CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Ticket to Paradise: Best Film at New York Festival.

CUBA, April 20th, 2011.- The Cuban film Ticket to Paradise (Boleto al paraiso), by Gerardo Chijona, won the prize in the Best Film category of the Havana Film Festival New York, that wound up on April 15.

       The feature film competed with another 54 movies from 17 countries, and it’s inspired by the book Sida: Confesiones de un medico (AIDS: Confessions of a Physician), by Jorge Perez, tells the real story of six youngsters who decided to get infected with AIDS to be admitted in a clinic and guarantee their daily food in the middle of the Cuban economic crisis of 1993.

   Chijona, who wrote the script and to whom this 12th edition of the event was dedicated with a retrospective of his work, thanked "the wonderful" young actors of his film for their performance, during the awards ceremony held at the headquarters of Directors Guild in the US city of Manhattan.

   He recalled that the film, which opened the Festival on April 7, is inspired by "a real story that broke out hearts."
   The 61-year old filmmaker also received the Cuban Vision Art prize, granted to the Best Film.

   The Best Director award went to Argentinean Fabian Hofman, for Te extraño, a Mexican-Argentinean production. This film, along with Viaje Redondo, from Mexico, won in the category of Best Script.

   Colombia’s Los colores de la montaña, the first feature film by Carlos Arbelaez, received a Social Mention from the jury "for not being afraid of showing the real victims of the conflict your country is going through.”

   The prize for Best Documentary was for Operation Peter Pan: Flying Back to Cuba, by Estela Bravo, which tells the story of 14,000 Cuban children sent by their parents to the United States in 1959 after the triumph of the Revolution.

   The documentary Robatierra, from Colombia, directed by Miguel Salazar and Margarita Martinez, received an Honorable Mention.

(Cubaminrex  -ACN)

<< Back