Ventana Sur 2023: A Record Attendance, Brazil’s Surge as a Latam Super Power and Endless Speculation About Fallout From Milei’s Election Victory
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Jointly organized by Cannes’ Marché du Film with a Thierry Fremaux Cannes Film Week adding star auteur glamor, Ventana Sur turns 15 this week unspooling Nov. 27-Dec.1 at its usual venue of the Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madero, its most modern and most chic of districts.
Founded with Argentina’s INCAA film-TV agency in 2009, Ventana Sur has proved a modern addition to Latin America’s film landscape, adding international edge to national film industries then lifting off from Mexico City to Bogotá, São Paulo and Rio, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires, energized by new film laws modeled on Europe and a wave of new filmmakers: Think Chile’s Pablo Larraín, Mexico’s Carlos Reygadas, Pablo Trapero and Santiago Mitre.
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As an arthouse industry worldwide experienced ever more challenges in clinching substantial theatrical sales abroad, Ventana Sur with forward-looking zeal launched sub-markets focusing on still remaining growth axes: Genre (Blood Window), toon pics and series (Animation!), co-production (Proyecta) and now high-end TV (SoloSerieS) and video games (Maquinitas).
“Ventana Sur has anticipated a lot of market interests, such as genre and now video games,” says Bernardo Bergeret, Ventana Sur co-director.
Equally, Ventana Sur has expanded year-on-year in its delegate numbers. 2023 looks like no exception. Participants were tracking at 3,280 participants on Sunday evening and counting, with several hundred more expected to sign up on site, on course for a best-ever historical record of 3,500-plus attendees, Bergeret noted. A far stronger delegation than normal will attend from Mexico. Backed by Cinema do Brasil, Brazil’s will be “very big indeed,” says Bergeret. Attendance at Maquinitas, Ventana Sur’s vid game forum, and SoloSeries, thanks to a 14-title section from Chile’s Consejo Nacional de Television (CNTV), have surged.
Ventana Sur has also added Fantasmática, a fantastic genre short film project showcase and, as the world’s industry leans into IPs, Shoot the Book!, a tradition at Cannes Marché du Film, and now expanded to Ventana Sur, showcasing European and Latin American literary properties.
“Bernardo and I talk a lot about how we can link between Cannes’ Marché du Film and Ventana Sur,” says Guillaume Esmiol, Marché executive director and co-director of Ventana Sur. “We can also try things in Ventana that we don’t do in Cannes and learn from that. I’m interested in creating more synergies between the event, such as we already have in genre, which began at Ventana Sur’s Blood Window,” he added.
Teaming with fest Shorts Mexico, Latin America’s biggest shorts event, Ventana Sur will bow a new competition, Show Shorts, sourcing 22 titles from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
The market can exercize a huge attraction. One section of SoloSeries is sponsored by Netflix, targeting women series writers, which offers $5,000 for development of the winning screenplay. Ventana Sur received 620 submissions, Bergeret notes.
Just how 2023’s edition can play out is another matter. A baker’s dozen of takes on Ventana Sur made on the eve of Latin America’s biggest film-TV industry event:
Whac-A-Mole Latin America
Never has Ventana Sur taken place with the region caught in seemingly contrasting states. The high-profile and perhaps terrible news: Amazed by Javier Milei’s election victory on Nov. 19, part of Argentina’s left-leaning industry is mourning the possibility of loss of government funding, without which it cannot function. And part of the good news: Brazil, enjoying an encompassing Ventana Sur presence, looks set to prove a major growth driver in Latin America as it emerges from four years of hell under Jair Bolsonaro with renewed and gathering energy.
Argentine Fears
Milei has promised to destroy film support and shutter Argentina’s INCAA and pubcaster Televisión Pública. The latter would prove disastrous for many small producers, notes François Pier Pelinard Lambert, editor in chief, Le Film Français. Whether push will come to shove is another question. INCAA autonomy is protected by law. Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, has just 38 of 257 seats in Congress. “If Milei wants to abolish INCAA, it might be very simple for him to strangle it through a lack of funds,” said an Argentinian producer. “We’ll depend exclusively on exporting production services to remain in business,” the producer added. INCAA funding, however, is culled from levies on box office tickets and TV advertising, Box office returns are sky-rocketing in peso terms, both from soaring attendance and inflation. So, an optimistic scenario runs, INCAA’s budget will increase naturally in rough line with inflation.
