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The 29th edition of the Guadalajara Film Festival concluded last week with Mexican director’s Nicolas Echeverria’s Echo of the Mountain and Argentine Matias Lucchesi’s Natural Sciences respectively winning the Mezcal Prize and best picture, screenplay and actress in the festival’s Latin-American Competition. The Brazilian A Wolf at the Door, by Fernando Coimbra took best director, Marcelo Gomes and Cao Guimaraes’ Man of the Crowd won the special jury prize and cinematography (for Ivo Lopes Araujo), and Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks took the audience award.

The Cartagena Film Festival is the largest and oldest in South America and celebrates mostly Latin American films. The 54th Edition of the festival directed by Monika Wagenberg, which just concluded, featured counting 12 South American films in the official competition, most of them premieres.

L. A-based writer-director Carlos Marques’ Long Distance (10,000 Km) swept Spain’s Malaga Film Festival, the country’s biggest showcase of Spanish cinema, scooping its top award, the Golden Biznaga, for best movie, best director, best new screenwriter, a critics’ award and best actress to Natalia Tena (a prize she shared with Elena Anaya for her work in Everybody is Dead’s (Todos están muertos).

A court case against Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated film could signal a turn towards censorship in a moment of rising tensions. The Wolf here is Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has always believed that preserving the world’s film heritage is a cultural mission of vital importance and film restoration efforts have always been a primary beneficiary of HFPA grants. That mission continued this year with a donation of $350,000 to the Film Foundation, which was accepted at the HFPA’s Installation and Grants lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel by Steven Spielberg.

A long-standing tradition of the Hollywood Foreign Press has been to encourage our journalists to attend film festivals all over the world for the purpose of cultural exchange, to explain the goals of our association, to meet international filmmakers and invite them to submit their movies for Golden Globe consideration. We represent the HFPA at important international events like Cannes, Venice, Berlin or Sundance; we also recognize smaller festivals, where a shared passion for the art of cinema creates an exciting and fertile atmosphere.

Danish director Gabriel Axel, a Golden globe nominee for his Babette's Feast (1987) died last month at age 95. His was one of seven Golden Globes nominations garnered by Danish films over the history of the Awards, from The Word, (Carl Theodor Dreyer's penultimate movie, and his only critical and commercial success) that won Best Foreign Film in 1956, to Susanne Bier's In a Better World, the 2011 winner.

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The 64th Berlin International Film Festival kicks off today and runs through February 16, bringing international premiers, a slew of sales and acquisitions and the world premiere of Wes Anderson’s much-anticipated The Grand Budapest Hotel. As the first major fest of the year after Sundance, the Berlinale plays host to the European Film Market, sure to be buzzing with business.

Last Year Pablo Larain’s No with Gael García Bernal received a well deserved Academy Award nomination. This year Gloria directed by Sebastián Lelio was among the year’s best reviewed foreign language entries (and earned veteran Chilean actress Paulina García the prestigious Best Actress Silver Lion in Berlin.