Profiles: Sebastián Cordero | Proimágenes Colombia

Born May 23, 1972 in Quito (Ecuador). At age nine, his family moved to France where he lived until he was 15 and where he discovered a passion for the Seventh Art. He has worked as a producer, director, photographer and editor of short films and music videos and is considered to be the most outstanding filmmaker in Ecuador’s newly emergent film industry. He has worked with famed actors Damian Alcazar (Garcia) and John Leguizamo (Love in the Time of Cholera) and his third feature film Rabia was co-produced by Mexico, Spain and Colombia and premiered in the latter country on November 5, 2010.
 
Cordero studied film at UCLA and in 1995 returned to Ecuador with the idea of shooting his first feature film. The first film written and directed by Cordero, Ratas, ratones y rateros (1998), portrays the poverty and delinquency in Ecuadorian life in a style close to that of Colombian Victor Gaviria’s Rodrigo D. No futuro (1990). The film screened at some 50 festivals and earned numerous awards including a Goya nomination in Spain for Best Foreign Spanish-language Film and an Ariel nomination in Mexico for Best Ibero-American Film. It was also selected for the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.
 
Cordero’s second film, Crónicas, received support from the Sundance Institute through the NHK International Filmmakers award and in 2004 was selected for the “Un Certain Regard” competition at Cannes, and was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. The film stars Colombian-American actor John Leguizamo as the host of a sensationalist program out of Miami who travels to Ecuador to track down a child rapist known as the “Babahoyo Monster” (inspired by Colombian Luis Fernando Garavito) and discovers a group of citizens trying to lynch a traveling salesman after the chance death of a small boy. The film also stars Mexican actor Damian Alcazar whose role won him an Ariel Award for Best Actor in 2007 and the same distinction at the Cartagena, Guadalajara, Lima and San Sebastian Film Festivals.
 
“I’ve been trying for some time to pull off a project in the US; I don’t know when it will happen; there are still several stories I’d like to tell in Ecuador,” stated Cordero in San Sebastian where he was on the jury of the 2010 Latin Horizons competition. “I’d also like to alternate making films in Ecuador and outside the country… I feel at home with many realities, both in my own country and in others.”
 
His third feature, Rabia, co-produced by Dynamo Capital (Colombia), Telecinco (Spain) and Tequila Gang (México), premiered in the Contemporany World Cinema category at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film stars Martina Garcia and Mexican Gustavo Sanchez Parra (Amores perros) as well as Spaniards Alex Brendemühl, Concha Velasco, Iciar Bollain and Xavier Elorriaga. The film’s crew included such luminaries as producer Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), director of photography Enrique Chediak (28 días después) and Oscar-winning art director Eugenio Caballero (Pan’s Labyrinth). In 2010, Cordero released Pescador, based on a true story that happened several years ago in Ecuador when a cargo of cocaine was unloaded at a fishing port. “Latin America is one of the places where cinematographic events continue to occur, precisely because of the series of obstacles that exists and the powerful events that occur daily. People become more creative when they have less money to make a film … but for some reason, we haven’t been able to get our films onto distribution circuits in neighboring countries unless they show first in the US and Spain,” Cordero pointed out.