News

Chilean actor Alfredo Castro will make his directorial debut with the psychological thriller “Los Trabajadores de la Muerte,” which translates to “the workers of death.”

Based on Diamela Eltit’s novel of the same title, the film is penned by Castro and Pablo Valledor. Chile’s Storyboard Media and Les Films de l’Âge d’Or in France co-produce.

Producer and co-writer Valledor tells Variety the project is representative of his larger goal to ramp up international co-productions: “As a producer, my intention is to get involved in projects that present a radical approach and an attractive cinematic language,” he explained. “The aim of Les Films de l’Âge d’Or is to establish a structure dedicated to projects of this nature, creating a bridge between the Americas and Europe to ensure that funds are obtained and that these films are made through well-established international co-productions.”

Set during Chile’s economic crisis...

Feature also screened at New York, London film festivals.

Visit Films will kick off talks at AFM in Santa Monica next week on San Sebastian absurdist comedy The Practice.

‘The Practice’: San Sebastian Review

Martín Rejtman wrote and directed the Argentina-Chile-Portugal- Germany co-production about recently separated yoga instructors Gustavo and Vanesa who find it difficult to live apart.

The film centres on a recently separated yoga instructor with a knee injury who must deal with the search for a new home, a meddling mother, and a flirtatious student.

Esteban Bigliardi, Camila Hirane (Fugitives), Manuela Oyarzún (The Good Life), and...

Writer-director Martín Rejtman’s La Práctica skillfully eases us into a world where yoga is a lifestyle and not just an exercise. This is a world that promises health for the health-conscious, an improvement of one’s life through strict scheduling discipline, and freedom from earthly troubles thanks to the influence of Hinduism that can still be felt in yoga’s practice. Pity, then, that Gustavo (Esteban Bigliardi), an Argentinian yoga instructor living in Chile, is no longer grounded in his connection to that practice, as his separation from his wife, Vanesa (Manuela Oyarzún), prompts a series of life changes that a Vinyasa pose can’t fix.

Despite his dedication to exercise and a vegan diet, Gustavo’s health is threatened by a series of stretching accidents and pratfalls, forcing him to teach his yoga classes with a limp. He lives, at first, with Vanesa’s brother and the man’s wife,...

Pablo Larraín’s primary mode is deconstruction, of everything from genre to myth to ideology. But given its intensely subjective point of view, El Conde shares more in common with Spencer and Jackie than the filmmaker’s earlier investigations into Chile’s tumultuous past, Post Mortem and No. The film seeks to dispense with the historical record and imagine what happens behind closed doors. Of course, there’s one important difference here: El Conde is certainly no stickler for verisimilitude, as the Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) of this film is a morose vampire fasting from blood in order to ease himself into death.

That premise might suggest that Larraín has sympathy for the devil, but El Conde is no hagiography. The film renders Pinochet as an aging, ever-prattling child of sorts, who no longer wants to live in a Chile that has no appreciation for all his “great work,” nor...

Putting the blackened, flash-frozen heart of Chile’s undead past into a blender, blitzing it to a lumpen pulp and guzzling down the result with grimly comic relish, Pablo Larraín, after his Hollywood forays with “Spencer” and “Jackie,” returns to his home turf and finds it bleeding out from a mysterious two-hole puncture on its neck. “El Conde” — the Chilean director’s uncategorizably bizarre riff on vampire mythos, cronyist corruption and the more mundane horror that is a squabbling family divvying up their patriarchal inheritance while the patriarch is still around — coils itself around an inventively nasty literalization of the idea that the evil that men does lives after them. Those words, spoken over Caesar’s body in “Julius Caesar,” sparked a war that ended a republic. With his iteration, Larraín aims to do his part in delivering a republic instead, bringing his elegantly foul exercise in gallows humor to bear,...

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín returns to Venice this evening with his latest pic El Conde, a black-and-white satire of dictator Augusto Pinochet, which he co-wrote and directed for Netflix.

The pic is his first direct movie for a streamer.

“It’s important that Netflix has supported a movie like this that is bold and unique,” Larraín said of the streamer during the film’s official press conference on the Lido this afternoon.

Related: Venice Film Festival 2023 Photos: Premieres, Red Carpets And Parties

“It’s not only the support for this movie but also the support for Chilean cinema, which can speak to the world and has the skills to do it and make valuable cinematic elements that can travel to multiple societies.”

