Locarno Open Doors Standout ‘Diamond’: Empatía, Maravilla Team on the Andean Queer Universe Drama (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comJohn Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentBuenos Aires-based Maravilla Cine, producer of 2018 Berlin Panorama player “Marilyn” and San Sebastian 2020 New Directors’ hit “That Weekend,” has boarded “Diamond” (“Diamante”), the first fiction feature from Bolivia’s Yashira Jordán which is shaping up as one of the standout titles at this year’s Locarno Open Doors.Maravilla Cine joins “Diamond” lead producer Empatia Cinema, rapidly consolidating as a production hub for Bolivian auteurs.
Recent credits include Martín Boulocq’s “The Visitor” which premiered at June’s Tribeca Festival and Alejandro Quiroga’s Western “Los de abajo,” a Sanfic Industria pix-in-post winner in March 2021.Empatia Cinema and Maravilla Cine have jointly applied for a development grant from the Ibermedia regional film fund for Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
The incentives will be announced in late November, said Empatia’s Alvaro Olmos Torrico. “Diamond” taps into two trends powering ever more of the best cinema coming out of Spain and Latin America: The emergence of female auteurs mixing local detail and magical realism or horror tropes to pointed effect: Think Elena López Riera’s Cannes success “The Water” or Michelle Garza Cervera’s “Huesera”; the flowering of LGBTQ universes in conservative bastions – such as rural Latin America or traditional Indigenous communities – as a haven of freedom for establishment rebels.Produced by Empatia Cinema’s Olmos Torrico, Jordán and Maravilla Cine’s Paula Zyngierman, “Diamond” weighs in as a coming of age drama.
