- Organized by Universidad Austral de Chile, produced by the Valdivia Cultural Center for Film Promotion, and convened by the Great City of Valdivia and the Los Rios Regional Government, FICVALDIVIA has the objective of offering Chilean and foreign filmmakers a space for dissemination and competition, along with promoting national and international audiovisual productions of artistic quality. This year, the festival celebrates its 30th anniversary, between October 9 and 15, 2023.
- Tickets, festival passes, and accreditations will be available soon.
In this commemorative edition, the 30 Years Program is entirely oriented to review the trajectory of those who have been present, in different ways – whether in competitions, tributes, and out-of-competition sections – along the roads the Valdivia International Film Festival has traversed over these three decades, and whose work and thought have contributed to reflect on the present and the future of cinema in our countries.
This presence inevitably links the work of each filmmaker with the spirit of the Festival. By virtue of this identity relationship, this series intends to honor and at the same time acknowledge the generosity of filmmakers who have shared their work and their vision of the world with the audience, throughout the years.
The directors present this edition share a Latin American perspective and, from that point of view, it is possible to intuit that their experiences around the future of the countries in the continent is essentially confluent. Cinema in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and Chile has been and is constantly developing and expanding, and to a large extent, the voices of those who make up this section have accelerated the growth of their own audiovisual territories.
NATIONAL FILMMAKERS
Ignacio Agüero
The filmography of Chilean documentary author Ignacio Agüero (Santiago, 1952) has been the subject of retrospectives and premieres at the Festival, both in and out of competition. He has been in Valdivia since the first edition of the festival, with Sueños de Hielo (1994), and his constant presence includes the world premieres of El Otro Día (2012) and Notas para una Película (2022). This sense of Agüero’s belonging makes him an inescapable figure in this anniversary version, by virtue of his creative tenacity, and also of the significance his cinema has acquired, both in and out of Chile, since the time of One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train (1988), which won, among others, the Best Documentary Award at the Latin Film Festival in New York, along with the OCIC Award in Havana and in Cartagena.
Agüero’s work has focused on researching into the nature of images, and from there, he has created an essentially territorial filmography, attentive to the relationships between past and present, and to the role the cinematographic medium plays in this construction. Precisely in that register are his recent pictures The Other Day -Best Ibero-American Documentary at the Guadalajara Film Festival-, and also Nunca Subí el Provincia -Grand prize in the International competition at FID Marseille-, together with his latest and fascinating Notas para una Película (2022).
The focus that FICValdivia will dedicate this year to Ignacio Agüero includes the short Hoy es Jueves Cinematográfico (1978) – a student project rescued by FICValdivia for the retrospective of his work, in 2009, which allowed Agüero to see it again after 30 years – which briefly captures the emotion of the spectator when entering the cinema and later, the obligation to return to reality. Also featured in the program is his full-length Sueños de Hielo (1993), an equidistant record between fiction and documentary that describes the rescue and transfer of immense pieces of Antarctic ice for viewing at the World Exhibition in Seville, in 1992.
- Hoy es Jueves Cinematográfico. Chile. 1978. 4 minutes. DCP
- Sueños de Hielo. Chile. 1993. 52 minutes. DCP
Sebastián Lelio
The beginnings of Sebastian Lelio’s career (Mendoza, 1974) can be directly associated with the Valdivia International Film Festival. His first two shorts (Cuatro and Música de Cámara, both made in 1996) were in the competition, at the third and fourth editions of the festival, respectively. Later, works such as Carga Vital (2003) and, soon after, his first full-length fiction, La Sagrada Familia, premiering in the 2005 edition, continued his link to the festival. Lelio has become one of the most successful filmmakers of his generation, and his vision focuses on describing the fragility of familial and emotional ties and, in general, of those relationships forged by tradition and blood, themes that come up in titles such as Navidad (2009), El Año del Tigre (2011), and later in Gloria (2013).
The latter film obtained the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival, in 2013, for Paulina Garcia’s performance, the Gran Coral prize, at the Havana Film Festival, and the Ariel Award for Best Latin American Film, in 2014, and thus began the internationalization of his career, ratified very soon with Una Mujer Fantástica (2017), a drama about a young trans woman’s search for dignity, after her partner dies suddenly from a stroke. The picture received the Oscar for Best Foreign Film the following year, becoming a milestone, positioning Chilean cinema abroad, and strengthening its industrial logic.
Now on the international stage, Sebastián Lelio continued developing his craft of directing with Disobedience (2017) -about the relationship between two women, in the context of an Orthodox Jewish community in London-, and later, with a new version of Gloria, adapted as Gloria Bell (2018), with a cast led by Julianne Moore and John Turturro, in the roles previously played by García and Sergio Hernández, and featuring a story adjusted to the liberal sensibilities of the middle class in California.
