- The new films by Nicolás Guzmán, René Ballesteros, Nicole Costa, and Alba Gaviraghi are part of the Official Feature Film Selection.
- Also returning to the Gala section with their new full-length films are Dominga Sotomayor with “La Perra”; Cristián Sánchez with “La Tierra Invisible”; Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña with “Princesa Burro”; Valeria Sarmiento with “Detrás de la Lluvia”; Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos with “Cocaína Negra”; and Sergio Castro San Martín with “Il Cileno.”
The Valdivia International Film Festival (FICValdivia), which will take place between October 12 and 18, announced its Chilean program. This includes competitive and non-competitive sections, such as the Official Feature Film Selection, the Official Short Film Selection from Latin America and the Caribbean, the Film and Audiovisual Students’ Official Chilean Short Film Selection, as well as contemporary cinema, animation, Chilean Gala, austral cinema showcase, and expanded cinema sections, offering a diverse panorama of premieres.
The announcement was made as part of the opening of FICValdivia in Santiago 2026, a film series taking place between September 2 and 5 at Sala K of Universidad Mayor, an institution that for fourth consecutive year has partnered with FICValdivia, reaffirming its commitment to the promotion of local and international cinema. This partnership strengthens the links between the festival and academia, facilitating spaces for exhibition, dialogue, and access to cinema experiences for students, teachers, and the community at large.
The gathering was attended by Daniel Laguna, Executive Secretary of the Audiovisual Promotion Fund of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage; Laurent Bogen, Cultural Attaché of the French Institute of Chile; Pedro Sáez and Leonora Díaz, representatives of the Spain Cultural Center; and Universidad Mayor authorities: director of Continuing Education, María José Rivera; dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Arts, Sergio Toro; and Film School director, Guillermo Bravo; along with FICValdivia Director, Raúl Camargo.
Founded by Universidad Austral de Chile, produced by the Valdivia Cultural Center for Film Promotion, and convened by the Great City of Valdivia, the Los Ríos Regional Government, and Codeproval, the Valdivia International Film Festival is financed in part by the Audiovisual Fund of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, and the support of the Los Ríos Corfo Development Committee. FICValdivia offers audiovisual creators a space for dissemination and competition, along with promoting domestic and international audiovisual production of artistic quality. It is a project under the Law of Cultural Donations. The festival will take place between October 12 and 18, 2026.
OFFICIAL FEATURE FILM SELECTION – CHILEAN CINEMA PREMIERES
Competing in the 2026 Official Feature Film Selection will be the Chilean pictures Lo que Nos Une, by Nicolás Guzmán; Los Niños Sin Tierra, by René Ballesteros; No Honey No Money, by Nicole Costa, and Hijas Unikas, by Alba Gaviraghi.
Lo que Nos Une, by Nicolás Guzmán, is an approach to melodrama with various backdrops. Its main fictional framework is the story of an adult woman whose love for her eleven-year-old nephew irretrievably leads her to kidnapping, which generates media and judicial uproar. The film builds this story out of different narratives and aesthetics: first, from the staging of a reality show that recounts the case; then, with the testimonies recovered by a filmmaker who seeks to turn the event into a fictional drama; and, finally, the shooting of said movie.
Although, Lo que Nos Une at first observes and confronts certain forms of documentary creation, this is only the initial level of its rumminations. As in Guzmán’s previous works — in Víctima Potencial and also in Me Gustaría que Vivieras mi Juventud de Nuevo — the exchange of roles and spaces is key. From that primary area of inquiry and research, the picture unfolds in different directions, making formats dialogue and overlap with one other, while the boundaries between fiction and reality become blurred.
Los Niños Sin Tierra is the new feature film by documentary filmmaker René Ballesteros, a director based in France whose previous work, Los Sueños del Castillo (2018), collected the award for Best Picture in the Chilean Feature Film competition at FICValdivia 25. Like his previous film La Quemadura (2010), the work addresses circumstances that relate to child neglect — explicitly in the first and more subtly in the second. In his new production, Ballesteros follows the trail of two adults in France and Sweden who, after a chance event, begin the search for their biological mothers: Chilean women who are victims of illegal adoptions.
Their experiences add to those of thousands of children who were taken out of the country between 1960 and 1990. However, in this film Ballesteros’ intention is not to summarize the consequences of this practice, but to investigate the individual wounds of this process — both in the children and in their mothers — to reflect on identity and the unresolved issues of the past. Los Niños Sin Tierra had its world premiere in competition at the 48th Cinéma du Réel Festival.
