#FilmNominations2014 : Best Hispanic Picture

Despite the severe financial crisis affecting film production in Spain, this has been an excellent year for Hispanic movies. All across Latin America young auteurs with fresh voices keep on being discovered for the world, whereas the Spanish theaters themselves saw a record number of tickets sold, thanks to the biggest box office hit the Mediterranean country has ever released, the comedy “Spanish Affair (Ocho Apellidos Vascos)”.

The nominees for best Hispanic picture feature works from all corners of the Latin world such as the Venezuelan moving drama “Bad Hair (Pelo Malo)”, sensitively exploring the problems of a child discovering his gay sexuality; another touching drama was the Basque “Flowers (Loreak)” with its accomplished screenplay about the different meaning flowers have in our life and relationships; love and losses; Abrasive Mexican social realism meets crime in ‘Heli’, the story a humble family trapped in between estate corruption and the mafia surrounding them, which earned its director Amat Escalante an award at Cannes ; Ken Loach’s former assistant and worthy pupil Diego Quemada-Díez, narrating the desperate and dangerous trip of three Guatemalan teens to the USA, hoping to escape the misery of their homeland in ‘The Golden Dream (La Jaula De Oro)’; Almodovar’s El Deseo produced “Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes)” a corrosive and darkly comic collection of stories based on the premise of putting into practice the violent thoughts crossing our minds during particularly extreme situations, a huge box-office hit in Argentina and up for the Foreign Language Oscar; plus two accomplished Spanish movies, Paco Leon’s social dramedy, wisely depicting the hardship most people are enduring in the current financial crisis in ‘Carmina y Amén; and ‘Marshlands (La Isla Mínima)” , often described as the Spanish “True Detective”, an intriguing case of teenage disappearances in a humble Andalusian village, set in early post-Franco Spain.

Check all the nominees’ trailers below and vote for your favourites here