Brazil film fest eyes social fights as 'True' marks 70th

[RayKelly]

From The Hollywood Reporter, June 8, 2012:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/Brazilian-ceara-film-festival-social-struggles-335261

FORTALEZA – The 22nd Ceara Film Fest’s focus on social upheaval has certainly gone beyond its programmed section, a parallel exhibition named "Latin America’s Social Fights." This year focus was triggered by the 70th anniversary of Orson Welles’s unfinished South American project It’s All True, which in 1942 attempted to portray the fight for worker rights led by four fishermen from Ceara, in North East Brazil, against the Getulio Vargas government in 1941.

The section was curated by Argentine journalist Oscar Ranzani and features films that specifically depict political and social fighting, like Newen Mapuche, a documentary about the Mapuche community's fight for their land against government repression in Southern Chile. Director Elena Varela was actually persecuted by the State’s intelligence agency and imprisoned in 2008, and all her footage was confiscated.

But social topics have also poured into the fest’s main competition, which closed last night and featured films from Guatemala, Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and the Basque Country.