Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2013: #42. Amat Escalante’s Heli

Published on January 14, 2013

Heli

Director: Amat Escalante
Writers: Escalante and Gabriel Reyes
Producer(s): Mantarraya
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Cast: TBA

Information is so scarce on the production, yet I’ve been keeping tabs on Amat Escalante’s third film since it won the 2010 Sundance Institute and NHK award (same year as Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Elena” and Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild“). Escalante calls the film a cross between Sangre and Los bastardos.

Gist: Shot in various locations outside the city of Guanajuato, where most citizens work for an automobile assembly plant or the local drug cartel, Heli is confronted with police corruption, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, love, guilt and revenge in the search for his father who has mysteriously disappeared.

Release Date: Third times a charm – this should be at the Cannes Film Festival once again. Followed by North American debuts at NYFF and/or AFI Film Fest.

Related Topics:Amat Escalante, Gabriel Reyes, Heli, Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2013

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).