Mexican Fiction Feature "Galerna" Takes Top Prize at Impulso Morelia
Galerna, a fiction feature from Mexico's Tatiana Huezo, has won the top prize at Impulso Morelia, according to Variety.
Impulso Morelia is the industry section of the Morelia Film Festival. It is built for films at the "pix-in-post" stage, meaning they are shot but not yet finished. Projects in this stage still need editing, sound and colour work, and the section offers prizes and services to help them get there. The section ran from 18 to 20 October as part of the wider Morelia festival, a 10-day event that closes on 25 October.
Huezo's film has already collected other awards. It won the Egeda Platino Industria Award at the San Sebastian festival, where it took part in the WIP Latin America showcase for works in progress. At the 24th Morelia festival (FICM), Galerna also won the Premio José María Riba, which carries 350,000 pesos. The film is produced by Nicolás Celis, Tatiana Huezo and María Zamora.
The documentary Homeboys, directed by Alonso Garibay and Alejandro Bernal, also had a strong run. The jury gave it a Special Mention, and it won the Eugenio Polgovsky award, worth 100,000 pesos (about $5,340.83). It is a first-feature documentary, and its producer is Camila Aguirre Beltrán.
Post-production house Caffeine picked three films for in-kind help. Galerna, All the Water in the World and Homeboys will receive post-production services valued at more than $20,000, or 387,000 pesos, in total. "In kind" means the help comes as work and services, not cash. Caffeine also gave Homeboys a separate post-production award in kind.
The selection itself was small. Organisers chose six entries from around 90 submissions, and three of the six came from women filmmakers, according to Variety's August report. That report also named Javier Toscano's Katechon among the chosen projects, and noted new films from Huezo and Elisa Miller.
For a film at this stage, the prizes are not the finish line. Money and services like these pay for the last months of editing and sound work, the kind of unglamorous labour that decides whether a film reaches a cinema screen, a festival stage or a streaming service. None of the announcements set out a release date for Galerna or Homeboys.
Full results are listed on the Impulso Morelia site.