Larraín later added: “We shouldn’t take that for granted. It’s important and relevant because today with the world changing so fast having Netflix doing that is quite important.

With six feature credits in the last decade, Pablo Larraín is among the most prolific filmmakers working today, but he returns to the Lido this week with a new proposition.

El Conde, his latest feature, an inventive black-and-white satire of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, is his first film for a streamer. Larraín co-wrote and directed the film, which debuts in Competition at Venice this evening for Netflix.

“I’m happy because this movie is going to be in a lot of living rooms. It’s beautiful,” Larraín said of his work with the streamer.

Related: Venice Film Festival 2023 Photos: Premieres, Red Carpets And Parties

Starring his regular on-screen collaborators like Alfredo Castro and Amparo Noguera, El Conde is set in a parallel universe where fascist Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet exists as a vampire. After being ousted from power, Pinochet is now hidden in a ruined mansion on the cold southern tip of the continent.

Sisterly love ruled at Chile’s 19th Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic), which wrapped on Aug. 27 where female directors and actors clinched the top prizes.

Israeli-Ukrainian drama “Valeria is Getting Married” by Michal Vinik and Kattia Zuñiga’s “Sister & Sister” snagged the preeminent Chilean festival’s best film plaudits, adding to their trove of accolades since their respective world premieres.

Aside from best international film, Vinik also took home the best director gong in Sanfic’s international competition. Picked up by Berlin-based M-Appeal before its Venice world premiere last year, the taut family drama revolves around two Ukrainian sisters: one is content in her married life in Israel and wants her younger sister, the titular Valeria, to marry, too. She and her husband arrange for Valeria to marry but the younger sister struggles to accept the pact.

“Israeli cinema has been very interesting of late,” noted Sanfic fest director Carlos Nuñez...

Chilean indie Equeco, led by Pablo Calisto, is a triple threat at the 19th Santiago Int’l Film Festival (Sanfic), with three projects participating in the annual event running August 20-27. Vying for the top prize in the official competition is Equeco’s “Historia y Geografia,” which debuts its teaser trailer exclusively on Variety.

Equeco is also embarking on its most ambitious project, “Il Cileno” by Sergio Castro San Martín, a historical drama in co-production with Italy’s Dispàrte, a Rome-based independent production company founded in 2015 by Alessandro Amato and Luigi Chimienti.

Equeco’s first international co-production, “Il Cileno” was conceived from the start as a cross-border project between Chile and Italy, said Calisto. Inspired by the book “Aldo Marín: Cannon Fodder,” it follows a young political exile who fled Chile after the 1973 coup and ended up in Turin, where he joined the anarchist group Azione Rivoluzionaria, dying years later...

Netflix has debuted the trailer for Pablo Larraín’s horror satire ‘El Conde.’

The movie is a dark comedy/horror that imagines a parallel universe inspired by the recent history of Chile. The film portrays Augusto Pinochet, a symbol of world fascism, as a vampire who lives hidden in a ruined mansion in the cold southern tip of the continent. Feeding his appetite for evil to sustain his existence.

After two hundred and fifty years of life, Pinochet has decided to stop drinking blood and abandon the privilege of eternal life. He can no longer bear that the world remembers him as a thief. Despite the disappointing and opportunistic nature of his family, he finds new inspiration to continue living a life of vital and counterrevolutionary passion through an unexpected relationship.

Directed by Larrain, Chilean actors Jaime Vadell, Gloria Münchmeyer, Alfredo Castro and Paula Luchsinger star. They are joined by Catalina Guerra,...

As you may recall, a mysterious Netflix movie titled The Count had been rated “R” earlier this year for “strong violence and gore” and “graphic nudity,” and we now know the project is from director Pablo Larraín (Spencer), officially titled El Conde and coming soon to Netflix.

El Conde will premiere on Netflix on September 15, 2023. Watch the trailer below for a taste of the black & white vampire movie, which looks like a highly unique new take on the genre.

“El Conde is a dark comedy/horror that imagines a parallel universe inspired by the recent history of Chile. The film portrays Augusto Pinochet, a symbol of world fascism, as a vampire who lives hidden in a ruined mansion in the cold southern tip of the continent.

