chose to call the film Ella es Cristina when both the girls were equal protagonists? Or did you start writing the film with Cristina as the protagonist?
Yes, it was always like that. But then when I started working with the actress who plays Susana, Paloma Salas, I thought about writing the film with her. But it was a disaster. She doesn’t really write and it didn’t work. We talked a while and then it occurred to me that she could be Cristina’s friend. She has a lot of talent and everything she does is very natural so she naturally came to take on a bigger role.
In reality I was interested in a romantic story. Friendships are a type of love, and so it seemed to me that you could tell the story like a romantic comedy – they are together and then they split up – but as I said before, it seemed a little bit superficial, just to leave it like that. So I thought it was much more interesting to explore, what happens for some time with Cristina. But I kept thinking of the film as being about two friends, but people would say to me: this is about a girl who has a friend. So that conversation remains open. I’m thinking I might do another film called Ella es Susana.
I was just going to ask you that! That would be Part Two.
One of the things I loved about the film was how natural it felt. It was a romantic comedy but it felt very natural. Almost like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. I read that you’d studied at the University of Texas in Austin, and I wanted to ask if the films of Richard Linklater at all influenced you.
Yes, absolutely! I met him. I had a class with him on Production. I remember him and a lot of the things he said and I’ve followed his work and always thought he was very interesting.
The movement of those indie films coming out of Austin is super interesting. I actually thought the film seemed a bit like an American indie but with a Chilean touch.
Yes it’s like I wanted to make an American indie film, but in Ñuñoa, which is the neighbourhood that I come from in Chile. With some Raúl Ruiz mixed in.
So that’s why you chose to shoot it in black and white also?
It was actually something that happened by chance. When we did A Fantastic Woman we went to LA to the Independent Spirit Award and she presented the prize for Best International Film and we won it. We had a friend in common who introduced us and she asked me where I lived. I said London, and she told me that she also lived in London, so we agreed to do something together. So we got together here and started collaborating on some of her projects and at one point she asked me what I was working on and I showed her the film and she got involved as executive producer as a way to feature on the project.
How was it for you as someone who writes, to suddenly find yourself behind the camera? Was it very different? Or did it feel like a natural progression?
It’s incredible to direct. It is much better than writing! Writing is horrendous, boring, anguishing, solitary. Nobody really cares. Directing is glamorous, there’s coffee, there’s food. You are the centre of attention. That’s why everyone wants to direct. It’s fun. But I also wanted to develop something autonomous.
Now I would like to go back to the subject of men. I am a bit embarrassed to keep writing about women. Especially now that women write about women. I feel it is more interesting to see films made by women and it seems a bit patronising to be a man who only writes films about women.
If you had positioned yourself as a writer who writes female characters it could come off as patronising. But the characters you’ve written are terrific: you don’t see many female roles like that. It important for us to be able to see those characters.
Yes that is true. I do think it is good for both sides to write about the opposite sex.
But something I discovered in this film. To film men in such a crude way: there is something interesting there to explore, the masculinity in crisis, this sensation of ridiculousness. It all seems very ridiculous.
Well I think it would be great if you wrote a film about a guy that didn’t have any of these problems!
That would be very boring.
But seriously, I have the feeling that for that to happen, it’s hard. It’s like telling millionaires to have a social conscience. They can have one, or a bit of one. As long as they don’t lose what they already have. With men it is the same. You can ask them to give women a space but as long as they can carry on watching football and having their space. I find there is a huge selfishness there.
So what is the solution?
I don’t know! How should I know? [Laughs.] There is no solution.
Yes there is. There is hope. Especially when sexual identity becomes more fluid. Which is what is happening with the new generations. Younger people don’t hold onto that strong masculinity and everything is more variable. But I don’t think it will happen in our generation.
I think deep down it is interesting because we are witnessing an important period. Not just because of Covid, etc but because we are deciding how society will be going forward. Not in the same idealistic way you saw in the 1960s but in a way that is much more pragmatic. Within that pragmatism, sexual identity has opened like a fan, so it is not taboo to be homosexual, bisexual, etc.
