Chilean film will have a significant presence at the Rotterdam International
Film Festival
>>> The feature-length films “Vida de familia” and “Rey”, along with the short films “El sueño de
Ana” and “Non castus” will represent Chile in the Dutch festival’s international competition. In
addition to this, Chilean filmmaker Francisca Alegria will attend the CineMart market with her first
feature-film, and young producer Sebastian Gonzalez will participate in the prestigious Rotterdam
Lab program.
Santiago, January 23rd - Four Chilean productions will form part of the close to 200 feature-length
and 200 short films from 50 countries that, from January 25th through February 5th of this year,
will integrate the official selection of the 46th Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR), one of
Europe’s five most important film events.
The Dutch festival offers a line of fiction and documentary films that have been carefully selected,
in short and feature-length formats, centering its main categories on recent works from new and
talented filmmakers.
This is how the film “Vida de familia” (“Family Life”) by directors Alicia Scherson (“El futuro”) and
Cristián Jiménez (“La voz en off”) will represent Chile in the International Competition, whose
premise is to discover new talents in world cinema, offering a 40,000 euro prize to the winning
film, in addition to the Jury’s Special Prize, which consists of 10,000 euros. The film —which is
based on a story by Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, and whose world premiere took place at
Sundance— narrates the story of a 40-year-old man who, feeling let down by life, agrees to take
care of a distant cousin’s family home and cat for a few months, while he and his wife are away in
France. The protagonist invents a new life for himself, and lying in order to attract his neighbor, he
tells her that the house belongs to him, and that he used to live there with his family until his wife
left him.
Another of the Chilean films that was selected for the festival is “Rey”, by Niles Atallah, which will
compete for the prestigious Hivos Tiger Award. Based on true event, this co-production between
Chile, Francia, Holland, Germany and Qatar tells the story of a European lawyer who in 1860 had
the idea of creating Chile’s La Araucanía area into a kingdom, in which he would be king and the
areas Mapuche natives would be his subjects, with the objective of keeping their independence in
Chile. The film will compete against others from Israel, Brazil, Colombia, United States, India,
Norway, Bulgaria and Belgium for the 40,000 euro prize and the 10,000 euro Jury’s Special Prize,
which will be awarded to the piece that presents an exceptional artistic quality. Chile has a good
track record in this category: in 2012, director Dominga Sotomayor won with her film, “De jueves a
domingo”.
In addition to this, as part of the exhibition called Voices Short Films, the Chilean short films “El
sueño de Ana” (“Ana’s Dream”) by José Luis Torres Leiva and “Non Castus” by the young Andrea
Castillo will be presented.
The acclaimed director will return to Rotterdam after successfully premiering his documentary “El
viento sabe que vuelvo a casa” last year at this very same festival. This time, he will present his
short film, “El sueño de Ana”, in the Short Stories: Mental Picture section, which brings together
four audacious cinematographic declarations regarding aspirations, loss, and the deep impression
that certain memories and desires leave on our minds. Simultaneously, Andrea Castillo’s short film
—which received a special recognition from the jury at the last version of the Locarno Film
Festival— will form part of Short Stories: Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained, a space that gathers
four pieces that deal with stories of unresolved conflicts.
NATIONAL PARTICIPATION IN CINEMART – ROTTERDAM LAB
The Rotterdam Festival actively supports new film talent through its co-production market, Cine
Mart, its Hubert Bals Fund, the Rotterdam Lab, and other industry activities. This year, 27 films will
form part of the 34th edition of CineMart, which will take place from January 29th through
February 1st of this year. Out of the selected films, one is the Chilean-Italian co-production, “Vaca
que cantó una canción sobre el futuro”, Francisca Alegría’s first feature film, produced by Jirafa
and Alba Produzioni. CineMart’s feature films will compete for the Euroimages co-production
development award (20,000 euros), the international ARTE award (6,000 euros) and the Wouter
Barendrecht award (5,000 euros).
Simultaneously to CineMart, the 17th Rotterdam Lab will also take place: a space that seeks to
insert emerging producers in the international market. The chosen participants are nominated by
institutions, festivals, organizations and programs associated to the event. In this way, after
holding an open call to all Chilean producers, the Rotterdam Lab association, along with
CinemaChile —ProChile’s sectorial brand— and the Direction of Cultural Affairs (DIRAC) have
selected Sebastian González, of the production company Maltrato Films.
Constanza Arena, executive director of CinemaChile, assures us that “what excites us the most
about our alliance with CineMart is the possibility of opening up international pathways and
delivering concrete tools for co-production with other countries to a new and young producer
such as Sebastian González. The Rotterdam Lab program, in association with the DIRAC, fully
complies with CinemaChile’s mission: to be an exportation platform for our sector, which is
bubbling with opportunities.”
Likewise, Osvaldo Marinao, ProChile’s commercial attaché in Holland, affirms that “the
recognitions that the Chilean film industry has received over the last few years reflect that our
country’s creative industries are undergoing an important process of development and that,
therefore, our work is to propitiate this growing offer of talent and services to be exhibited in
international circuits, where the sector’s main actors are gathered. This is what we are doing at
Rotterdam Lab today, by supporting the presence of a national producer that, in addition to
learning these skills, will have the chance to expand his contact network to recognized members of
the worldwide film industry. This will give a future to the possibly of, for example, carrying out coproductions and returning to CineMart with his project participating in the official selection.” In
addition to this support, the commercial office of ProChile in Holland, along with the Chilean
Embassy, organized a wine tasting for the avant premiere of “Rey”, with the objective of
strengthening the country’s presence at the festival.