His latest feature, El Prodigio (2022), still far from Chilean borders, involved his delving deeper into themes related to the observation of closed communities, positioning the director in more complex production structures: in this case, financing from three countries – Ireland, United Kingdom, and United States – and international distribution through the Netflix platform.
The focus that FICValdivia will screen during its next edition includes the short Cuatro, which recounts four urban stories, in black and white, that take place at the end of a night, and Gloria, the award-winning film about a 58-year-old widow who is determined to put her emotional life back together.
- Cuatro. Chile. 1996. 12 minutes. DCP.
- Gloria. Chile. 2013. 110 minutes. DCP
Dominga Sotomayor
Probably the most remarkable thematic feature in Dominga Sotomayor’s cinema (Santiago, 1985) is her autobiographical approach, where personal experiences, most of them linked to childhood and adolescence, populate the universe of her thoughtful filmography. From that perspective, De Jueves a Domingo (2012), winner of the Pudú Award for Best Film at FICValdivia 2012, is one of the most beautiful motion pictures about teenage growth and learning made in Chile, in the last two decades.
Most of her works have screened at FICValdivia, beginning with Cessna (2006), a short film about a neurodivergent child’s obsession with flying. After the success of De Jueves a Domingo, which began its tour of the festival circuit in Rotterdam – collecting the Tiger Award–, Sotomayor kicked off an international career marked in part by collaborative learning. From that period is the short film The Island (2013), co-directed with Poland’s Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, which opened the 20th FICValdivia. Once again, in this brief picture, the daily lives of a group of children and their families, who have traveled to Chiloé, are carefully and distantly traced, while at the same time, a tragedy becomes imminent.
So far in her career, Dominga Sotomayor has persisted in observing these events and moments, sometimes barely perceptible, that forever mark the lives of her protagonists. Hence her interest in observing the fragile status of childhood and adolescence, which the filmmaker sees as territories of emotional and existential tension, where irreversible processes of maturity intersect with wounds and losses generated by chance, and also by the wear and tear of one’s affections.
After Mar (2014), a feature shot quickly in Argentina, with very few means of production, which premiered worldwide at FICValdivia, Sotomayor focused on Too Late to Die Young -the most autobiographical of her movies-, where the topics she embraced since her first shorts converge and are synthesized. With its world premiere at Locarno, the movie achieved a milestone in the history of that festival, making her the first woman to obtain the award for best direction.
After this experience, Dominga Sotomayor joined with Catalan filmmaker Carla Simon (Alcarràs), to create Correspondencias (2020), a small picture organized as an exchange of visual postcards, a cinematic format that approaches the film essay, in which both directors reflect on the female presence in their respective families, through visual missives recorded between June and November 2019.
Correspondencias was the Opening Film of the 27th edition of FICValdivia, and this year, the Festival reunites with her work, in a focus that includes her short Debajo (2007), an experience that captures, from a fixed overhead view, an upper class family spending the afternoon by the pool, on the same day that an eclipse seems to distract the small tensions between a father and his daughter. The second selection in this focus is her first feature, De Jueves a Domingo, that chronicles the terminal crisis of a couple, as seen from the perspective of their teenage daughter, during a family trip over a long weekend.
- Debajo. Chile. 2007. 15 minutes. DCP.
- De jueves a domingo. Chile, Holanda. 2012. 96 minutes. DCP.
Claudia Huaiquimilla
In her short film San Juan, la Noche más Larga, filmmaker Claudia Huaiquimilla (1985) condenses what will be her greatest concerns as a creator: precarious childhood and adolescence, and the current situation of the Mapuche people. The title focuses on depicting the celebration of St. John’s Eve, and centers on Cheo, a boy that watches and keeps clear of the preparations for the ceremony, which will serve as context and counterpoint for the reckoning of the boy with his father’s violence. The short, which won mentions at the VIART Ibero-American Short Film Festival, in Venezuela, and at the prestigious Clermont Ferrand, took the Best Short Film award at the FICValdivia 19.
Claudia Huaiquimilla continued her career, expanding her children’s universe with Mala Junta, an account of the relationship between two children: a boy from Santiago with behavioral problems, who has gone to live with his father in a rural area in the south, and the friendship he establishes with a shy Mapuche boy, in the middle of a community haunted by violence. Celebrating its world premiere at the 23rd FICValdivia, it received Best Picture in the Chilean Feature Competition, later ratifying its quality with the Audience Award, at the Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse, and the Editorial Caminos prize, at the Havana Film Festival.
