This is what the famous critic Nicolás Azalbert said, in the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, referring to the undisputed place of Uruguayan cinema on the international scene, with a market of only three and a half million inhabitants.
More than 125 years of Uruguay Films
Just three years after the birth of cinema by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, the documentary shortfilm Carrera de bicicletas en el velódromo de Arroyo Seco (1898), by Félix Oliver, a spanish immigrant living in Montevideo, was created in Uruguay, considered the pioneer of Uruguayan cinematography.
During the 20th century, activity around cinema in Uruguay continued to expand: the first silent works were born in the first decades; The expansion of cinemas throughout the country is consolidated in the mid-40s; Institutions such as the Cine Arte of the Official Radio Electric Broadcasting Service (SODRE), the Cine Club and the University Cinema emerged, and the Uruguayan Cinematheque was founded in 1952; In the 60s the first experimental works appeared along with documentary film/political cinema, as well as the arrival in the 80s of the first national fiction films.
The renewal of Uruguayan cinema and its projection
At the beginning of the century, the stage of the “new Uruguayan cinema” began, with films that left an imprint of an auteur cinema that continued to grow, accompanied by the local public and a strong international projection: in just ten years, Uruguay Films obtained 200 international awards and distinctions.
Learn about the main milestones of Uruguayan cinema in recent years and the data on national premieres from the ACAU Observatory.
With an increasingly wide diversity of genres and a development of talent at both a creative, artistic and technical level, Uruguayan cinema has established itself with one of the best relationships between the number of national releases and GDP in Latin America and has obtained international recognition in the most varied international festivals. The construction over the years of a public-private ecosystem that supports the creation of films and its promotion, has given rise to the existence of a wide catalog of work that we at Uruguay Films intend to present.