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Director Dominga Sotomayor’s Too Late To Die Young screens at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood) Friday August 30th, Saturday August 31st, and Sunday September 1st. The screenings begin at 7:30 each evening. Facebook invite can be found Here.

Set in 1990 Chile at the end of Pinochet’s reign, Too Late to Die Young focuses on 16-year-old Sofía (Demian Hernández), who, like most leads in coming of age stories, is itching to be a little bit older than what she is. Sofía has a clear, age-appropriate suitor in Lucas (Antar Machado), but she’s drawn to a cool older guy named Ignacio (Matías Oviedo) instead. Director Sotomayor has a keen eye for visuals, calling to mind recent independent touchstones such as Beasts of the Southern Wild.

In Spanish with English subtitles.

Admission is:

$7 for the general public

$6 for seniors, Webster alumni and students from other schools

$5 for Webster...

Dominga Sotomayor’s Too Late To Die Young is a coming-of-age drama that takes place during the halcyon summer of 1990 in Chile, a time when the nation was slowly emerging from the shadows of a violent military regime. Against a changing political climate, the film follows 16-year-old Sofia (Demian Hernández) as she navigates the waters of adolescence and approaching adulthood. A hazy mood piece frequently bathed in pallid sunlight, Too Late To Die Young is deliberately mystifying at times, with Sotomayor choosing to focus on re-creating the hopeful and tentative atmosphere of that period, at the expense of a narrative with more direction. Still, she manages to interweave the teenage growing pains of heartbreak, disappointment and reconciliation with the uncertainty of a post-Pinochet Chile in...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The possibility and impossibility of community lies at the heart of Chilean Dominga Sotomayor’s second feature film, Too Late To Die Young, which follows a group of young people living in a community being formed by their parents on the outskirts of Santiago. While the country is undergoing its own transition to democracy from the 17-year dictatorship of General Pinochet and their parents try to build a society that reflects their own values, the teenagers, particularly Sofía (Demian Hernández), seek to find their place in the world, all the while watched by a younger generation of children looking to emulate […]...

The possibility and impossibility of community lies at the heart of Chilean Dominga Sotomayor’s second feature film, Too Late To Die Young, which follows a group of young people living in a community being formed by their parents on the outskirts of Santiago. While the country is undergoing its own transition to democracy from the 17-year dictatorship of General Pinochet and their parents try to build a society that reflects their own values, the teenagers, particularly Sofía (Demian Hernández), seek to find their place in the world, all the while watched by a younger generation of children looking to emulate […]...

A teenager seeks to escape from her remote commune just after the fall of Pinochet in this atmospheric but elusive drama

History provided a resplendent context for simple domestic events in last year’s Latin American standout Roma. But in Dominga Sotomayor Castillo’s Too Late to Die Young – which also features a showpiece New Year’s brushfire – history rises up almost unseen like smoke and hangs in the air around the inhabitants of the Chilean rural commune where this film is set.

It’s set in 1990 just after the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship, and 16-year-old Sofia (Demian Hernández) is seeking a route out of the stifling inertia of the backwoods setup her father has chosen for her. A few ominous incidents – a dead horse poisoning the watercourse, a break-in – hint at the outside world encroaching, but the community’s dope-smoking adolescents barely notice. It’s unclear if anyone,...

Ioncinema.com’s Ioncinephile of the Month feature focuses on an emerging creator from the world of cinema. This month, we are pleased to introduce filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor and her third feature film Too Late to Die Young (Tarde para morir joven) which debuted at Locarno in 2018 (she won Best Director prize) and it would be featured prominently on the fall festival circuit at Tiff, New York, Viennale and BFI London (we met her at Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival back in November). Starring first time actress Demian Hernández, KimStim opens the film on Friday, May 31st at Film at Lincoln Center in New York.…...

Dominga Sotomayor‘s Too Late To Die Young (Tarde para morir joven) has been a festival darling since it premiere and won the Best Director award at the Locarno Film Festival in 2018. Opening May 31st at Film at Lincoln Center in New York, June 7 at Laemmle Music Hall in Los Angeles followed by other cities, the folks at KimStim have provided us with the exclusive U.S. trailer and poster to the film.

