Latin Heat Online
Posted on 08-08-2005

BB Entertainment Marketing and Lawrence Bender Productions Team up for Innocent Voices

Rebekah Hendershot
latinheat@latinheat.com

Hollywood, CA -- Ben Barbosa, CEO of BB Entertainment Marketing recently announced the company’s acquisition of all North American rights to Innocent Voices from Lawrence Bender Productions and Altavista Films. Marty Zeidman’s Slowhand Cinema Releasing has finalized negotiations with BB Entertainment to distribute the film. BB Entertainment has awarded creative and advertising to Terry Hines and Associates."

Innocent Voices will be released in New York, Los Angeles and major markets nationwide on September 23, 2005. Innocent Voices recently won the Golden Space Needle Award as Best Film at the 2005 Seattle International Film Festival.

Lawrence Bender Productions is well-known for producing critically acclaimed films such as Good Will Hunting, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2 and Pulp Fiction. “I made Innocent Voices because this coming-of-age story--about a boy and his mother’s struggle to protect her children in the middle of a civil war--made me reflect on the decisions we adults make that affect the lives of our children in the world,” said Bender. I’m thrilled that BB Entertainment has the passion and conviction to release it.”

Director by Luis Mandoki’s (Angel Eyes, Message In A Bottle) Innocent Voices follows the life of 11-year-old Chava (newcomer Carlos Padilla) as he comes of age in El Salvador during the 1980s civil war, has been hailed at international film festivals for its unflinching portrayal of the controversial war and its stark view of the use of child soldiers.
The film has unusual resonance for screenwriter Oscar Torres (El Matadero, Hired Help), who co-wrote the film with Mandoki and based the screenplay on his own childhood. According to materials released in connection with the film, Torres managed to avoid several military roundups as a child before finally enlisting with the FMLN guerrillas at age 12 and later escaping to the United States. He now works as an actor and writer in Los Angeles, CA.
“It is so rare to come across such a poignant, unusual and inspiring screenplay. There was no question in my mind I had to make this movie,” Mandoki said in a press release for the film.
Reviews of advance screenings have been positive overall, including many comments posted to the Internet Movie Database from Salvadorans expatriates praising the film as a much better depiction of the war than other, better-known projects such as Oliver Stone’s Salvador. Several pointed out that both communist guerrillas and government forces fighting against them recruited children to fight (publicity for the film said the enlistment age was 12, though the information is difficult to confirm), though the film focuses primarily on government troops. Almost all applauded the film’s accuracy in portraying the conflict, and several expressed surprise that the film had been shown in El Salvador at all.
Innocent Voices won Best Film at the 2005 Seattle International Film Festival.
Some 300,000 children are serving as soldiers in armed conflicts around the world, according to Human Rights Watch.
The film took a toll on Torres, who would occasionally disappear during filming, according to Mandoki’s remarks at a recent screening, quoted in National Geographic.
“Later I would find him crouching under a tree, crying,” Mandoki said.


Through BB Entertainment, Mr. Barbosa consults for high profile companies within the entertainment industry. With an extensive background in film exhibition and distribution spanning over 25 years, most recently Barbosa served as CEO of Mann Theatres. During his tenure at Mann, Ben oversaw all film acquisitions, marketing, operations and business development for the circuit, in addition to spear-heading the renovation of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and building of the Mann Chinese 6. Previously Ben worked acquiring, distributing and marketing films for General Cinema, Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios