The Pearl Button (El botón de nácar) 2015 Chilean documentary film directed by Patricio Guzmán will be screened at TIFF. It was screened in the main competition section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear for Best Script. Patricio Guzman will be in Toronto and available for interviews.
« It is the director’s extraordinary intuition about the synchronicity of history, geography and the physical universe – a mysterious relationship that has nothing to do with cause and effect – that gives the film and its predecessor their undeniable power. Watching them opens up mental windows, unknown vistas appear, subliminal connections are made. The native people’s belief that everything in the universe is alive and that water makes music and has a voice no longer seems so impossible.» Deborah Young, The Hollwood Reporter
Patricio Guzmán is born in 1941 in Santiago, Chile. He attends the Official Cinematography School in Madrid, where he dedicates his studies to documentary film. His films are regularly selected and awarded prizes at international festivals. In 1973 he films “The Battle of Chile”, a 5-hour documentary on the end of Allende’s government. The magazine CINEASTE nominates it as “one of the ten best political films in the world”. After the military coup, Guzmán is threatened to be executed and spends two weeks arrested inside the national stadium, unable to communicate his whereabouts to anyone. He leaves the country in November 1973. He lives in Cuba, Spain and then France, where he makes “In the Name of God” (Grand Prize, Festival of Popoli, 1987), “The Southern Cross” (Grand Prize, Festival Vue Sur les Docs, Marseille, 1992), “Chile, Obstinate Memory” (Grand Prize Festival of Tel Aviv, 1999), “The Pinochet Case” (International Critic’s Week, Cannes, 2002), and “Salvador Allende” (Official Selection, Cannes, 2004). In 2005, he makes “My Jules Verne”. He teaches documentary film classes in Europe and Latin America. He is founder and director of the International Documentary Festival of Santiago (FIDOCS). He lives in France.
TIFF screenings
Press & Industry 1 | 09/10/15 | 1:45PM | Scotiabank 14 (305) |
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Public 1 | 09/10/15 | 6:30PM | Scotiabank 3 (387) |
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Public 2 | 09/13/15 | 11:30AM | Cinema 3 (221) |
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Public 3 | 09/18/15 | 3:00PM | Cinema 2 (353) |
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The Pearl Button is distributed by Fun Film un Canada