Click for larger version:

Starring trans actor Demian Hernández—who has transitioned since production—in the role of Sofía, and inspired by the director’s own childhood, the third feature by Sotomayor is set in 1990, when Chile transitioned to democracy.…...

Last Sunday, the Leopard for Best Director at the Locarno Festival went, for the first time, to a woman. The filmmaker in question was the 33-year-old Chilean Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, who premiered her magnificent second feature Too Late to Die Young in competition. Unlike many of her fellow filmmakers in the lineup, Sotomayor is not content with a single set of visual schemata; her wondrous, protracted style builds out from the corners of a scene, developing character and space in congruent ways. Her way with the contours of space, as with the particulars of performance, is bold and non-classical. This movie’s chill vibe is a peculiar one; this is one of the few shaggy hangout movies to possess a sharp-edged visual rigor, far from the loungey pleasures of the genre’s highlights.Too Late to Die Young, then, is at times loose and at times heavily choreographed. Each shot,...

In the opening moments of “Too Late to Die Young,” a Chilean family crams into their car as they head off from their remote settlement to their last day of school. As the car makes its way down the dusty road, they peer back at the path behind them, where the family dog emerges from a cloudy mist. It’s a striking reveal, at once silly and mesmerizing, setting the scene for the kind of poetic flourishes that make director Dominga Sotomayor Castillo’s third feature such a stunning assemblage of small moments.

“Too Late to Die Young” takes place in 1990, as Chile was reassembling its democracy after the fall of General Augusto Pinochet, but those broader sociopolitical developments have little to do with the lives depicted here. For 16-year-old Sofía (Demian Hernández), the bulk of her frustrations revolve around the drab routine she leads in the middle of nowhere.

Six years after her debut feature and 2012 Rotterdam Tiger Award winner Thursday Till Sunday (De Jueves a Domingo), 33-year-old Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor attended the 71st Locarno Festival for the world premiere of her new feature, Too Late To Die Young (Tarde Para Morir Joven). A subtle, tender coming of age set in a commune nestled atop Santiago’s cordillera in 1990s Chile, Too Late To Die Young entered the Swiss fest’s official competition, and just landed a spot at this year’s New York Film Festival.

A multi-character portmanteau of a self-sufficient, environmentally friendly community of hippie-like adults and kids, Sotomayor’s work zeroes in on three young commune members, Sofía (Demian Hernández), a 16-year-old itching to leave the place to move in with her estranged mother, Lucas (Antar Machado), a teenager helplessly besotted with Sofía, and Carla (Magdalena Tótoro), a 10-year-old way too smart and mature for her own age.

Halfway through Dominga Sotomayor’s movingly tender coming-of-age tale Too Late to Die Young (Tarde Para Morir Joven), my mind jolted back to a movie I saw and instantly fell for a couple of months prior, Carla Simón’s Summer 1993. It took me a while to figure out why. Summer 1993 is set in early 1990s Catalunya; Sotomayor’s takes place at the decade’s outset, but on the opposite side of the world: a commune nestled in the arid cordillera towering above Chile’s capital, Santiago. Yet at some fundamental level, the two films speak the same language. Underlying Sotomayor’s follow-up to her 2012 feature debut and Rotterdam Tiger Award winner Thursday Till Sunday is a deep-seated nostalgia – the same longing for a long-gone era that rang achingly true in Summer 1993.

Inspired by the 33-year-old director’s childhood in the Ecological Community of Peñalolén – an environmentally friendly and self-sufficient commune...

Back in form after her underwhelming sophomore film “Mar,” Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor returns to an exploration of childhood and its intersection with a particular grown-up world, one where idealism is no protection from inner emotional turmoil. “Too Late to Die Young” springs from the director’s experiences growing up in the alternative ecological community of Peñalolén, yet she’s broadened the perspective by focusing on two teens on the brink of adult awareness, silently examining their confused sensations while nonjudgmentally witnessing the dysfunction around them. While the film is perhaps longer than necessary, and the adult characters could use some fleshing out, this is a satisfying sensorial work, unmistakably grounded in independent South American cinema, and should see a thriving festival life.

Though only her third feature, “Too Late to Die Young” features an opening shot that’s unmistakably Sotomayor: a boy asleep in an old car. Harking back...