Cancion Sin Nombre (Song Without a Name), a feature directed by alumna Melina León '08, was acquired by Luxbox.
Canción sin Nombre is shot in black and white and inspired by a real event, co-produced by New York’s Torch Films and lensed by Inti Briones, DP on Dominga Sotomayor’s Locarno winner Too Late to Die Young. It is set in Peru in the late 1980s, at the height of the economic crisis and political upheaval. Canción sin Nombre follows a migrant musician from the Andes, whose newly born baby mysteriously disappears from a fake clinic. In the midst of total political chaos, Pedro Campos, a young journalist, opens an investigation and joins her in the desperate search.
In an interview in Variety, León said, “We wanted to return to 1980s Peru, a time of violence that shaped our childhood and left us feeling that there was no possible future for us if we stayed there.” The article went on to say, “The film proved a standout at December’s Ventana Sur market, a joint venture of the Cannes Film Festival, Cannes Film Market and Argentina’s INCAA. La Vida Misma Films, MGC and La Mula produce.”
Canción sin Nombre was also awarded a national grant for production by the Ministry of Culture of Peru in 2014.
According to the film’s website, Cancion Sin Nombre, “The film explores a main question: What is the meaning of being socially invisible? This question defines the lives of our main characters: Georgina and her husband Leo, who by losing her kid discovers the magnitude of her social invisibility, and the journalist Pedro who lives a double life in his effort to hide his sexual identity. All the protagonists have turned invisible or clandestine. And the missing baby is a sort of symbol of this society of phantoms: since the day she was born, she is nothing but a memory.”
Melina León is a Peruvian director based in NYC and Lima. She was the recipient of a 2015 Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Production Grant to direct this film. His previous short film El Paraíso de Lili (Lili’s Paradise) is also set in 1980’s Lima. It officially premiered at the prestigious New York Film Festival and was selected at over 20 international film festivals, winning 11 awards, among them Best Latin American short film at the São Paulo International Short Film Festival. León grew up in Lima and moved to New York city in 2003 to study film directing at Columbia University. She currently works internationally as a director, producer, editor and teacher.
Luxbox is a Paris-based company, dedicated to international sales and co-production of selected projects, based on a solid film catalog and a passionate pool of world cinema directors.