In No Money No Honey, Nicole Costa rescues and brings up to date the life of Máxima Mauricio, an Argentine sex worker who settled in Miami in the late 90s and who now, from New York, tries to connect with the trans community amid the economic precariousness and alcoholic loneliness in which she survives. Interspersing VHS footage with current records of the protagonist, the picture offers a deep exploration of cultural identity, examining the relationship between Latin American ways of being and the United States — a concept that Costa had already addressed in her previous feature film, El Viaje de Monalisa, premiered at FICValdivia 26. In this case, the documentary is organized as a painful journey into the protagonist’s past — stored in a handful of video tapes — narrated in first person, as a testimonial diary. In the film’s logic, this voyage also involves a reunion with her former troupe in Miami; from that point of view, the itinerary is not only traveled individually — where it becomes particularly intimate and stark — but also collectively. Despite the permanent interplay between past and present, the movie never adopts a pessimistic perspective; on the contrary, the character’s dignity prevails, even in the journey towards Maxima’s childhood that surfaces in the final sections of the story.
In Hijas Únikas, Alba Gaviraghi’s first feature film, the narrative moves from the contingent to the social, without the latter functioning as a mere frame of reference to insert the intimacy linked to the search for the father. The movie is set during the protests of secondary students in 2006, a context that seems to take visibility away from Antonia’s situation, a young high school student determined to resume contact with her father — of whom she knows absolutely nothing — so that he authorizes her travel to Argentina, for her class trip.
Formally part of the coming-of-age genre, the film is based on the director’s teenage experiences. Therefore, its approach is intimate and, at the same time, generational: music, urban tribes, codes, and ways of coming together unfold at the same time as the protagonist’s motivations. Out of this territory, an awareness of autonomy emerges, driving Antonia to undertake the search for her father on her own, while at the same time, she participates in student protests against a State that has also left her largely orphaned.
- Lo que Nos Une, by Nicolás Guzmán. Chile. 2026. 72 minutes. DCP.
- Los Niños Sin Tierra, by René Ballesteros. France, Chile. 2026. 97 minutes. DCP.
- No Money No Honey, by Nicole Costa. United States, Chile. 84 minutes. DCP.
- Hijas Únikas, by Alba Gaviraghi. Chile, Mexico, Germany, Argentina. 2026. 90 minutes. DCP.
OFFICIAL SHORT FILM SELECTION FROM LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN – CHILEAN CINEMA PREMIERES
This selection brings together four short films that, in very different ways, find how to approach their characters, territories, and conflicts through observation.
Partículas Inconmensurables, by Francisco Rojas, is an observational short in which the camera aligns with the rhythms of rivers. Gradually, the image acquires an almost abstract dimension that is transformed — thanks to a delicate sound work — into an immersive and almost tactile experience, thus deepening a material connection present in the director’s previous works.
Una Fortaleza, by Alba Gaviraghi, will show at FICValdivia shortly after screening at the 82nd edition of the Venice International Film Festival. The film can be understood as a thematic complement to Hijas Únikas, Gaviraghi’s full-length picture competing in the Official Feature Film Selection, as it goes through a similar historical framework: high school student protests. However, here the anecdote is specific and addresses the choice and political commitment of a young woman who must decide if she continues to participate in the actions of a high school occupied for months by its students.
Manuel Vlastelica’s Toda la Quietud Posible (2026) puts into images a peripheral city that has equally relegated objects, waste, and identities. The piece is an exercise in observation — mainly visual, yet also auditory — on everything that is in front of our eyes yet somehow remains invisible, perhaps out of the sheer will not to want to see. As the minutes go by, this succession of flora, fauna, and urban still life seems to take on an existence of its own, contained in its dynamics of loneliness and neglect.
En Día de Sacrificio, Benjamín Leiter and Carolina Gutiérrez return as co-directors to FICValdivia, holding to the observational logic behind Atajo (2024), their first joint work (directed by Leiter, with Gutiérrez as director of photography), which translated the dynamics of a western to the Chilean countryside. In their new production, the duo stages a natural itinerary that gives an account of an ecosystem’s beauty and precariousness, synthesized in a day in the life of a marine otter.
- Day of Sacrifice, by Benjamín Leiter and Carolina Gutiérrez. Chile. 2026. 20 minutes. DCP.
