Festival Predictions

2014 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Mark Grieco’s Marmato

Published on November 20, 2013

Having just participated at the 2013 Music and Sound Design Lab at Skywalker Sound, Mark Grieco’s heavily supported docu (Cinereach, MacArthur and BRITDOC Foundations) debut is in the final stages of completion – and this after a long six year process. There is light ahead of the tunnel for the Canadian/Colombian production, currently seeking completion funds, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marmato culminates into a ’14 showing.

Gist: Marmato is a documentary feature about an artisan gold-mining village in rural Colombia on the precipice of opportunity and destruction as a Canadian mining company plans a massive regional investment. For five centuries these miners have lived in the lush Andes Mountains; the gold being their only source of sustenance. This intimate portrait follows the lives of the villagers as they struggle to preserve their centuries old way of life and confront the arrival of large-scale mining operations.

Production Co./Producers: Mark Achbar, Stuart Reid, Izabel Hoyos

Prediction: World Documentary Competition

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

[related]2014 Sundance Film Festival Predictions[/related]

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).