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Francisco J. Lombardi

Francisco J. Lombardi

Directing

Biography

Francisco J. Lombardi is one of the most renowned filmmakers in Latin America. Throughout his career, he has directed 17 feature films, and his work has been the subject of retrospectives and tributes at major festivals such as Fribourg, Mar del Plata, Guadalajara, Havana, Huesca, Viña del Mar, and Trieste. Lombardi has received numerous international awards, including two Silver Shells for Best Director at the San Sebastián International Film Festival (The City and the Dogs, Under the Skin) and the Grand Prix des Amériques at the Montreal World Film Festival (Fallen from Heaven). His films have also been selected by top-tier festivals such as Cannes (The City and the Dogs, Without Compassion), Toronto (What the Eye Doesn’t See, Fallen from Heaven), and Berlin (The Mouth of the Wolf, Captain Pantoja and the Special Services), among many others. In 2014, he received the National Culture Award of Peru, the highest distinction in the country’s cultural sphere. Other major honors include the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award from Human Rights Watch for his exceptional commitment to human rights, and the Pablo Neruda Gold Medal of Merit, awarded by Chile’s National Council for Culture and the Arts in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Latin American art and culture. In 2023, he was among the 398 individuals invited to join the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars.

Known For

Ella
3.5

Ella – well she has a name too – Luna (Patricia Garza), is actually about her much older husband and painter Alfredo (Paul Vega), and his choice of actions/reactions after she decides to leave him for a lover that he wasn’t aware of. Alberto has been going through a creative crisis and is under pressure to complete a series of paintings for a forthcoming show. It is nevertheless also plain to see that he’d been treating Luna, who’s also his model, largely as an object of desire and obsession – capturing with camera her every movement in the house when she’s not posing for him, and memorising her every physical feature, moles and warts included – he’d apparently counted twenty seven moles on her body. When Alfredo tracks down and entraps the lover she’d wanted to elope with (Rómulo Assereto), he’ll discover that they both have more in common than merely desiring the same woman…

Ella

2010Movie