PROFILPELAJAR.COM

Halley
Halley
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Sebastián Hofmann
Written by	Sebastián Hofmann; Julio Chavezmontes;
Produced by	Julio Chavezmontes; Jaime Romandia;
Starring	Alberto Trujillo; Luly Trueba;
Cinematography	Matías Penachino
Edited by	Sebastián Hofmann
Music by	Gustavo Mauricio Hernández Dávila
Release date	November 2012 (Morelia);
Running time	80 minutes
Country	Mexico
Language	Spanish

Halley is a 2012 Mexican horror film directed by Sebastián Hofmann and produced by Julio Chavezmontes and Jaime Romandia. It premiered at the 2012 Morelia International Film Festival, and later showed at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was part of the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition of the IFF Rotterdam.

The film follows Alberto, a night guard with a decomposing body who decides to withdraw from the world.

Plot

Alberto is dead and can no longer hide it. Make-up and perfume can no longer conceal his quickly decomposing body. Dismayed, he decides to withdraw from the world. But before surrendering to his living death, Alberto forms an unusual friendship with Luly, the manager of the 24-hour gym where he works as a night guard.

Cast

Alberto Trujillo as Alberto
Luly Trueba as Silvia “Chivis”
Hugo Albores as morgue worker

Production

Themes

About the name of the movie, the director Sebastián Hofmann said in an interview with Vice Mexico that when he started thinking about the story for his film, he had a childhood memory of his grandmother asking him to draw Halley's Comet. That happened in 1986, the last time it passed around the Earth. While writing the script for the film in Yucatán, México, he was walking across a town when he saw a newspaper where he read that there was going to be a meteor shower caused by the cosmic dust trail of Halley's Comet. He thought then that it was too much of a coincidence and called the project like the comet. For the director, Halley is also "a symbol for immortality" since it has been known since the beginnings of astronomy and orbits around the Sun every 75 years.^[2] Hofmann says "it is the eternal witness of our history, with its cycles of upswing and decline. The space between each one of its visits is the duration of a human life."^[3]

Release

The film premiered at the Morelia International Film Festival in November 2012 and later showed at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film was also screened in the International Film Festival Rotterdam, on January 25, 2013.

Critical reception

For its special treatment of topics as mortality, illness and loneliness, the cinematography and the protagonist performance,^[4] Halley gained positive reviews in several media. Marc Saint-Cyr of Senses of Cinema praised the film for taking the zombie genre into an original territory with a "thoughtful, expertly composed character study". He concluded that "while so many other filmmakers claim they want to bend or break free from overdone zombie movie conventions, Hofmann fearlessly leaves them all behind and emerges with a hauntingly relatable examination of the body, mortality and alienation. Precise and pure, it is a virtually flawless artistic achievement".^[5] Mark Adams from Screen Daily called the movie "a disturbingly stylish and surrealistic drama", with a "strangely compelling story, impressive performances and strange sense of the grotesque".^[6]

Accolades

Award	Year of ceremony	Category	Recipient(s)	Result	Ref
Ariel Awards	2014	Best Make-Up	Adam Zoller	Won	^[7]
Ariel Awards	2014	Best First Work	Sebastián Hofmann	Nominated	^[7]
Ariel Awards	2014	Best Score	Gustavo Mauricio Hernandez Davila	Nominated	^[7]
Ariel Awards	2014	Best Sound	Uriel Esquenazi, Raúl Locatelli	Nominated	^[7]
Ariel Awards	2014	Best Visual Effects	Gustavo Bellon	Nominated	^[7]
Durban International Film Festival	2013	Best Cinematography	Matias Penachino	Won	^[8]
East End Film Festival	2013	Best Feature	Sebastián Hofmann, Piano	Won	^[9]
Munich Film Festival	2013	CineVision Award	Sebastián Hofmann	Won	^[10]
International Film Festival Rotterdam	2013	Hivos Tiger Award	Sebastián Hofmann	Nominated	^[11]
Sitges Film Festival	2013	New Visions Award	Sebastián Hofmann	Won	^[12]