- Partículas Inconmensurables, by Francisco Rojas. Chile. 2026. 10 minutes. DCP.
- Toda la Quietud Posible, by Manuel Vlastelica. Chile. 2026. 18 minutes. DCP.
- Una Fortaleza, by Alba Gaviraghi. Chile. 2026. 14 minutes. DCP.
OFFICIAL CHILDREN’S SHORT FILM SELECTION FROM LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN – CHILEAN CINEMA PREMIERES
Antonia Pérez Wagner successfully participated in the second version of Professional MATCH! in FICValdivia 2025, an instance seeking to connect regional artists with audiovisual companies from all over Chile. ¿A Dónde se Fue el Jambato? emerged from that gathering. With a carefully crafted watercolor aesthetic, the animated short narrates the search that a snail-eating snake, marsupial frogs, a spectacled bear, and a condor undertake to find the jambato: a harlequin toad, once abundant in the Ecuadorian Andes, which has progressively disappeared until declared extinct.
- ¿A Dónde se Fue el Jambato? by Antonia Pérez Wagner. Chile, United Kingdom. 2025. 3 minutes. DCP.
OFFICIAL SELECTION OF CHILEAN SHORT FILMS BY FILM AND AUDIOVISUAL STUDENTS
This selection draws together young perspectives that explore identity, memory, and the changes that accompany transitions into new stages.
Donde Anida la Lluvia, by Ignacio Durán, is set in the southern town of Fresia, where three teenage friends spend their last moments before finishing high school. There, the constant rain and daily routines become the only refuge to distract them from the uncertainty the future holds for them.
Mañana Vendrá el Silencio, by Matía Lorenzo, tells the story of Trizado, a depressed film student who, through a sensory journey through various image archives, tries to reflect on his sexual orientation, memory, and guilt.
Sonio Leonelli’s Cómo Cortarse el Pelo is the story of Dalia, a 13-year-old girl who is determined to cut her long braids despite her family’s disapproval. Prevented from achieving her goal, the protagonist enters an extra-cinematic space that gives her full authority to fulfill her desire.
Caerá el Morro y Marcharán sus Hijos, by Oscar Marín, is a poetic inquiry into what defines the city of Arica. Structured from postcard images, the work places El Morro — a geological formation — as the central symbol of a blurred identity.
Casa Propia, by Conam Calderón, Alejandra Bravo, and María José Rojas, recounts the bond and shared memories of a retired mother and Conam — her non-binary child — which come to the surface shortly before they leave the family home.
- Caerá el Morro y Marcharán sus Hijos, by Oscar Marín Sepúlveda. Chile. 2026. 13 minutes. DCP.
- Casa Propia, by Alejandra Bravo, Conam Calderón, María José Rojas. Chile. 2026. 14 minutes. DCP.
- Cómo Cortarse el Pelo, by Sonio Leonelli. Chile. 2026. 10 minutes. DCP.
- Donde Anida la Lluvia, by Ignacio Durán Vidal. Chile. 2026. 20 minutes. DCP.
- Mañana Vendrá el Silencio, by Matía Lorenzo. Chile. 2026. 17 minutes. DCP.
CHILEAN CINEMA PROGRAM
CHILEAN GALA
The 2026 Chilean Gala section, dedicated to domestic productions out of competition, will screen new works by prominent Chilean directors, such as Cocaína Negra, by Cristóbal Valenzuela; La Tierra Invisible, by Cristián Sánchez; Il Cileno, by Sergio Castro San Martín; Detrás de la Lluvia, by Valeria Sarmiento; La Perra, by Dominga Sotomayor; and Princesa Burro, by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña.
Cocaína Negra, the novel documentary by Cristóbal Valenzuela, reconstructs the persona and assassination of Chilean chemist Eugenio Berríos, who actively collaborated with the DINA, a secret police in the Pinochet dictatorship, in the manufacture of chemical weapons. The main source for the film were microcassette tapes collecting invaluable testimony to gauge Berríos’ character, shortly before his disappearance and the subsequent discovery of his remains, in April 1995, half-buried on the beach of El Pinar, near Montevideo. That material had been in the hands of the judiciary since 1991.