I think people will lean more on their affections, rather than their sexual identify. So I think there is something there but it has a long way to go. But it is more possible than for men to take stock and give up their space.
Click here to read Amy Hancock’s review of Ella es Cristina
Cinemachile reports: “Jeonju Film Festival, one of the most important in Asia, selects Chilean films for its 21st edition”
Jeonju Film Festival website
Another international cinema event joins in on the trend of carrying out its activities online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This time it’s the Jeonju Film Festival (JIFF), recognized as the center of independent film in Asia and the broadest window of avant-garde cinema in the entire world. JIFF had set its 21st edition for April 30th through May 9th, but postponed the encounter to May 28th to June 6th, and boasts a high national presence in several of its categories.
Showing in the World Cinema – Fiction section is This is Cristina, the directorial debut of screenwriter Gonzalo Maza, winner of the Jordan Ressler First Feature Award at the most recent Miami Film Festival. The film portrays two friends in their 30s who don’t know what to do with their lives; women trapped between their belated adolescence and a level of emotional maturity that never grows.
Since 2000, JIFF has introduced a series of new, emerging filmmakers to the world scene. In addition, Jeonju Project Market has dedicated itself to supporting independent film projects, distributing and promoting numerous Korean and foreign films. Industry Video Library and Industry Screening, meanwhile, have provided exclusively international guests, including the world’s festival programmers and film professionals.
Variety has announced this year’s 10 Latinxs to Watch, and has again selected the Miami Film Festival as a partner for the second annual celebration of promising talent in the Latinx community that will include a panel discussion and film screenings.
This year’s honorees are Melissa Barrera (actor, “Vida,” “In the Heights”); Angel Bismark Curiel (actor “Pose,” “Critical Thinking”); Julissa Calderon (actor, “Gentefied”); Carolina Costa (cinematographer, “Hala,” Workforce”); Mariana di Girolamo (actor, “EMA”); Gonzalo Maza (director, “This is Cristina”); Cesar Mazariegos (writer, “High & Mighty,” “The Simpsons”); Camila Mendes (actor, “Riverdale”); Tainy (music producer, Bad Bunny’s “X 100pre”); and artist-singer-dancer Chesca.
“Even a quick look at the lineup of this year’s 10 Latinxs to Watch proves the point that industry pros already know: Latinx talent is enlivening and enriching global entertainment from theater to music to film and television,” said Steven Gaydos, executive vice president of global content of Variety. “We are excited to showcase this year’s class of talented creatives at the 37th Miami Film Festival.”
The celebratory luncheon and panel discussion will take place on Saturday, March 14, during the festival, which runs from March 6-15. Malina Saval, features editor at Variety, will moderate the conversation.
“The Miami Film Festival is excited to partner with Variety once again to celebrate their ’10 Latinxs to Watch’ for 2020” said Jaie Laplante, Miami Film Festival executive director and director of programming. “We look forward to welcoming all 10 honorees to Miami and are delighted that we can showcase three of the artists’ films during the festival including Carolina Costa, Mariana di Girolamo and Gonzalo Maza.”
The honorees will be featured in Variety’s March 3 issue.
I just came back from the Göteborg Film Festival, the legendary Scandinavian film festival in Sweden. We had the European premiere for “This is Cristina” in the Biopalaset theatre, and the audience was simply amazing. Lots of laughs and enthusiastic comments in the Q&A. I felt incredibly grateful for the experience. Göteborg is also the home of Volvo cars, so every time Susana’s car was showed in the film (a Volvo Heritage 265, that belongs to actor Paloma Salas) people in the audience was giggling with some not-so-hidden pride. Thank you, Göteborg!
Susana (Paloma Salas) trying to sell his beloved Volvo to car salesman (Horacio Valdivia) in “This is Cristina”. Horacio is also one of the producers of the film.
