Anna Marie de la Fuente Former Pimienta Films executive producer Paulina Valencia has boarded coming-of-age drama “The Weird” (“Lo Raro”), the debut feature of Nicolasa Ruiz, whose most recent short, “Extinction of the Species,” which she co-directed with Matt Porterfield, participated in Cannes’ Critics Week last year.
Valencia joins Chile’s Matías de Bourguignon of Cordyceps Content, a producer of “The Dog Thief,” directed by Chile’s Vinko Tomicic and sold by Luxbox, which competes in the Santiago Film Festival’s (Sanfic) international section.
Set in La Paz, Bolivia, it stars Alfredo Castro (“El Conde”) as a lonely tailor, Señor Novoa, whose dog is stolen by a 15-year-old shoe shiner who imagines Sr.
Novoa to be his father. Mexicali-set “The Weird” follows Consuelo, a shy teenage nerd with a deep passion for technology who has built Alita, a robot pet driven by artificial intelligence.
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