As he had already done in part in his previous documentary, Isla Alien (2023), Valenzuela here resorts to fictional reenactments, with actor Claudio Arredondo starring as Berríos — a role the actor had already played in the Chilean-Uruguayan co-production Matar a Todos (2007), by Esteban Schroeder. In Cocaína Negra, there is abundant archival material and testimonies from those who knew the man, but the audio included in the movie — with multiple everyday conversations — works as a device that gives the documentary a terrifying closeness. To work with it dramatically, the picture recreates these sequences, synchronizing them with the participation of other actors. It held its world premiere at the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG) 2026.
La Tierra Invisible, Cristián Sánchez’s new feature, began its circuit in FICValdivia in 2025, when it was selected for Austral Meetings, Future Chilean Cinema, in the Finaliza-Postproducción category. In that same edition, Sánchez premiered El Santo Oficio in the Gala section, a motion picture about a film director’s tribulations — both budgetary and supernatural — while making his auteur film. After screening at the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (BAFICI), La Tierra Invisible is also joining the Gala section at FICValdivia.
The story once again intertwines the relationships between the living and the dead, with Mapuche cosmogony as the point of connection, and, in this case, seemingly drawing elements of the Greek myth of Orpheus. A kimche (a wise man in Mapuche society) bursts into a medical clinic where some patients have died due to an invisible evil entity. The kimche transports them to the world of the dead, where the deceased are evaluated by spirits who allow two of them to return to life.
Il Cileno, the latest fiction full-length by Sergio Castro San Martín (Mil Pedazos), is inspired by Aldo Marín Carne de Cañón, an investigation by journalist Juan Cristóbal Guarello into a left-wing activist who, after leaving Chile in the aftermath the coup d’état, died in Turin in 1977, blown to pieces by the very bomb he was trying to detonate, as part of the actions of the Italian anarchist group Azione Rivoluzionaria.
Castro fictionalizes the story, setting the events in Turin in 1976, at a time when Italy was experiencing a deep economic crisis reflected in persistent demonstrations and strikes — a period known as the “Years of Lead.” In this context, Aldo’s character emerges as that of a pariah: someone with a precarious family life and disconnected from society — like Miguel, the central character in Mil Pedazos — for whom violence appears as the only way to reconnect with family affections. Il Cileno premiered worldwide at the recent Locarno International Film Festival, where its lead actor, Camilo Arancibia, received the Boccalino d’Oro award for Best Performance.
Detrás de la Lluvia is, literally, the farewell picture by Valeria Sarmiento, one of the most important filmmakers in Chilean cinema. To a large extent, it is also a tribute to the memories and literary influences that filled the director’s childhood in Valparaíso, a free dimension of memory that intersects with a criminal intrigue. The movie is set in the present day — but shot in a contrasting, hazy black and white that evokes the aesthetics of classic film noir — and focuses on the story of Sofía, a young woman who has just finished her psychology studies in Valparaíso and is preparing to come back to Valdivia, her hometown. Her return to the South coincides with the rape and murder of a girl, a situation that forces her to recall episodes of sexual abuse suffered during her own childhood.
From that starting point, Detrás de la Lluvia freely weaves together memories, observations of local customs, and police investigations, constructing a portrait of internal dynamics, historical oversights, and those things communities choose to keep silent. As in his film Secretos (2008), the work is also a look at certain less-than-exemplary Chilean idiosyncrasies. The feature had its world premiere in the Official Competition of the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
La Perra, the recent full-length picture by Dominga Sotomayor, portrays the relationship between a middle-aged woman and an abandoned puppy she calls Yuri, the name of the daughter she never had. This dynamic becomes symbiotic and gives the woman a degree of protection against an essentially aggressive environment.
The movie is based on the eponymous novel by Colombian author Pilar Quintana but transporting the action from Cali to an island off the coast of the Biobío Region. This is a fairly free adaptation that remains faithful to the dramatic essence of the original work: the maternal relationship the woman develops with her pet and, moving beyond any pathological interpretation of that bond, the depiction of a socially repressed motherhood. This psychological framework is complemented by the way Sotomayor deals with the island’s landscape as another instrument of aggression — an approach that echoes references to Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950). The film held its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where its canine star, Yuri, won the prestigious Palm Dog Award.
After their appearance in the Gala section of FICValdivia 31 with Los Hiperbóreos, Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña return with Princesa Burro. The story is set once again in the world of children’s literature — especially the realm of Charles Perrault — with a free adaptation of Donkeyskin, a tale first published in 1694.