Sundance Institute has announced the 15 screenwriters who have been chosen for the January 2020 Screenwriters Lab, which will go from the 17th-22nd. Those selected will have the opportunity to develop their independent projects by immersing themselves in the creative process and working with the mentorship of Creative Advisors.
Creative Advisors are Artistic Director Scott Frank, Michael Arndt, Suha Arraf, Ritesh Batra, Andrea Berloff, D.V. DeVincentis, Gonzalo Maza, Doug McGrath, Walter Mosley, Nicole Perlman, Howard Rodman, Susan Shilliday, Zach Sklar, Dana Stevens, Joan Tewkesbury, Bill Wheeler, and Tyger Williams.
Leading international sales agency-production-distribution company, FiGa Films, has snagged all worldwide rights to “This is Cristina” (“Ella es Cristina”), the directorial debut of Chilean scribe Gonzalo Maza, who has co-written four of Sebastian Lelio’s films, including his Oscar-winning “A Fantastic Woman” and Berlin Festival winner “Gloria.”
“It’s a pleasure to collaborate with Gonzalo, whose writing we’ve admired so much in the past. He’s got a great future as a director and we’re fortunate to be behind his lovely feature,” said FiGa’s Sandro Fiorin who has already sold it to China’s Beijing Hualu NewMedia.
Produced by Primate Lab, Noise Media and Maza’s Mar Humano, the black and white dramedy revolves around the titular Cristina and her best friend, played by Mariana Derderian and Paloma Salas, who are both in their 30s. After a major bust up between them, Cristina’s life spirals just when she could use the support of a good friend.
Salma Hayek, who met Maza at the Independent Spirit Awards last year, and Siobhan Flynn, her development exec at Ventanarosa Prods., serve as executive producers of the film. “I was drawn towards ‘Ella es Cristina’ for its unique portrait of a generation of urban young Chilean women struggling for recognition and respect but in a fresh and funny way,” Hayek told Variety. “I am always looking to support fellow artists – Gonzalo is one of the most talented screenwriters in the Latin American community so I was excited to be involved in his directorial debut,” she continued.
For the third consecutive year, the Morelia International Film Festival(FICM) and the Sundance Institute International Program get together for the realization of the Morelia / Sundance Story Lab, which seeks to support the improvement of feature film scripts through analysis and creative advice by prestigious international tutors.
Supported by the experience of the laureate Mexican producer Bertha Navarro, the Story Lab has designed an intensive program of personalized advice, where participants and tutors work together on fundamental themes in their projects’ writing, such as the focus of the story that wants to be told, character development and dramatic structure.
The Morelia / Sundance Story Lab 2019 will receive six projects, four Mexican and two from Latin American filmmakers, since one of the objectives of the workshop is to enrich dialogue among creators from diverse creative contexts.
A group of tutors of recognized prestige, among which stand out Erik Jendresen (United States), Naomi Foner (United States), Gonzalo Maza (Chile), Gibrán Portela (Mexico) and Laura Esquivel (Mexico), will lead the group sessions and personalized advice with the participating filmmakers and projects.
The Academy topped last year’s record of 774 new members. It invited 683 members in 2016 and 322 in 2015, which were also record numbers.
The expansion of Academy membership to more than 9,200 stems from an ongoing effort to diversify its ranks following uproar over the lack of African-American nominees in 2015 and 2016, which culminated in 2016’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Two weeks after the widely criticized nominations were announced, AMPAS announced a goal to double the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.
If all the 2018 invitees accept, the overall membership would be 9,226.
Full list of invited members:
Writers Roy Andersson – “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence,” “You, the Living”
Robert L. Baird – “Ferdinand,” “Big Hero 6”
Sean Baker* – “The Florida Project,” “Tangerine”
Marco Bellocchio – “Sweet Dreams,” “Dormant Beauty”
Pablo Berger – “Abracadabra,” “Blancanieves”
Chris Bergoch – “The Florida Project,” “Tangerine”
Sabina Berman – “Gloria,” “Backyard”
Thomas Bidegain – “Racer and the Jailbird,” “Les Cowboys”
