Have you bought your Miami International Film Festival tickets yet? Although they just went on sale to the public a week ago, three performances are already sold out. In fact, the festival reports that advance ticket sales are up 35 percent from last year.
Two of the hot tickets are films that festival director Tiziana Finzi picked months and months ago but that were recently nominated for the Oscar's Best Foreign Language Picture category. When we asked Finzi which of the two she thought would win, she explained: "The Secret in Their Eyes is closer to the American blockbuster. For me, I like The Milk of Sorrow but it's very tough; it works very well in Europe but not in America."
The Argentinean murder mystery The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto De Sus Ojos) was directed by Juan José Campanella and based on a Eduardo Sacheri novel. The movie, which is told in flashbacks, won the Goya Award, the Spanish equivalent to the American Academy Awards for best movie of 2009. Campanella went to film school in New York; after graduating, he filmed The Boy Who Cried Bitch and he now directs American TV series like Law & Order and 30 Rock. Finzi says that Campanella promised that if he wins the Oscar, he'll bring it with him to their closing night performance on March 13th at 7 p.m. at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. Watch the trailer below.
The other Oscar-nominated film is the Peruvian The Milk of Sorrow (La
Teta Asustada, which more accurately translates to "The frightened
tit"). The film was directed by Claudia Llosa, a young director at only
34 years old, who was inspired to make The Milk of Sorrow after
learning of a Harvard anthropological study that traced the lasting
affects of the rape and violence on women in Lima during the political
uprising in the early 90s. Llosa centers the plot on the old wives'
tale that such trauma is passed on to future generations through breast
milk. The film won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. Finzi called it tough to watch and so far, no American distributors
have picked it up so the festival may be your only chance to see it on
the big screen.
The Milk of Sorrow screens on March 6th at 7 p.m. at the Tower Theater
and on March 14th at 9:30 p.m. at the Regal Cinemas South Beach. Here's the trailer:
Buy tickets here. Call 305-237-FILM or visit www.miamifilmfestival.com
