Welcome to Morelia

The Morelia International Film Festival is a forum that promotes cultural expression in our community; it is an important source of identity that gives us a place in the world and in history. Films strengthen liberty by championing authentic ways of being and thinking.

Every line and every frame of the Morelia International Film Festival’s short and feature-length works are engaging; they guide our emotions through the world of human sentiment.

The Festival expresses, transmits, and reveals a human being’s most intimate thoughts and feelings. It also works as a platform for people to interact and build relationships among themselves and with their environment. A continuity from past into present, with a modern vision of the future is what gives the Morelia International Film Festival value and meaning.

Morelia’s cultural treasures are a rich heritage of humanity, a legacy of past centuries. This important cinematic showcase underscores the historical and cultural strengths of our rose-colored colonial city, whose people believe that this fertile land will continue to cultivate talent and creativity in every field of human endeavor.

The Morelia International Film Festival has launched some of the best filmmakers and artists in the world and, because cinema is a treasure for humanity, the Festival’s Fifth Edition places a wide range of works in the hands of great film critics.

For this special event, I welcome our ever-faithful and sensitive film community, and urge them to join efforts and contribute to this sector, to discover new talent, and to excel in this industry with better quality film contents. I also urge the viewing public to take part in this feast and see the original and contemporary films that make up the festival’s program. Nurtured by both local and global cultures, The Morelia International Film Festival’s spirit will continue to grow thanks to the constant contact with new productions.

This cinematographic feast has become, with the creativity and imagination of artists, a meeting point for all the arts. On behalf of the City, I warmly welcome the producers, artists, directors, photographers, cinematographers, writers, and technicians to the Morelia International Film Festival’s Fifth Edition.

The people of Morelia celebrate and welcome those who will visit our beautiful city from all over the world in the coming days and enjoy these remarkable films.

CARLOS MACOUZET ZAMACONA
Mayor of Morelia

Fifth Morelia International Film Festival

Five years ago, The Morelia International Film Festival, an event dedicated to celebrating films from Mexico and around the world, was founded. Since then, the FICM has quickly gained renown for supporting emerging Mexican filmmakers. Guided by this mission, the festival established two competitive sections, the short and documentary film competitions, as these are the genres that Mexican film students typically pursue first. The festival also invites great film directors from all over the world to share their knowledge and experience with these young artists in a welcoming environment.

Half a decade later, the remarkable results of our previous editions are testament to the fact that we have achieved our goals. Our movie theaters have screened the work of hundreds of filmmakers, which include more than 170 shorts and 70 documentary films in the Official Selection categories. Award-winning directors have not only been able to finance future projects, but also present their works at Cannes, Sundance, Huesca, Toulouse, and Rotterdam.

The success of 25-year-old Elisa Miller at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where her short film Ver llover won the Palme d’or, proves that the FICM’s aim to back young Mexican filmmakers and create a platform to expose new talent has been accomplished. Seven months before the Cannes Film Festival opened, Ver llover won the FICM’s top prize.

The Morelia International Film Festival will launch a new category this year: the Mexican Feature Film competition for first or second-time directors. This new section will allow the FICM to further its mission: to provide a showcase for local talent and encourage up-and-coming filmmakers. The section’s objective is to attract the best, most promising new Mexican features and offer their directors what Elisa Miller has called “a springboard” to the international festival circuit.

The FICM has also helped launch other innovative ventures, such as the traveling documentary film festival Ambulante. In 2007, it traveled for the second time to 15 cities throughout the country showing 17 documentaries from Mexico and all over the world. During the FICM’s fifth edition, Ambulante (sponsored by Canana, Cinépolis, and Morelia) will unveil its new line-up, programmed to begin in 2008. Ambulante, along with the FICM extension in Mexico City, works to make sure documentaries are also exhibited in commercial theatres.

After five years, the FICM has become a festival of international significance. We will continue to pay close attention to the quality of our selections and the organization of our events, to center our attention on filmmakers, the excellence of our jury and international guests. We welcome the thousands of film enthusiasts and artists that make their way to Morelia during this intense week to live and breathe cinema the way it can only be done here. Welcome to the Morelia International Film Festival.

ALEJANDRO RAMÍREZ
President
CUAUHTÉMOC CÁRDENAS BATEL
Vice-president
DANIELA MICHEL
General Director

Message from the Mexican Institute of Cinematography

The Morelia International Film Festival has become a heaven for cinephiles and young Mexican filmmakers. Like every high-profile film festival, it constitutes an important meeting point for young makers and industry professionals, a privileged venue for the exchange of ideas, images, stories, narrative strategies, and creative initiatives.

Now in its fifth edition, the festival offers once again a superb selection of films. Its various sections attest to the diversity and dynamism characteristic of recent Mexican cinema—offering competitive sections for short films, documentaries and this year, for the first time—and proof of its longstanding commitment to young generations of filmmakers— a competitive section for first and second feature films.

For all of us at the Mexican Institute of Cinematography, it is an absolute honor to know that Mexican filmmakers of every level, and working within every genre, can find in the festival, a venue of great import. In this context, we want to recognize and celebrate the festival’s continuing support of Morelia Lab—a series of workshops and round tables designed to offer training and professional advice to young Mexican and Latin American producers.

In a similar vein, we want to acknowledge the importance of the partnership that the Morelia International Film Festival has forged with the International Critics’ Week (SIC) at the Cannes International Film Festival. Now young filmmakers can count on a space where Mexican cinema can gather international exposure and recognition. And conversely, audiences in Morelia can enjoy a selection of films from the International Critics’ Week.

We applaud the festival organizers and the participants for creating an extraordinary event. Congratulations for all the hard work, for helping to form loyal and discerning audiences for today’s cinema, and for your sustained effort to improve and foster Mexican cinema.

MARINA STAVENHAGEN
General Director