Chile’s Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic) celebrates its 19thedition with a vibrant lineup packed with works from first-time Chilean filmmakers, with six debut features out of nine contenders in the fully in-person festival running August 20-27.
“It was tough. We had at least 30 submissions to the Chilean film selection, which we narrowed down to these nine,” said artistic director Carlos Nuñez, who added that three of them are world premieres.
The selection touts five documentaries – a reflection of the boom in non-fiction filmmaking in recent years. Among them is the poetic “A Brief Space in Time” (“Breve espacio de un tiempo”), which world premieres at Sanfic and turns on a Mapuche couple living off their ancestral Wallmapu land.
Pepe Rovano’s debut docu feature “Bastard, the Inheritance of a Genocide,” also world premiering in Sanfic, revolves around the son of a genocidal criminal who seeks to make reparations for his father’s dark past. “In the Shadow of Light” has been plying the festival circuit ever since its Sheffield world premiere and was among the four pics inChileDoc’srecent showcase at Cannes.
Furthermore, themes have grown more diverse, observes Nuñez, with only two films referring to Chile’s traumatic past during the Pinochet regime.
They range from the thriller drama of Tomás González Matos’ “Allanamiento,” which tracks four detectives who, accused of drug trafficking, torture and corruption, have only 48 hours to clear their names, to the comedy behind Bernardo Quesney’s “History and Geography,” world premiering in Sanfic, that turns on a TV comedian-actress who puts on a stage play in her hometown in order to win some artistic recognition. The sci-fi documentary “Alien Island” by Cristóbal Valenzuela deals with Friendship Island, a mysterious isle said to be inhabited by aliens that is also the subject matter of the upcoming series, “La Isla,” to be directed byClaudia Huaiquimilla.
The slate also includes the first fiction collaboration with Japan in Ignacio Ruiz’s debut feature, “Green Grass” which turns on a 30-year-old Japanese businessman who wakes up and finds himself on a beach he’s never seen where he meets strange people who help him realize that he’s dead.
Two co-productions with Central America, also quite unprecedented, are in the lineup, family drama “The Daughters” (“Las Hijas”), a Costa Rican-Panamanian-Chilean co-production directed by first-time filmmaker Kattia G. Zúñiga, and “Orbit,” the feature debut of Clea Eppelin Ugarte, a co-production with Costa Rica.Both are produced by Alejo Crisóstomo, born in Guatemala of Chilean parents, whose credits include “Sister & Sister” and “The Desert Bride.”
Co-productions have been increasingly the norm in Chile given its limited resources and reach. A recent co-production pact inked with Spain is expected to drive up more collaboration with Spanish producers. Chile currently has co-production treaties with Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Canada, France, Italy, the Walloon region of Belgium and Venezuela.
Chilean Competition
“Allanamiento,”Tomás González Matos
“In the Shadow of Light,”(“A la sombra de la luz”), Ignacia Merino and Isabel Reyes Bustos
“Bastard, the Inheritance of a Genocide,”(“Bastardo, la herencia de un genocida”), Pepe Rovano
“A Brief Space in Time,”(“Breve espacio de un tiempo”), Fernando Saldivia Yáñez
“Green Grass,”Ignacio Ruiz
“History and Geography,” (“Historia y Geografia”), Bernardo Quesney
“Alien Island,”(“Isla Alien”), Cristóbal Valenzuela
“The Daughters,”(“Las Hijas”), Kattia G. Zúñiga
“Orbit,”(“Orbita”), Clea Epppelin Ugarte