“Feeding his appetite for evil to sustain his existence. After two hundred and fifty years of life, Pinochet has decided to stop drinking blood...

As he bounces back and forth between English-language projects and Chilean features, Pablo Larraín is following Spencer with El Conde, which imagines Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) as an aged vampire who, after 250 years in this world, has decided to die once and for all, due to ailments brought about by his dishonor and family conflicts. Ahead of a Venice Film Festival premiere, followed by a September 15 release on Netflix and theatrical release the same month, the first trailer has now arrived. Meanwhile, Larraín is also prepping to kick off production on his Maria Callas biopic starring Angelina Jolie.

“I understand that there may be things linked to my family and life that could affect the way I see all this,” Larraín told IndieWire. “In Chile, many, many families have seen both sides of the story and different perceptions of it. Maybe mine is more known because there are known politicians in it,...

From its triumphant world premiere (with seven-minute standing ovation) at the Venice Film Festival, A24 opens Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale in theaters this weekend amid a whirl of Oscar buzz around star Brendan Fraser. The former action star carries the psychological drama as Charlie, a reclusive and severely obese English teacher trying to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.

Deadline critic Damon Wise said Fraser’s “all-in performance… makes adjectives such as ‘brave’ and ‘fearless’ seem almost meaningless” and that The Whale is “cutting the line to put a never-better Brendan Fraser at the front of the Best Actor race.” See full review.

It opens on six screens total in NYC and LA and plans to hold there next week, expanding in a limited national footprint on Dec. 21 for the holidays.

The Whale looks set to do...

“Blanquita,” Chile’s official Oscar entry for Best International Film from rising star Fernando Guzzoni, is a cinematic and narrative revelation. Taking its cues from the real-life child prostitution and pedophilia scandal known as the “Spiniak Case” that rocked Chile in the early 2000s, “Blanquita” revolves around the young lady at the center of the scandal.

Blanca (first-time actress Laura López), more commonly referred to as Blanquita, has been subjected to abuse — emotional, sexual and physical — all her life. Poor and largely unprotected, the 18-year-old Blanquita is rarely championed; rooting for her, as Guzzoni reveals, does not always end where we hope it will.

Backed by Manuel, the priest of the home where she resides with her baby girl, Blanca alleges that a powerful businessman and a noted politician are part of a child-prostitution ring. As we watch her undergo psychological evaluations, holding her head high with a steely stare...

L.A.-based Outsider Pictures, one of the most avid U.S. distributors of Spanish-language movies, has picked up Chile’s Oscar entry “Blanquita.”

“It’s a critical look at a sordid part of Chilean social history, but also a political thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat,” enthuses company’s founder and CEO Paul Hudson, who closed the deal, noting that the decision continues Outsider’s ongoing support of Latin-themed independent cinema.

The film, directed by Fernando Guzzoni, will be released theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 9, 2022.

“Blanquita” celebrated its world premiere at Venice Film Festival in the Horizons section, scoring Guzzoni an award for best screenplay. It also won the Golden Colon for best film at Spain’s Huelva Latin America Film Festival.

Giancarlo Nasi of Quijote Films produced the affecting drama, with Pablo Zimbrón (Varios Lobos), Donato Rotunno (Tarantula), Pascal Guerrin,...

Exclusive: Chile has submitted Fernando Guzzoni’s Blanquita, exploring a real-life child prostitution scandal that rocked the country in the early 2000s, as its official entry to the best international film category of the Oscars.

The film was chosen as Chile’s official entry by members of the Chilean Film Academy, in its third selection since its creation in 2018.

“Once again we are witnessing both the quality and diversity of our cinema, as well as the criteria and commitment of our partners: 70 of them voted in this process, the most participatory since we as an Academy have been in charge of choosing the film that represents Chile at the Oscars”, said the body’s executive director Josefina Undurraga.

Blanquita world premiered in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival this year, winning the best screenplay prize for Guzzoni.

Big screen debutant Laura López stars as an 18-year-old resident of a foster home,...

Camila José Donoso (“Naomi Campbel”) is gearing up to shoot her fourth pic, “Antitropical,” with Roberto Doveris’ Niña Niño Films producing. The docu-fiction hybrid will be filmed much like a documentary over various months, starting late October, that will stretch into the next year. It’s also received some additional support from Chile’s Audiovisual Production Fund.

