By Variety | Created at 2026-08-09 18:52:45 | Updated at 2026-08-09 23:37:48
6 hours ago
LOCARNO, Switzerland — Cross-ocean love story “Spring Story” and false miracle comedy “The Surubí,” won big at Locarno’s 2026 pix-in-post First Look focus on Uruguay, sharing its top five prizes at a Sunday evening Aug. 9 awards ceremony.
The industry plaudits went to two of the competition’s most substantial offerings, underscoring the range of productions on offer from Uruguay, also taking in an offbeat crime thriller (“Maltrato Animal”), a historically grounded kids’ adventure (““Our Little Band of Justice”) and two auto doc-features tracing directors’ personal multi-generational family relations (“Perkal,” “The Other Side of the Net”).
For director-producers Gabriela Guillermo and Irina Raffo, based out of Uruguay’s L’Avventura Cine, “Spring Story” is the case of fourth time lucky: the film No. 4 in a series of four movies set in a different season scooped both First Look’s Bright Side of the Moon prize of complete colour grading and Le Film Français Award of advertising work €5,600.
Germán Ormaechea’s Animista Cine co-produces.
The most extensive of First Look’s six titles, weighing in at a rough cut of over two hours, “El Surubí” won La Mayor Cine Award, consisting of total sound post-production, and a Music Library &SFX/Acorde Award, made up of music supervision services at Music Library & SFX’s labs to a value of €45,000 ($51,750). The film also snagged a third prize, the Jannuzzi Smith Award, offering the design of an international poster worth €10,000 ($11,500).
Kicking off like an Ealing or Luis Berlanga comedy, “The Surubí” is set in the post-industrial town of El Surubí, devastated by the closure of the local Pezur plant in the 1980s and now on its last legs.
When 70 chickens at a local farm lay 128 eggs in just one night after the arrival of a red helmet biker Emanuel, the event is described as a miracle and Emanuel hailed by the local priest as a prophet of divine powers. Whether this is true or the so called miracles can halt El Surubí’’s terminal decline is, however, another matter.
“El Surubí” marks the feature debut of director Lorenzo Tocco, behind “The Anniversary” (2019), a best Ibero-American short film at Guadalajara. Prominent Uruguayan prod co Monteloni produces. Brazil’s Kocria and Multiverso co-produce.
“’El Surubí’ is an ensemble story featuring a distinguished Uruguayan-Brazilian cast; that with humor and sensitivity, it portrays a hopeless community clinging to an illusory hope out of a need to survive,” producer Pancho Magnou Arnabal told Variety.
