Chilean filmmaker wins Cannes Festival scholarship

PARIS.- Chilean national Esteban Larraín has been recognized as one of the six winners of the Cinefondation Residence scholarship, offered by the Cannes Film Festival to encourage young filmmakers.

The four-month scholarships are given out twice per year to young film directors that are working on the screenplay for their first or second film.

The Cannes Film Festival announced today through a press release that 35 year-old Larraín was recognized as part of the 18th edition of the Residence in Paris scholarship, along with Andreas Bolm of Germany, Martin Turk of Turkey, Rafael Kapelinski of Poland, Julio Hernández-Cordón of Guatemala and Yaël Gidron of Israel.

Those awarded with the scholarship were selected from among the more than 160 applications that were received by the judging panel, which is presided over by the honorable President of the Cannes Festival, Gilles Jacob.

Esteban Larraín is currently working on his second full-length feature film titled, "The Virgen of Peñablanca", which is set during the period of the military regime and tells the story f a 13 year-old boy who speaks to the Virgin Mary.