At the 18th Santiago Int’l Film Festival (Sanfic), Niña Niño Films is screening docu “Me gustaría que vivieras mi juventud de nuevo” (“I’d Like You to Live My Youth Again”), Nicolás Guzmán’s third film, co-produced with Francisca Soto and renowned filmmaker Alicia Scherson (“Il Futuro”).

As in her previous films, Donoso plays on the limits between fiction and documentary. “It is a project that I began to develop when I was researching the world of café brothels [dubbed cafes con pierna in Chile] for my first film, almost 10 years ago,” said Donoso. “There I met two...

Bernardo Quesney’s “History and Geography” and Tomás González Matos’ “Breaking and Entering” are two of the titles screening May 20 at Cannes’ Marché du Film showcase, Sanfic Industria Goes to Cannes.

Two other films round out the selection; Andrew Sala’s “The Barbaric” from Argentina, and Esteban García’s Mexico-Columbia co-production “Back to the Sea of my Deseaced.”

All four titles screened at Sanfic Industria’s Works in Progress. The 2022 Cannes slate showcases powerful themes of violence, identity and corruption.

The Goes to Cannes sessions will run May 20-23 May. The curated selections will be presented at two-hour pitch sessions alongside teams who will introduce their films in front of an audience of industry execs and fest heads. The films in this section are in various stages of post-production, some seeking sales agents, distributors or festival selection.

A brief breakdown of the Sanfic Industria Goes to Cannes titles:

“Breaking and Entering,...

Few productions set to air in 2022 promise the emotional impact and political urgency of “La Vida de Nosotras,” which translates to “Our Lives” in English, a five-part short-form series telling the true stories of 16 women – three or four per episode – who suffered from, fell victim to or overcame patriarchal violence.

Up-and-coming director Bárbara Barrera Morales directs all five of the series’ episodes, produced by International Emmy-winning filmmaker Hernán Caffiero and Btf Media co-founders Francisco Cordero and Ricardo Coeto. In fact, much of the film’s technical crew worked together on Caffiero’s Emmy-nominated series “Una Historia Necesaria.”

“La Vida de Nosotras” boasts an impressive cast in front of the camera as well, including cinema standouts such as “The Maid” lead Catalina Saacedra; Alejando Goic, who starred in Pablo Larraín’s Berlin Jury Prize-winner “The Club”; “Violeta Went to Heaven’s” Francisca Gavilan; and Amparo Noguera, who recently starred in “La Jauria,...

Few facets of Chile’s Sanfic Industria are as keenly tracked as its Works in Progress. This is the section, after all, which introduced the industry to Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria,” which went on to win best actress at Berlin for Paulina García and see a successful remake by Lelio himself with Juliane Moore in the title.

Sundance winners “Violeta Went To Heaven,” from Andrés Wood, Marialy Rivas’ “Young & Wild” and Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ “To Kill a Man” all made auspicious debuts at Sanfic as movies in post-production.

Sanfic Industria has now released the full list of Works in Progress set to screen onsite and online over Oct 27-Nov 5. A strong jury takes in Estrella Araiza, director of Mexico’s Guadalajara Film Festival, Busan Film Festival programmer Karen Park and Anabelle Aramburu, co-ordinator of the Mafiz industry umbrella at Spain’s Malaga Festival. They will select four titles which...

Chilean bio-musical series “Los Prisioneros” had its European debut at Madrid’s inaugural Iberseries Platino Industria on Sept. 28 where it screened in the event’s Chapter One sidebar.

Taking place in the mid ‘80s, the eight-episode show kicks off with the titular iconic band Los Prisioneros playing their sardonic protest songs to a rowdy, unappreciative crowd. It’s only when they perform at Chile’s then biggest entertainment show, “Sabado Gigante,” hosted by the equally iconic Don Francisco, that their career takes flight.

Episode one shows the key moments of their debut on the show and the start of their career, which later led to their persecution by the military regime and censorship on Chilean radio and television. To this day, their songs are anthems at protest rallies in the region, most recently in Chile and Colombia.

“Their songs have become ever more relevant, they still resonate to this day,...

Independent Chilean production company Equeco, founded by producer Pablo Calisto and award-winning director Tomás Alzamora, is celebrating it’s fifth anniversary this year by showing off its impressive lineup of two features in post, one feature project and a finished short film on display at the Cannes Marché du Film, looking to connect with partners abroad.