Brazil is Coming Back
Brazil is back. Ventana Sur should reveal how, and further rebound initiatives. Hitting the ground running, 90 minutes after Ventana Sur opens on Monday, reps of its Ministry of Culture, Bravi Independent Producers Assn., and Spcine
São Paulo Film Commission will talk up São Paulo incentives. They may also sketch how far renewed federal funding is now on tap, plus Brazil’s co-pro drive. São Paulo state authorities talk on Wednesday; one day later, Projeto Paradiso samples projects from exciting young North-East talent. Brazilian titles play out in multiple major Ventana Sur sections.
… And Already Flexing its Muscles
Brazil’s Ventana Sur focus is already justified by a building reality. Broadcast giant Globo alone invests around $1 billion in content every year. In May, via moneys channeled via a Paulo Gustavo Law or federal budgets for 2022 and 2023, Brazil was readying a total cash injection for this year of R$4.8 billion ($972 million). Some of that money has still to hit the sector. But Brazil’s very promise, in Latin American terms, is mind-boggling. Brazil is already the No. 1 territory in the world outside the U.S. in terms of commissioned fiction local originals with 41 scripted projects orders, driven by Netflix (13) and Disney/Star+ (11), ahead of the U.K. (33), Mexico (30), France (29), India (28), Spain (27), Sweden (25), South Korea (23), Germany (22) Argentina (13), estimates The Wit’s Caroline Servy.
Ventana Sur Highlights
Cannes head Thierry Fremaux will deliver a masterclass on Tuesday at a Cannes Film Week which frames films which can expect to be in Oscar running or among winners. Championed by Blood Window and now consecrated as the first Latin American to win Sitges’ best picture award with “When Evil Lurks,” Demián Rugna has a new project at “Tinta Oscura,” VS’ genre screenplay contest.
Two big French video game players, Shiro Games’ Arnaud Richard and Arte’s Adrien Larouzée, deliver presentations.
Animation! WIPs showcase, always a strong draw given sales prospects, takes in two buzzed up titles: “The Language of Birds” and “My Grandfather is a Nihonjin.” Shoot the Book is spangled by titles from acclaimed and best-selling authors. Proyecta will spotlight a brace of exciting new talents. Netflix’s SoloSeries pitching session may be one of the best attended at Ventana Sur. Pitching Paradiso will underscore the sophistication of movie projects coming out of Brazil’s North-East.
Streamer Land: Latin America
Brazil is once more a Latin America growth driver. Another is Netflix, Amazon, WBD, Disney+, Paramount+ et al. Shoot incentives are often key to streamer investment, but platforms’ investment is not totally determined by the shifting sands of institutional support. Over Nov. 2022-Oct. 2023, in Latin America new original shows from local streamers (ViX, Globoplay, for instance) or global streamers built bullishly, powering up 25% year-to-year, The Wit’s Caroline Servy confirmed at MipCancun. That is no minor affair. Worldwide, VOD services account for 26% of new original premieres, all genres. In Latin America that figure is 46%, Servy tells Variety.
“The efforts by streamers has really been impressive,” she adds.
Why the Platform Bullishness?
Netflix co-sponsors a SoloSeries section at Ventana Sur. Amazon Prime Video, Warner Bros. Discovery, Walt Disney, Paramount Television Intl. Studios and Mubi are sending execs, usually buyers. “There’s a lot of platforms’ interest in Latin America, though maybe when it comes to movies for a bit bigger projects,” notes Esmiol. That seems entirely logical. “In Latin America, the linear TV market presents multiple entry barriers for producers. So streamers have a real opportunity to be ambitious and offer some alternatives for audiences that don’t watch the typical prime time content from Televisa or the major Latin broadcasters,” Servy says. Results can be impressive. Servy cites bio series “Rigo,” about Colombian cyclist Rigoberto Urán, didn’t perform well on broadcaster RCN, but on Amazon’s Prime Video scored No. 1 berths across Latin America. “There’s a place for those originals from what we see,” Servy adds.