Her next full-length, Mis Hermanos Sueñan Despiertos (2021), a drama set in southern Chile, which depicts the relationship between two brothers inside a juvenile detention center, debuted in Valdivia after coming from Locarno, obtaining again the award for Best Feature, in addition to the Hector Rios Award -presented by the Chilean Cinematographers Association-, for the best cinematography in a Chilean picture. In addition, the production collected accolades at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and the Valladolid International Film Week, along with the Grand Prix Coup de Cœur and the Prix du Public Fiction La Dépêche du Midi, at the Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse, among other international festivals and series.
Claudia Huaiquimilla is the only filmmaker in history to have received top prize at FICValdivia with each of her works.
The focus dedicated to Huaiquimilla’s filmography will reacquaint the Festival audience with her short San Juan, la Noche más Larga, and her lastest feature, Mis Hermanos Sueñan Despiertos.
- San Juan, la noche más larga. Chile. 2013. 17 minutes. DCP.
- Mis hermanos sueñan despiertos. Chile. 2021. 85 minutes. DCP.
León & Cociña
Cristóbal León (Santiago, 1980) and Joaquín Cociña (Santiago, 1980) come from training in design and visual arts, respectively, and this link explains, only in part, the powerful visual sense of their cinematographic work. From their beginnings in animation, in projects carried out together with Niles Atallah, they showed an admiration for the old techniques of frame-by-frame animation, particularly, the work of some of the Central European pioneers in the genre, such as the Polish master Vladislav Starévich.
La Casa Lobo (2018), their first full-length movie, was largely a statement of aesthetic principles that converged on the rarefied universe of children’s stories, exacerbating the disquieting and disturbing dimension of childhood fears. In a kind of reverse story, the film tells the frightening experience of a girl who escapes from Colonia Dignidad, taking shelter in a small cabin, haunted by the voice of the colony’s leader that surrounds the house and stalks her in the shape of a wolf. It took five years of animation work, which the duo turned into a collaborative experience and an exhibition open to the public, thereby accentuating the transmedia vocation of their creative endeavors.
La Casa Lobo took the Caligari Prize, at the Forum section in Berlinale, the Jury Prize, at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, a Special Mention, in FIDMarseille, and the Best Animated Feature Award, at the Monterrey International Film Festival, as well as the Audience Award, in the Feature Film Competition, at the FICValdivia 25.
This dazzling experimental experience about the horrors of the Dictatorship, recurred later, in Los Huesos, a short in which, through their visual work, they again delve into the darkest areas in Chile’s historical past, based on a story that, through spiritualism, links two key figures in the legal construction of authoritarian periods: Diego Portales, as the architect of the conservative state, and Jaime Guzmán, as the ideologue of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial project. Both appear in the same context, when, in a ceremony, Constanza Nordenflycht, Diego Portales’ lover, unearths the remains of her partner and of Guzman.
Los Huesos picked up the Orizzonti Award for Best Short, at the Venice Film Festival, and a few weeks later, was the Opening Film at FICValdivia 28. The experience consolidated the interest that León & Cociña’s work began to garner in American and European audiovisual industries. Shortly after, they took over the video for the song “Thin Thing,” by The Smile, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s new band, formed together with guitarist Jonny Greenwood and drummer Tom Skinner. Here, they reiterated the creative style of Los Huesos, meaning stop motion in 16mm.
In early 2023, filmmaker Ari Aster (Midsommar), who also produced Los Huesos, commissioned them to take over some sequences in Beau is Afraid, his recent horror epic, and, later, they did the video for “I Inside the Old I Dying”, first single from the album “I Inside the Old Year Dying,” by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey.
In this occasion, in addition to this year’s screening – in the Gala section – of Cuaderno de Nombres, a project made in the context the 50-year anniversary of the Coup d’état, Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña will be the subject of a special focus that showcases the two works they premiered at the Festival as a duo: La Casa Lobo and Los Huesos.
- La casa lobo. Chile. 2018. 73 minutes DCP.
- Los huesos. Chile. 2021. 14 minutes. DCP.
LATIN AMERICAN FILMMAKERS
Martín Rejtman
There is something of a latent nightmare in the social and human universes that populate the cinema of the Argentina’s Martín Rejtman (Buenos Aires, 1961), even if those little hells are usually lined with comedy. Trained in the United States and after an experience in Cinecittá, Rejtman began his career in the late 80s, reaching notoriety with Rapado (1996), a film that, in a way, turns the argument of the classic Bicycle Thief (1948) around, to describe the arc of a boy who has been robbed of his motorcycle, his clothes, and in general, his social identity.