Shot last December, Bernardo Quesney’s dramedy “History & Geography” was one of the company’s longest-gestated project, originally announced by Variety in 2018 as “Break a Leg.” The film turns on Gioconda Martínez, played by Amparo Noguera (“A Fantastic Woman”), a well-remembered but past her prime TV actor who stages a play about the conquest of Chile in her hometown, earning her artistic recognition which she assumed she’d lost, but realizes she never really had. Catalina Saavedra, who’s unforgettable performance in Sebastián Silva’s “The Maid” won her awards around the world, including at Sundance and Torino,...

A lesbian couple move to the country to deal with terminal illness in this tense, sensitive film by Chilean director José Luis Torres Leiva

Chilean film-maker José Luis Torres Leiva’s new drama is a thoughtful treatment of terminal illness. It gets under the skin and into the thoughts of two women: a couple, and one of them is dying of cancer. Torres Leiva wrote the script after losing three friends to the illness. His film is anti-sentimental, a tough watch, as they say; the kind that can leave you feeling a little fragile. But it’s sensitive, too, and beautifully acted.

Ana (Amparo Noguera) and María (Julieta Figueroa) are in their 40s. The film opens with the two of them in a car. María in the passenger seat gently instructs driver Ana to close her eyes, and for a tense moment Ana drives blind, scared. Afterwards, we discover that María has terminal cancer.

Following Chile’s most successful theatrical release of 2020 and high-profile streaming premieres in Latin America and the U.S. as an Amazon Prime Video Exclusive, Argentina’s Meikincine, sales agents on this year’s Argentine Oscar submission “The Sleepwalkers,” has sold Chilean political thriller “Jailbreak Pact” to Swift Productions in France and Sbs in Australia.

Recent deals struck following Meikincine’s summer sales push, including June’s virtual Marché du Film, which achieved sales to Movement Pictures in South Korea and Av-Jet International Media in Taiwan.

In September, the company shared with Variety that negotiations are in the final stages for deals in the U.K. and Ireland and offers are being considered from theatrical distributors in China, Canada and India, among others.

“Jailbreak Pact” was released theatrically in Chile in January by Fox, and quickly pulled the highest box office for a domestic film in more than two years...

Among the many praiseworthy qualities of “My Tender Matador,” the most notable is its honesty. It would have been so easy for the film, about a transgender woman in Pinochet’s Chile and her relationship with a straight political activist, to have overplayed its hand with ill-judged sentiment or sensationalism, but instead director Rodrigo Sepúlveda Urzúa guides everything just right, from the refusal to treat anyone with less than full respect to the superb ensemble, and from Sergio Armstrong’s carefully calibrated camerawork to the thoughtful understanding of how daylight changes a person who’s lived fullest under the protection of the night. Based on the groundbreaking novel by queer icon Pedro Lemebel, the film deserves better treatment than most international gay-themed dramas get.

Alfredo Castro’s versatility shouldn’t be taken for granted, but how can we not when he keeps delivering one fully rounded performance after another? Here...

Amazon Prime Video has clinched U.S. and Latin American rights to Pacto de Fuga” (“Jailbreak Pact”), the biggest Chilean smash-hit at domestic cinemas in Chile over the last few years.

Negotiated by “Jailbreak Pact’s” sales agent, Buenos Aires-based Meikincine, the rights deal was struck during the Marché du Film Online, said sales agent Lucía Meik.

The fiction feature debut of David Albala, produced by Calibre 71, Storyboard Media, Enlazo Capital Films and Tora Investments, the thriller is based on real-life events which led to Chile’s most celebrated prison escape on Jan. 29, 1990, at the tail-end of Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. During it, 49 prisoners, some members of the anti-Pinochet armed resistance group Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez, managed to escape from a penitentiary on Santiago de Chile through a series of tunnels dug over 18 months using spoons, screwdrivers and other rudimentary tools.

A symbolic victory over Pinochet, the film...

Chile’s Forastero has shared with Variety the first trailer for it is highly anticipated, pan-Latin American co-production “My Tender Matador,” staring the country’s most prolific lead actor Alfredo Castro “The Club”).

