While in Argentina the merits of closing the National Film Institute (INCAA) are debated, Chile’s promotion of cinema bears fruit. Trans-Andean cinema is back in vogue. Since Andrés Wood’s hit film “Machuca” (2004), Chilean filmmakers, headed by Pablo Larraín, Sebastián Lelio and now Maite Alberdi, have even been above the weight of the country in the world audiovisual industry, consistently winning applause in Sundance, Berlin and Cannes.
Chile has also won three Oscars (for Claudio Miranda’s cinematography in “Life of Pi” in 2012, the animated short “Bear Story” in 2015, and the fictional feature “A Fantastic Woman” in 2017), more than any other South American country, except for Argentina of course (our country has 8 award-winning films, filmmakers and screenwriters to its credit). And the first half of 2023 has not been an exception in the search for awards for Chile.
Maite Alberdi’s “Infinite Memory” won the Sundance World Cinema Grand Prix; “News of a Kidnapping,” by Andrés Wood, won the award for best series at the Premios Platino, the Spanish-speaking festival closest to the Oscars. In total, according to a CinemaChile study published during Sanfic, one of the most important festivals in South America, Chilean films or filmmakers swept 103 awards in the first six months of the year. That is 128% more than in the same period in 2022, when Chile was still preparing to exit the COVID-19 confinement, one of the longest in the world, which was lifted in February 2021, paralyzing the audiovisual industry.
Model
“The report highlights that the audiovisual industry in our country enjoys great success and recognition in the world,” said the executive director of CinemaChile, Ximena Baeza, and considered that an “added value” was the fact that so many awards have been won in markets that are benchmarks for film and television, such as the United States (32), Spain (14) and France (11).
Ten awards were in Asia, including India (5), Japan and China, where “El Castigo”, by Matías Bize, took home the award for best film and actress at the Beijing Film Festival in April. Another relevant fact: 32 awards went to international co-productions, among which “Noticias de un secuestro” stands out, four times a Platinum winner, produced by AGC Studios (by Stuart Ford) and the Chilean Invercine & Wood. And 33 awards were won by women, a sign of the change that has been promoted in Chile, which is noticeably more inclusive.
In fact, half of the statuettes harvested in 2023 have gone to directors of the new generation of trans-Andean filmmakers, directors of feature films or short films that are making their debut or premiered for only the second time, and whose films stand out for the audacity of their subject matter, mixture of of genres and formats. “Mutt,” the first feature film by transgender director Vuk Lungolov-Klotz, a Chilean-Serbian based in New York, won the Sundance Dramatic Jury Special Award in the United States for Lio Mehiel’s performance, and a special mention at the Berlinale .
“The Colonists”, by Felipe Gálvez, a co-production with 11 producers from eight countries, won the Fipresci award for best film: it is set in 1901 and offers, in a revisionist Western style, a look at how the south of Chile was conquered, massacring to the Selk’nam natives in Tierra del Fuego. The film shone at Cannes and could be Chile’s ticket to compete at the Oscars.
Women
About half of these new generation filmmakers are women. And the specialized magazine Variety recently highlighted some emerging female talents from Chile, such as the self-proclaimed “millennial grandmother” Alexandra Hyland, for example, who shone in Rotterdam this year with “Outsider Girls.”
The Santiago International Film Festival, which took place in the last days of August, left a positive balance on the table, where a dozen Chilean directors appear as champions of the next generation.
Francisca Alegría, who first captured international attention with her magical realism animated short “And the Whole Sky Fit into the Dead Cow’s Eye”, which won the Best International Short Film award at Sundance in 2017, will premiere her first feature film in 2022 , “The Cow who Sang a Song into the Future,” which was a New York Times Critics’ Choice.
Paola Campos, author of “On the Way Home,” is also included in that famous lot. The director returns to her hometown, walking the old paths toward belonging to her, against the backdrop of the Mapuche conflict that has torn the fabric of the community. Produced by Vicente Barros (“Educadores”) and Ursus Films, the project was part of Sanfic Industria’s Documentary Laboratory.
Francina Carbonell, with “El cielo es rojo”, was recognized by the Mar del Plata Festival. And the documentary that relives a tragic prison fire that occurred in 2010 at the San Miguel prison, which left 81 prisoners dead, so impressed the partners of the production company Storyboard, Gabriela Sandoval and Carlos Núñez, that they are now producing other of their stories.
Patricia Correa, with “Otra Piel,” winner at Tribeca for her debut feature, also presented her first feature film, “The Woman and the Passenger,” an ironic ode to the uniqueness of human nature. Laura Donoso is the author of the crude “Sariri”, where a 16-year-old teenager, Dina, becomes pregnant. Fearing societal sanction in ella’s staunchly patriarchal mining town, she will attempt to flee across the surrounding desert with ella’s 11-year-old sister Sariri, who just had her first menstruation.
“Malqueridas”, by Tana Gilbert, arrived at the Venice festival as the only film by a Latin American director. Filmed entirely on clandestine cell phones by inmates in a women’s prison, it describes how inmates face motherhood despite incarceration.
And “Alien0089”, by Valeria Hofmann, won the Sundance Special Jury Prize for Short Film, with María Di Girólamo playing a gamer who uploads a video denouncing gender harassment. Elegant, immersing herself in a ghostly video game aesthetic, echoing Chilean social unrest, she is a pearl in the celebrated new Chilean cinematography.
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