As in Los Hiperbóreos, León and Cociña are committed to a hybrid materiality that combines live performances with stop-motion animation. The picture stars Antonia Giesen as Diana, the princess of an ancient kingdom who must contend with her father’s ban on love, following the queen’s sudden death. When Diana falls in love with Lalo, a wandering traveler who has given her a magic bracelet, the king banishes him, prompting the princess to embark on a long journey to get him back.
The first film adaptations of this tale were made in the first decade of the 20th century, yet the most famous was 1970s musical directed by Jacques Demy and starring Catherine Deneuve. In León and Cociña’s approach, this reimagining of the story deepens their ongoing exploration of materiality and cinematic construction, already present in their earlier work, exposing the film’s own manufacturing processes as it unfolds.
- Cocaína Negra, by Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos. Chile, Uruguay. 2026. 84 minutes. DCP.
- Detrás de la Lluvia, by Valeria Sarmiento. Chile. 2026. 97 minutes. DCP.
- Il Cileno, by Sergio Castro San Martín. Chile, Italy, Switzerland. 2026. 99 minutes. DCP.
- La Perra, by Dominga Sotomayor. Chile, Brazil. 2026. 112 minutes. DCP.
- La Tierra Invisible, by Cristián Sánchez. Chile. 2026. 70 minutes. DCP.
- Princesa Burro, by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña. Chile, France, Netherlands, Uruguay, Germany. 2026. 90 minutes. DCP.
ANIMAMUNDI
La Baraja de Myriam, by Cristina Hadwa, tells the story of an 11-year-old girl who must get married, cross the ocean, and leave Palestine to settle in an unfamiliar land in the Chilean foothills. In this new environment — as despoiled as her own homeland — the protagonist discovers her powers and tries to pass them on to her great-granddaughter. The film was part of the selection for the 64th edition of the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival.
Gacela Gazette, by Cote Ramírez and Simón Bucher, draws on the physical medium of newspaper to construct a universe dominated by the media. Within it, the figure of a young athlete called “La Gacela” (The Gazelle) is molded, one whose voice must rise above the clamor of the press.
Ánima del Amanecer, by María Ignacia Hargreaves and Guillermo Arias, is a strikingly visual take on an underground labyrinth ruled by machines and darkness. There, two forced companions must trust each other to face danger and find a path toward the light.
In Noize, by Javier Rodríguez Pino, three young women who disappeared in the early 1990s return transformed into sparks and static. A spectral figure leads a ritual of echoes and slides where noise gives way to a space for vengeance.
- Ánima del Amanecer, by María Ignacia Hargreaves, Guillermo Arias. Chile. 2026. 13 minutes. DCP.
- Gacela Gazette, by Simón Bucher, Cote Ramírez. Chile. 2026. 5 minutes. DCP.
- La Baraja de Myriam, by Cristina Hadwa. Chile. 2026. 15 minutes. DCP.
- Noize, by Javier Rodríguez Pino. Chile. 2026. 10 minutes. DCP.
AUSTRAL CINEMA SHOWCASE
This section features audiovisual productions that strengthen perspectives from southern Chile, with five selected works for this edition.
Receta para un Desastre, el Caso Queque, by Mai Pazkal González Castro, is a comedy of errors that begins with a burnt cake and an absurd fight between Tito and Feli. That small incident reveals an old tension between them that will have to wait until dawn to be resolved.
Una Orilla para Jugar, by Israel Salinas, highlights the work of a community school that offers a space for children marked by displacement and state neglect, on land located between a wood-processing plant and a wetland. Set at the crossroads between two opposing ways of relating to nature, this short film chronicles the small forms of resistance silently contained in play, listening, and shared learning.
Violeta Bernal A.’s Las Piedras que se Esconden en el Río tells the tale of the director’s return to her family home in Valparaíso after receiving a VHS tape with recordings she made of her mother during her childhood. This footage, along with other tapes, will help her reconstruct a family portrait, laying bare the weight of time and memory.
Garantía de por Vida, by Daniel Lobos, is a work of fiction set in an artificial city where everything is discarded. In this setting, Astrid, a plastic girl, must escape before she is scrapped because of her defective shoes. After her getaway, she finds shelter in a forgotten shoe store, where she meets Don Aurelio, an old copper craftsman who teaches her that no one is disposable.