Co-produced by Forestero in Chile, Tornado in Argentina, Caponeto in Mexico and Zapik Films in Chile, the feature is directed by Rodrigo Sepúlveda Urzúa and based on the the novel by celebrated Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, a figure decades ahead of his time is his advocacy of gender issues, in an archly conservative Chile under and after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Turning on an intimate friendship, the 1986-set feature tells the story of an impoverished, elderly, cross-dresser known as the Queen of the Corner (Castro). After falling in love with a charming guerrilla, the character gets swept up in a covert anti-Pinochet operation.

In the trailer we see the first encounter between the two, and the...

Leading Argentine sales agent Meikincine has signed on to sell David Albala’s highly anticipated fiction debut “Jailbreak Pact,” (“Pacto de fuga”) on the international market.

Chile’s Storyboard Media produces the feature, with co-founders Carlos Núnez and Gabriela Sandoval executive producing and Calibre 71 and Enlazo Capital Films co-producing out of Chile and Colombia respectively.

Fox will distribute theatrically in Chile starting in 2020.

The political thriller is a 130-minute nail-biter based on the real-life events which proceeded one of Chile and the world’s greatest prison escapes on Jan. 29, 1990. At the tail-end of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, 49 prisoners managed to escape their incarceration in Santiago de Chile through a series of tunnels dug using spoons, screwdrivers and other rudimentary tools.

Albala says that the practical aspects of the story impressed him most, and he felt compelled to show how a group of political prisoners were engineered to dig a tunnel more than 60 meters long,...

San Sebastian — “Death Will Come And Shall Have Your Eyes” Italy’s Cesare Pavese wrote memorably in a poem that enchanted Chilean film director José Luis Torres Leiva a decade or so back.

Now he delivers a film of that title which world premieres at San Sebastian in main competition and talks about death without, Torres Leiva hopes, either clichés or stereotypes. As in his first fiction feature, the breakout “The Sky, The Earth and The Rain,” which won him a Fipresci international critics’ prize at Rotterdam,plot in “Death Will Come…” is light. Confronting María’s terminal cancer, a lifelong female couple, Maria and Ana, retreats to a cabin in the woods where their love, buried by routine, reignites. “Suddenly, hope appears, imprinting the heart of the story with life and happiness.”

Produced by Catalina Vergara at Chile’s Globo Rojo Films, Paulo Carvalho at Germany’s Autentika and...

Madrid — James Franco’s “Zeroville,” Louise Archambault’s “And The Birds Rained Down” and José Luis Torres Leiva’s “Death Will Come And Shall Have Your Eyes” will compete for San Sebastian’s Golden Shell, the Spanish festival announced Friday.

Further new main competition titles unveiled take in Guillaume Nicloux’s “Thalasso,” Ina Weisse’s “The Audition,” Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “A Dark-Dark Man,” and Mexican debutant director David Zonana’s “Workforce.”

The seven titles join three already-announced Spanish competition contenders: Alejandro Amenábar’s “While At War,” Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga’s “The Endless Trench” and Belén Funes’ “A Thief’s Daughter.”

Playing out-of-competition will be “Heroic Losers,” , starring and co-produced by Ricardo Darín, which receives a Special Screening, and Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo’s “Diecisiete,” marking the first time a Netflix Original Film makes San Sebastian’s Official Selection cut.

After winning the Golden Shell in 2017 with “The Disaster Artist,...

Santiago, Chile — Santiago-based production company Equeco have announced their involvement on a new feature project from director Bernardo Quesney, a dark-comedy revolving around a small-town theater troupe, a classic Chilean play and the recent influx in Haitian immigrants in Chile, titled “Break a Leg.”

Directing the play is the now-metropolitan Gioconda Millán, returned to her hometown to direct an adaptation of the classic Chilean poem “La Araucana” in order to save the cultural center that her sister manages. Among the hurdles she will encounter along the way are family that feel she’s abandoned them, a community disinterested in seeing a moldy old play, and a cast unwilling to do a show based on the native Mapuche people.

500 years of racism confronts the new, more subtle form facing Chile today, as a number of Haitian immigrants seek to be involved in the production. It’s much more than Gioconda ever expected to face.

The Karlovy Vary Film Festival jury awarded the Special Jury Prize to

Sueño Florianópolis about four teenage kids who set out from Buenos Aires one sweltering day in a Renault to vacation in the Brazilian resort of Florianópolis. a tale of first love, past lovers, fateful encounters, and fleeting joys by Argentinian director Any Katz, a humorous and melancholic movie, for which also Mercedes Morán received the Best Actress Award.

