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Chile’s Storyboard Media is making its first foray into series production by joining forces with Chilean actor-producer Pablo Díaz del Rio of Río Estudios and Argentina’s Juan Pablo Gugliotta of MagmaCine to co-produce a historical fiction series, “Habitación 205” (“Box 205”).

The deal with MagmaCine was closed during the Madrid forum Iberseries & Platino Industria on Oct. 3.

Created by Díaz del Rio and written by Mateo Iribarren, the four-episode series is inspired by the 20-year-long judicial investigation into the death of former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva, who died in an allegedly botched medical procedure. It will also be adapted into a 120-minute feature film.

“We are elated that our maiden venture into series-making begins with “Habitacion 205” and judging from the responses we received at the San Sebastian Festival and now Iberseries, it looks like it would appeal to both our local and international audiences,” said Gabriela Sandoval who co-founded and...

Following, some potential Chilean highlights at Cannes:

“Beautiful Yet Mortal” (“Bella Cosa Mortal”), Nicolás Postiglione

An Oro Films-Whisky Content co-production about star-crossed lovers in an ultra-traditional German community in Southern Chile, from the director of the acclaimed “Immersion.” To shoot in late 2022.

Breaking and Entering” (“Allanamiento”), Tomás Gonzalez Matos

From Sanfic Industry Goes to Cannes, a police procedural where the deputy commissioner of the investigative police unit asks the commissioner to enter the prosecutor’s office and dispose of recordings implicating them in drug trafficking, torture and corruption. In post.

“Conditional,” Alvaro Diaz

A youth comedy from Juntos Films following Esteban who, in order to impact the girl he fancies, runs for president of his school’s student union. To his chagrin, he’s elected.

“Land of Savages” (“Salvajes”) Fernando Guzzoni

Produced by Pablo Larrain’s Fabula, a thriller set in 1830 Chile centering on a slave owner haunted by nightmares and his dark past.

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (Tony Manero) was born in 1976, three years after the coup d’état that toppled democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende and ushered in the long, brutal regime of General Augusto Pinochet, whose chokehold on the South American nation lasted until 1990. Although Larraín is currently shooting the second season of Prófugos, an action-drama series for HBO Latin America about cocaine cartels — “it’s like playing a with a big toy,” he avers — the Pinochet era has continued to fascinate him. The chaotic, thunderous birth moments of this dark and deeply corrupt period in Chile’s late-modern history provide the setting for the writer-director’s latest feature, Post Mortem, a comically dour love story–cum–allegory of political madness that debuted at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. Mario Cornejo (Alfredo Castro) is a laconic mortician’s assistant whose mannered obsession with aging cabaret dancer Nancy Puelma (Antonia Zegers, in...

A man determined to not just emulate the character of Tony Manero portrayed by John Travolta in the 1977 film ‘Saturday Night Fever‘ but become the misogynistic screen presence doesn’t naturally come to one’s mind when thinking of viable movie plots. But in Pablo Larrain’s 2008 film ‘Tony Manero‘, he somehow weaves a world surrounding this 52 year old with a peppery grey pompadour, striving to win a contest as the “Tony Manero of Chile”.

Raul Peralta (Alfredo Castro) frequents the often abandoned movie theater nearby, re-watching the film, mouthing off the words in English that Tony Manero speaks, almost becoming one with his own personal celluloid god. He steals and deals with a neighborhood criminal to get glass bricks for a dance floor to properly present the disco dancing scenes from the movie for an upcoming show at the cantina he is staying at.

The movie deals with a...

Cannes Film Festival Directors FortnightNot for the faint of heart, or for those who like their protagonists all warm and cuddly, this second feature of Chilean director Pablo Larrain, despite its various forms of crudeness, is vital and strangely arresting. Even better, its political critique of the Pinochet dictatorship is indirect and subtle, and thus all the more welcome and fresh.

Awkwardly photographed and obviously made on the tiniest of budgets, it's hard to imagine much theatrical play beyond Chile, if there, and TV buyers will be put off by its violence and a few disgusting images. However, festival programrs searching for something intense and very different from Latin America should definitely take a look.

It's 1978, and Raul Peralta is a fiftysomething loser and petty criminal who is obsessed with John Travolta and his performance as Tony Manero in "Saturday Night Fever". Raul regularly attends screenings whenever possible, and has memorized all the dialogue. He even bests all rivals in his knowledge of the minutiae of the film's costuming. The problem is that he becomes so intent on winning a John Travolta look-alike contest on television that he starts killing people who get in his way. And not very prettily either.

Virtually every character in the film, including Raul, is a low-life driven by the basest of motives and desires. Even the middle-class owner of the bar where Raul and his little group perform every weekend is an unappealing Pinochet supporter. Complicating things, and unbeknownst to her or to Raul, Goyo, a young male dancer in Raul's group, is also clandestinely distributing anti-Pinochet pamphlets.

Heads are routinely bashed in, the sexual encounters are gross and supremely unsexy, and in one memorable scene, Raul defecates all over Goyo's white Travolta suit in order to keep him out of the running in the television contest. There is also something supremely grotesque, yet also powerful, in the image of Raul imitating Travolta's dance moves while in tight (and probably dirty) briefs.

The camera work is all hand-held and seemingly full of the greatest possible number of jump cuts, and several scenes are, perhaps purposely, completely out of focus. Yet the film also gives you the feeling that you have no idea what's going to happen next, or what new outrage Raul and his gang are going to inflict on us. And that in itself is cause for some cheer.

The political critique is nowhere and everywhere. Pinochet's secret police regularly pop up to harass dissenters, and we occasionally see the esteemed dictator on television. Director Larrain doesn't seem to be implying any cause-and-effect relationship between the dictatorship and a unique phenomenon like Raul, but the mere juxtaposition of the two speaks volumes.

Cast: Alfredo Castro, Amparo Noguera, Hector Morales, Paola Lattus, Elsa Poblete. Director: Pablo Larrain. Screenwriter: Pablo Larrain, Alfredo Castro, Mateo Iribarren. No rating, 99 minutes.