In Inercia, by Francisca Beas, Javiera — a rising modern dancer — lands her first duet in an erotic-themed performance. However, rehearsals trigger memories of past sexual abuse, forcing her to confront her trauma while struggling not to let it affect the work with her partner.
- Receta para un Desastre, el Caso Queque, by Mai Pazkal González Castro. Chile. 2026. 13 minutes. DCP.
- Una Orilla para Jugar, by Israel Salinas. Chile. 2026. 30 minutes. DCP.
- Las Piedras que se Esconden en el Río, by Violeta Bernal A. Chile. 2026. 18 minutes. DCP.
- Garantía de por Vida, by Daniel Lobos. Chile. 2026. 13 minutes. DCP.
- Inercia, by Francisca Beas Miranda. Chile. 2025. 10 minutes. DCP.
CONTEMPORARY CINEMA SHOWCASE
The Contemporary Cinema Showcase features two out-of-competition selections that explore novel formal and narrative possibilities: New Pathways presents two Chilean pieces that focus on experimenting with the materiality of film, and Animamundi screens four animated works that address memory, identity, violence, and resistance, from diverse visual universes.
NEW PATHWAYS – CHILEAN FILM PREMIERES
Macarena Ortiz’s Pleurotus works with a series of film archives intervened with the Pleurotus ostreatus fungus. Their proliferation alters the emulsion, modifies the frame, and distorts the sound, transforming the nature of the material, shifting its expressive capabilities toward a new sensibility.
Un Film Apacheta, by Roberto Collío, is a collage of images that highlights materiality and tradition surrounding religiosity. Through elements such as a pilgrim’s ritual, a hand cast in plaster, and various sound designs, the work establishes a dialectic between the ephemeral and the perishable.
- Pleurotus, by Macarena Ortiz. Mexico, Chile. 2026. 8 minutes. DCP.
- Un Film Apacheta, by Roberto Collío. Chile. 2026. 40 minutes. DCP.
SHORT FILM SHOWCASE FOR FAMILIES
PÁSATE UNA PELÍCULA
This section features Inflorescencia, by Santiago Feliú Zalaquett, which follows the adventure of Ichu and Hualo, two figures crafted from desert plants and flower heads, as they prepare for a journey across the desert. Upon catching a reflection, Ichu notices the difference in their petals, sparking deep insecurity before setting out. However, a dangerous encounter with a wild Cururo manages to dispel that feeling, allowing them to reach their destination and finally grow as cacti.
- Inflorescencia, by Santiago Feliú Zalaquett. Chile. 2026. 4 minutes. DCP.
NEW NARRATIVES
EXPANDED CINEMA
Three Chilean works feature in this section that offers experiments with new technologies, film installations, cinema by other means, and audiovisual essays.
Fernando Valenzuela’s NEORE(AI)LISMO works with photographs and fragments of Italian cinema from the 1940s to 1960s, transformed into visual fields that expand in space. This gesture alters both scale and duration: what was once an instant now acquires a new temporal presence, suspended between stillness and movement, past and present.
Chicas Terremoto: No Movemos la Tierra Pero la Cambiamos, by Mariana Carrasco and Javiera Luna, could act as a manifesto for this girls’ collective, which burst onto the scene with an exhibition and performance against street harassment. Through interventions of Super 8 footage of a protest action — hand-processed, projected in its original 8mm format, and scored live with analog and digital synthesizers — the film stock is transformed into a ritual element, and the cinematic experience, into a collective act of reparation.
En un Lugar Aparte. Memoria Cinéfila de Germán Arestizábal, can be understood as a motion picture made of movies that were never shot; scenes that Arestizábal found in movies and reimagined through drawing, shifting frames, faces, and landscapes into a universe all his own. Amid stars, trains, recognizable characters, and scenes, his work constructs a sort of affective archive of Chilean popular culture, where images from cinema coexist with those of a daily life marked by literature, friendship, and imagination. The Expanded Cinema project reclaims this transition between the screen and the paper — incorporating, as well, Arestizábal’s own footprints in the cinema of Raúl Ruiz — to look anew at a work that seems to ask: what remains of a film when that which abides is no longer movement, but memory?
- NEORE(AI)LISMO, by Fernando Valenzuela Quinteros. Chile.
- Chicas Terremoto: No Movemos la Tierra Pero la Cambiamos, by Mariana Carrasco and Javiera Luna. Chile.
- En un Lugar Aparte. Memoria Cinéfila de Germán Arestizábal. Chile.
