Mexico-Set Drama Wins Top Prize At Cannes Critics Week

ACQUI Y ALLA, a US/Spanish co-production set in Mexico, took top honors at the International Critics Week, the oldest parallel section at the Cannes Film Festival. The film by director Antonio Mendez Esparza was given the prize by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, who for the past 51 years has organized the parallel section devoted to up-and-coming directors’ first and second films. AQUI Y ALLA  centers on a man who returns to his Mexican village after years of working in the United States in a story of hope, memories and loss of what is inevitably left behind. Three other films in the section were also honored, including SOFIA’S LAST AMBULANCE, a documentary from Bulgarian director Ilian Metev, which won the Visionary Prize; the French production LES VOISINS DE DIEU (God’s Neighbors) which won the French Society of Authors, Directors and Composers Prize; and the Argentine film LOS SALVAJES (The Wild Ones) which won the ACID/CCAS Film Prize.

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