The Sales Scene
Of Ventana Sur film screenings, both “Joan Baez: I Am Noise” and “The Girls Are Alright” garnered excellent Variety reviews. There’s large anticipation for “Aire,” the Caribbean’s first sci-fi thriller. Angeles Hernandez’s awaited “Restless Waters, Shivering Lights” debuts in Blood Window Screenings. Good word is building in Primer Corte on Mexico’s “Lovers Bid Goodbye,” a poignant black-and-white drama directed by “Northless’” helmer Rigoberto Pérezcano, as well as on the Dominican Republic’s “Tiger” a brutish bootcamp father-son smackdown from Woodpeckers’”José María Cabral, and the lyrical “Memories of a Burning Body,” Antonella Sudasassi Furnis’ follow-up to Costa Rica’s Oscar entry, “The Awakening of the Ants.”
10 Talents to Track
Variety could have named 20. 10 for starters:
Mexico’s Ximena García Lecuona (“No Me Sigas”) in Blood Window Lab.
Mexico’s Alejandra Villalba García (“Hyperballad”), Argentine German Sophia Mocorrea (“Marriage by Abduction”) and Mexico’s Dalia Huerta Cano (“Elena”), all in Proyecta.
Brazil’s Caru Alves de Souza (“Lonely Hearts”) in Punto Género.
Colombia’s Laura Otálora (“Impermanence”) and Argentina’s Carlos Lascano (“Lina”), both in SoloSerieS.
Enock Carvalho, Matheus Farias (“Burning Land”), one of many standouts in Pitching Paradiso.
And among shorts:
Marton Olympio and Anderson Jesús: “Dive” (“Mergulho,” Brazil); Mauricio Sierra: “Ciela,” Mexico.
Latin America’s Next Gen Surge
Social drama is in Brazil’s filmic DNA, notes Projeto Paradiso head Joséphine Bourgois. “But something has changed in who is now telling these stories. A generation of young directors is coming from more diverse social classes and racial backgrounds, gaining access to the means of expression and production that they were estranged from for a long time,” she adds. “They carry with them a vision and an experience of the social dilemmas that Brazil is full of and bring them to screen with another sense of ownership and urgency.” That could be said of many parts of Latin America. It is galvanizing its cinema.
Co-Production: the Industry Fall-Back
As straight sales revenues drop on all but star titles, producers have looked ever more to co-production. After a decade and a half of pan-regional Latin American co-production, with the pandemic production links with Europe are strengthening again, Esmiol observes. “Co-production is of course very important. We’re trying to develop it, by bringing European producers to Ventana Sur. Co-producing with France can be very attractive, he says, but also with other European countries noting that Spain recently signed a co-pro treaty with Chile, and that Italy has joined Ibermedia in addition to Portugal and Spain.”
Regionalization
An ugly word for an exciting phenomenon. Five of the six projects in Pitchings Paradiso are from Brazil’s North-East; most projects in Ventana Sur’s Proyecta co-pro platform are set in Latin America’s far-flung and lesser filmed regions: Pernambuco, Guatemala, Honduras, Salta, east Cuba, remote Colombia, central Chile, pre-Andes Argentina. Two drivers are at work. Across-the-board affirmative action by government and institutions; and the build of regional industries, says Bourgeois. A delegation of producers from outside Bogotá will attend Ventana Sur, Bergeret noted.
A Certain Discomfort
“There’s some discomfort among Argentinian film producers around Ventana Sur,” said an Argentine producer. “It’s perceived as a huge expenditure for an INCAA that’s broken and that’s still owing producers a huge load of money. Money that might vanish in the air just after December, when Milei becomes president. So there’s this valid question: Shouldn’t INCAA protect producers and directors by honoring its debts, instead of simulating a market when there’ll be none?”
With Milei taking office on Dec. 10, this Ventana Sur should go ahead as normal in organizational terms.
At a time when a huge challenge for international titles is to gain profile via media coverage – the content industry has grown far faster than most media outlets – Variety reports in this Ventana Sur Daily on three new titles from talent of note being brought onto the market at Ventana Sur as well as co-production deals on another two titles. It would not have done were it not for Ventana Sur. The jury is out about how Milei’s declared hostility towards Argentina’s film industry will really play out. This year’s Ventana Sur market, however, has begun. Watch this space tomorrow for more announcements.
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