With this first feature, Rejtman proved an ability to create oppressive everyday lives, populated by characters that are disconnected from each other at the most essential and paradoxically, irreversibly tied in the most superfluous dimensions of their urban meanderings, psychologies usually tested to the limit, when chance relentlessly collapses their system of daily life.
A bastion of his style is Silvia Prieto (1999), one of the most important pictures in the country, since the emergence of the New Argentine Cinema. The winner of two awards at the Nantes Three Continents Festival -Best Screenplay and Best Performance for Rosario Bléfari-, it showcased at the 2013 edition of FICValdivia, as part of the commemorative program of its 20 years.
His next picture, Los Guantes Mágicos (2003), premiered in the Feature Film Competition, in FICValdivia 11. In 2008, the festival put together a complete retrospective of his work, later returning in the 21st edition to the Gala section, with his black comedy Dos Disparos (2014), and then in the 26th edition, in the same program, with his short Shakti (2019).
Within the framework of the focus on filmmakers for this special 30-year edition, FICValdivia has programmed Los Guantes Mágicos, his second full-length. As many of his movies, it describes the collapse of Alejandro’s daily life, a taxi driver that must simultaneously deal with various family and affective crises, along with a frantic existence. His car, an old Renault 12, and his passion for disco music eventually become his only refuge. In parallel, his latest title La Práctica is part of the Gala program, celebrating its Latin American premiere, after showing at the San Sebastian Festival.
- Los guantes mágicos. Argentina. 2003. 90 minutes. DCP.
Alexandra Cuesta
Coming from photography and visual arts, Ecuadorian director Alexandra Cuesta (Cuenca, 1980) has built a body of work that is attentive to the fragility of spaces and to the relationship between ethnicity, culture, and territoriality. Opting throughout her work almost entirely for the 16mm filmic format, in her case, more than a medium to shoot, it has become a way to approach and relate to the realities she captures. Her first piece, Recordando el Ayer (2007), was filmed in New York City and premiered in the avant-garde cinema section, at the New York Film Festival. From that starting point, her work has shown at festivals, museums, galleries, and also in non-traditional spaces, owing to the enveloping and sensory nature of her images. Places like Viennale, the Anthology Film Archives, the Centre Pompidou, the BFI London Film Festival, the National Gallery of Art in D.C., BAFICI, the Yebizu International Festival of Art and Alternative Media, and the Havana Film Festival are among some that have showcased her work, as has FICValdivia, which organized her first retrospective, in 2014.
After that milestone, Alexandra Cuesta participated in the Official International Feature Selection, at the 23rd FICValdivia, with Territorio (2016), later returning in the 27th edition with Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part I (2020), programmed in the Latinas in the Avant-Garde series, and the following year with Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela, as the Closing short film. Both pieces – made during the pandemic – create a diptych of images, oriented towards observing private spaces and capturing the daily lives of families.
This year, FICValdivia 30 dedicates a focus to Alexandra Cuesta, featuring her first four works in celluloid, part of her first retrospective, plus her new short film Lungta.
- Recordando el ayer. Ecuador, Estados Unidos. 2007. 9 minutes. 16mm
- Beirut 2.14.05. Ecuador, Estados Unidos. 2008. 8 minutes. 16mm.
- Piensa en mí. Ecuador, Estados Unidos, 2009. 15 minutes, 16mm.
- Despedida. Ecuador, Estados Unidos. 2013. 10 minutes, 16mm.
- Lungta. México, Ecuador. 2022. 10 minutes, Digital.
Kiro Russo
Kiro Russo (La Paz, 1984) comes on the scene at FICValdivia in 2015, with his short Nueva Vida, in the Official Latin American Short Film Selection. The following year, he returned with his first feature Viejo Calavera (2016), which garnered him the Special Jury Prize in the Feature Film Competition, at the 23rd FICValdivia. This growing relationship with the festival would increase the following year, with the invitation to a retrospective, together with the collective in which he participates, Socavón Cine, with a program of ten of their pieces, made between 2008 and 2016, which served to give context and diffusion to the work the group does in their country.
Later, at the 28th edition, Russo’s new feature film, El Gran Movimiento, debuted in the Official Feature Film Selection, shortly after its world premiere, at the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival. As in his first feature – a hard and uncompromising look into the indigenous mining environment in the Huanuni area – his second full-length continues his investigation into individuals whose lives are made precarious by extractive industries. This time, the focus is on two very different characters, a homeless man, who has just lost his father, and his uncle, who tries to take care of him, as they tour the city of La Paz, a motley urban environment that Russo captures with an irrealistic style.