Once again, Chile was present at Karlovy Vary, this time with two films participating in the festival. The film Cielo, directed by Alison McAlpine, was in the official selection of the Documentary Competition. The film was produced by the Canadian production company Second Sight Pictures, in association with the Documentary Channel, Argus Films, and in co-production with the Chilean company Errante Producciones through Paola Castillo.

The acclaimed co-production Los versos del olvido (Oblivion Verses) was screened out of competition, in the Another View section.

MaryAnn’s quick take… A quiet yet resolute portrait of bravery and resilience in the face of unconscionable bigotry, and distressingly moving. Specific yet universal, and wonderfully human. I’m “biast” (pro): I’m desperate for movies about women

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) women’s participation in this film

(learn more about this)

In some ways, what happens when 20something Marina’s (Daniela Vega) much older boyfriend, Orlando (Francisco Reyes), dies unexpectedly in their home is a familiar tale: His ex-wife and adult children — some of whom are probably older than Marina herself — rebel at the idea of his new partner attending the wake and funeral. But there’s another issue: Marina is transgender, which just adds an extra layer to what his family considers her inappropriateness. So now the constant battle she faces for acceptance every day,...

At the core of this indelibly moving film – Chile's entry in the Oscar race for Best Foreign-Language feature – is a performance of surpassing beauty and tenderness. Daniela Vega is the first openly transgender actress and model in Chile, and her portrayal of Marina Vidal, a trans woman who works as a waitress in Santiago to support her career as a cabaret singer, signals her as a world-class talent. With such cisgender actors as Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl), Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent) and Hillary Swank (Boys Don't Cry) scoring career triumphs in trans roles,...

Chilean director Sebastián Lelio’s follow-up to his 2013 hit Gloria is a dazzling companion piece that once again focuses on a woman’s resilience in a world where what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger. Timely issues of transgender rights both in Latin and North America help make A Fantastic Woman a bolder, brasher film, fiery in comparison with Gloria’s relatively tenderness, but anchored once more by a stellar central performance. Gloria’s Paulina Garcia won the Berlinale’s Best Actress award here four years ago, and trans actress Daniela Vega could repeat the feat in what would be a watershed moment for mainstream cinema’s treatment of transgender actors.

Vega is superb as Marina, a 30-something waitress who moonlights as a singer in upmarket bars. On the surface she keeps to a relatively normal life, in a healthy, caring relationship with sensible 57-year old,...

The 2017 Berlin Film Festival has revealed its first slate of 14 films for the Competition and Berlinale Special sections, including new work from Aki Kaurismaki (“The Man Without a Past”), Oren Moverman (“Time Out of Mind”) and Sally Potter (“Ginger & Rosa”). The festival will also screen a restored version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 TV series “Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day.”

Read More: The 2016 Indiewire Berlin International Film Festival Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During Run of Festival

So far, ten films have been invited to screen in Competition, and four films have been selected for Berlinale Special. These productions and co-productions are from the United State, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Belgium, Poland, Senegal and more.

The 67th Berlin International Film Festival will run from February 9 through 19. Further films will be revealed in the coming weeks. For more information, visit the official website.

Read More: The...

After Sundance Film Festival concludes in late January, the next big cinematic event on the globe is the Berlin International Film Festival. With Paul Verhoeven serving as jury president for the 67th edition of the festival, they’ve now announced their first line-up of titles, including Aki Kaurismäki‘s The Other Side of Hope (pictured above), Oren Moverman‘s Richard Gere-led The Dinner, Sally Potter‘s The Party (pictured below), and Agnieszka Holland‘s Spoor, as well as a restoration of a Rainer Werner Fassbinder TV show.

Check out the first titles below, and return for our coverage from the festival.

Competition

A teströl és a lélekröl (On Body and Soul)

Hungary

By Ildiko Enyedi (My 20th Century, Simon the Magician)

With Géza Morcsányi, Alexandra Borbély, Zoltán Schneider

World premiere

Ana, mon amour

Romania/Germany/France

By Călin Peter Netzer (Child‘s Pose, Maria)

With Mircea Postelnicu, Diana Cavallioti,...

