Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #51. David Zonana’s Heroico

Published on January 10, 2022

Heroico

A longtime producer for Michel Franco’s films, Mexican filmmaker David Zonana finally kicked off his feature filmmaking career with Workforce (Mano de obra) in 2019 shoring up at TIFF and competing in San Sebastian. Zonana moves from non-professional bricklayers with a valid chip on their shoulders to the joys of training and humiliation when young recruits enter military college with his sophomore feature. Zonana describes his curiosity of wanting “to show the psychological and physical side that these boys who want to enter the go through and what their life is like inside the armed institute”. With Heroico, he reteams with his cinematographer Carolina Costa and works with professional (Santiago Sandoval, Mónica del Carmen and New Order‘s Fernando Cautle) and non-professional actors. We’re really curious to see what happens in these barracks. Production took place in September of 2021.

Gist: This revolves around the military life in Mexico.

Release Date/Prediction: We see this playing in the Un Certain Regard or Directors’ Fortnight section in Cannes this summer.

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).