Amat Escalante's HELI Wins for Best International Film at 2013 Munich Film Festival

Heli by Mexican director Amat Escalante takes the ARRI/OSRAM Award for Best International Film at the 31st INTERNATIONAL FILMFEST MÜNCHEN.

Heli was selected by a high-caliber jury consisting of German actress Maria Schrader, New York publicist Peggy Siegal and Variety Executive Editor Steven Gaydos. The winner receives a € 50,000 voucher from ARRI and OSRAM.

In competition for the ARRI/OSRAM Award were the sixteen films by internationally acclaimed directors in the CineMasters section of FILMFEST MÜNCHEN including, among others, Costa-Gavras (Le Capital), Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), Alejandro Jodorowsky (La Danza De La Realidad), Asghar Farhadi (Le Passé), Michael Winterbottom (Everyday), Nicolas Winding Refn (Only God Forgives), Brillante Mendoza (Thy Womb) and Abdellatif Kechiche (La Vie D'Adèle).

In Heli, director Amat Escalante focuses on the life of a working class family that is suddenly confronted with the brutality of the Mexican drug cartels. When confiscated cocaine disappears, young factory worker Heli and his little sister are abducted by masked men and tortured. After these horrible events, the family tries to bring back a sense of normalcy to their lives.

Heli is the third film by Amat Escalante, whose mother is American: "My film explores the impact American culture has on Mexican society. Heli is set in a city that is very much like the city I grew up in, Guanajuato, a five-hour drive from Mexico City. General Motors built a plant there which changed the ecosystem, the landscape, the atmosphere of the town. Everything"

The jury had this to say: "Through the intimate story of one Mexican family's ordeal, Heli powerfully humanizes the plight of an entire country caught in the middle of a devastating drug war that has claimed by some estimates 100,000 lives in the past few years. Heli is an unforgettable portrait of the struggle for dignity in the face of a human catastrophe. Not only does the film touch us through its simple, restrained depiction of this tragic subject matter, but Amat Escalante demonstrates the writing and directing sureness of a master filmmaker."

The gala award ceremony took place on Saturday evening (July 6) in the festival center at Gasteig. The award for the Best International Film has been presented at FILMFEST MÜNCHEN since 2008. ARRI and OSRAM teamed up this year for The First Time to donate the award and a voucher for €50,000. German co-producer Titus Kreyenberg accepted the award from Franz Kraus, Managing Director of ARRI AG and Andreas Huber, Senior Director Research and Development of Display Optics of OSRAM GmbH on behalf of the director and production.

To post a comment, you must register and login.