BELLA

Winner of the "People's Choice Award" at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, Bella is a movie that is sweeping hearts across America and one can only hope the same as it heads for European Cinemas.

It is a film directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde starring and co-directed by the famous Mexican actor Eduardo Verastegui. The film takes place in New York city where an international soccer star named Jose (Verastegui) encounters a series of events prohibiting him from signing a multi-million dollar contract with a distinguished soccer club, consequently ending his career. He begins working as a chef in his brother's restaurant and there he meets Nina (Tammy Blanchard), a waitress who has recently found out she is pregnant. She resolves to have an abortion, however due to Jose's kindness she changes her mind, deciding to keep the child.

Some have called Bella a "disguised anti-abortion tract" whereas others have described it as being a tale about St. Joseph, himself. The Smithsonian Latino Center called it a "Poignant movie [...] that is a universal story of friendship, family, struggle and triumph in the face of the unexpected." Taking these opinions at face value, one could only hope that a movie such as this, which protrays values such as these, would be an interest and success in the public sphere even if it would cause a woman not to have an abortion...