Aki Kaurismäki, Oren Moverman, Agnieszka Holland, Sally Potter among Competition lineup.

The first 14 films have been announced for the Competition and Berlinale Special sections of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival.

Among directors with movies in competition are Aki Kaurismäki, Oren Moverman, Agnieszka Holland, Andres Veiel, Sebastián Lelio and Sally Potter.

Festival veteran Kaurismäki will debut new film The Other Side Of Hope about a Finnish travelling salesman who meets a Syrian refugee.

Moverman’s (The Messenger) mystery-drama The Dinner stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall and Chloë Sevigny. Based on the novel by Herman Koch, the film looks at at how far parents will go to protect their children.

Oscar-nominated Holland, who was nominated for the Golden Bear in 1981, will be at the Berlinale with crime-drama Pokot.

Potter returns to Berlin with ensemble comedy-drama The Party starring Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas and [link...

Aki Kaurismäki, Oren Moverman, Agnieszka Holland, Sally Potter among competition lineup.

The first 14 films have been announced for the Competition and Berlinale Special sections of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival.

Among directors with movies in competition are Aki Kaurismäki, Oren Moverman, Agnieszka Holland, Andres Veiel, Sebastián Lelio and Sally Potter.

Moverman’s (The Messenger) mystery-drama The Dinner stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall and Chloë Sevigny.

Fernando Trueba’s comedy-drama The Queen of Spain, starring Penelope Cruz, will get its international premiere in the Berlinale Special strand.

More to follow…

Competition

A teströl és a lélekröl (On Body and Soul) (Hungary)

By Ildiko Enyedi (My 20th Century, Simon the Magician)

With Géza Morcsányi, Alexandra Borbély, Zoltán Schneider

World premiere

Ana, mon amour (Romania / Germany / France)

By Călin Peter Netzer (Child‘s Pose, Maria)

With Mircea Postelnicu, Diana Cavallioti, Carmen Tănase, Adrian Titieni, Vlad Ivanov

World premiere

Beuys - Documentary (Germany)

By Andres Veiel ([link...

Title: Post Mortem Directed by: Pablo Larrain Starring: Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers, Amparo Noguera Set during the coup d’etat by General Pinochet in 1970’s Chile, Mario (played by Alfredo Castro), a civil servant who makes a living typing reports for a morgue, is caught in the crossfire. He’s not involved in the politics, nor does he really have anything directly at stake during the takeover–but a woman he falls in love with, a burlesque dancer, named Nancy Puelma (Antonia Zegers), is indirectly involved with an underground communist party that seeks to have Pinochet and his regime ousted. Directed by Pablo Larrain, this piece of art-house filmmaking is top-notch in quality, [ Read More ]...

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...

Jane Eyre (PG)

(Cary Fukunaga, 2010, UK/Us) Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell

It's customary with literary chestnuts like this to ask whether or not we really need another version. But would you rather have a remake of, say, Eat Pray Love? The power of the source material pulses anew here, thanks to some bold tweaks to the structure, elegantly restrained visuals, and, above all, two handsome, capable leads. And the mix between gothic gloom and slow-burning passion is just about right. So yes, we did need it.

Friends With Benefits (15)

(Will Gluck, 2011, Us) Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Patricia Clarkson. 109 mins

A non-romcom that almost creams its pants trying to be contemporary (iPads, apps, flashmobs?). The vaunted sex-only pairing is an excuse to critique the old sugar-coated Hollywood formula, but witty dialogue aside, you know it's going to resort to it in the end.

A Lonely Place To Die (15)

(Julian Gilbey,...

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...

Torture, the movie.

Alfredo Castro in "Tony Manero"

Photo: Koch Lorber Films

Chilean director Pablo Larrain's "Tony Manero" must be one of the worst-looking movies ever submitted for Oscar consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category. The picture is washed-out and blurry, contains some of the most dismal sex scenes outside of the Andy Warhol canon, and features a protagonist who's about as engaging as an abandoned luncheonette. Could this be ... art?

A lot of critics on the international festival circuit, where "Tony Manero" made the rounds last year, appear to have thought so. They discerned a political allegory, which is easy enough to do, I suppose, but raises the question: So what?

The story is set in Santiago in 1978, five years into the near-20-year military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet — a brutal national ordeal in which thousands of people were murdered and tens of thousands were jailed and tortured.