The two movies making up the focus on Kiro Russo are his short Nueva Vida (2013), and his feature El Gran Movimiento (2021), both very complementary approaches, in the irrealism with which they relate to the urban space, an ecosystem of buildings, walls, and rooftops where human life seems insignificant.
- Nueva Vida. Argentina, Bolivia. 2015. 16 minutes, DCP.
- El gran movimiento. Bolivia, Francia, Qatar, Suiza. 2021. 85 minutes. DCP.
Juliana Antunes
In the International Feature Competition at FICValdivia 24, the award for Best Picture went to a film that portrayed the precarious existence of two impoverished women in a favela in Belo Horizonte, and how they take charge of their lives. Baronesa (2017) was the first full-length by Brazilian director Juliana Antunes (Minas Gerais, 1989) and in it, her camera opts to build a space of everyday dignity, for this group of women, in an environment crossed by male violence.
Baronesa continued its tour around the festival circuit in Mar del Plata, earning top prize in the Latin American competition, in Havana, where it won the award for Best Full-length Documentary, and further collecting awards at Indie Lisbon and the Murcia International Film Festival, among others.
After her recognition in Valdivia, Juliana returned in 2019, with her short film Plano Controle, receiving the Jury Award in the Latin American Short Film Competition that year.
Antunes returned once again to the Festival in its 28th edition, with her third production, Trópico de Capricornio (2020), chosen to be the Closing short film for the event, a testimonial movie, made up entirely of images from the family archive, where he exposes his own sexual identity, and questions the normative construction imposed from different fronts, in everyday social and family relations.
In this focus, FICValdivia offers her two works shown in 2017 and 2021.
- Baronesa. Brasil, 2017. 70 minutes, DCP.
- Trópico de Capricornio. Brasil. 2020. 13 minutes. DCP.
Azucena Losana
In its 26th edition, FICValdivia held a focus dedicated to Mexico’s Azucena Losana (Mexico City, 1977), who did her training and audiovisual production in Argentina. There and also in Mexico, she has been part of various creative groups, where she has been involved in connecting photography, installation, video, urban intervention, and performance, in addition to her audiovisual work, a format that has demanded greater creative space in her expressive interests.
Throughout her audiovisual pieces, some which stand alone and others, part of larger formal corpus, there is a logic of intervening the more familiar hallmarks, sometimes in sequences in nature, and sometimes in extensive urban spaces.
Using mainly material in 8 mm and Super 8, both in found footage and in celluloid she shoots, Losana not only builds pieces, but works actively in her staging, contributing to their visual and auditory materiality throughout each screening. To that end, she uses the sound of projectors as a device, distorts the original audio, and combines images of opposite nature that complement each other as a counterpoint.
Her works have toured festivals such as Mar del Plata, BAFICI, (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periferico, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the Los Angeles Filmforum Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, Age d’Or, Curta8 in Curitiba, PAF in Olomuc, and MIEFF in Moscow. And in FICValdivia 26, twelve of her shorts screened, a synthesis of her interest in both the rescue of various types of trades, and the research into the various forms and textures of the image. All of them will be revived in this focus.
After her 2019 retrospective, Azucena Losana returned to FICValdivia with Pantano (2019) and Tres Bocetos de Casa (2020), Feriado (2021), Cangallo y Canning, and Tigre del Carbon (2022), becoming one of the filmmakers with the largest presence at our festival.
This year, the focus FICValdivia 30 devotes to Azucena Losana includes the full rerun of the 2019 retrospective, plus her new short, Primitiva.
- Colibrí. Argentina. 2013. 7 minutes. Súper 8.
- El guarachés. México, Argentina. 2013. 3 minutes, Súper 8.
- Intermission. Argentina. 2014. 4 minutes. Súper 8.
- Kapry. República Checa, Argentina. 2015. 3 minutes. Súper 8.
- Karl-Marx-Alle. Argentina. 2015. 3 minutoes. Súper 8.
- SP. Brasil, Argentina. 2015. 3 minutes. Súper 8.
- Develar. México, Argentina. 2016. 7 minutes. Súper 8.
- Gardel. Argentina. 2016. 3 minutes. 16mm.
- Neón. Argentina. 2016. 3 minutes. Súper 8.
- At your Heels. República Checa, Argentina. 2 minutes, Digital
- Siesta. Chile, Argentina. 2018. 3 minutes. Súper 8, Digital
- Tierras del mar. Chile, Argentina. 2019. 6 minutes. Súper 8.
- Primitiva. 2023. México. 5 minutes. Digital
