September 20, 2023
Welcome the exciting Chilean participation in the San Sebastian Film Festival! From 22 to 30 September, this event will be the epicenter of Chilean audiovisual, where 11 films with Chilean talents will participate in 6 competitive sections.
Original productions that will bring together and revive the best of Chilean cinema from their different areas, with the return of Raúl Ruiz, Maite Alberdi, Felipe Gálvez, Pedro Fontaine, Alfredo Castro and Amparo Noguera, among other national professionals who will be representing Chile through their work from the direction, production, acting and even with presence from the technical part.
In addition, Cinemachile, the entity that promotes Chilean cinema internationally, will be present with a high-impact strategy. Join us as we explore Chile’s exciting presence at one of the world’s most important Spanish-speaking film events! Don’t miss this festival with abundant Chilean talent and creativity! and join us to learn all there is about the great participation of Chile in the international film market
“We will have a strong Chilean delegation in San Sebastian, including the two films that represent the country in the race for the Oscar and the Goya. We hope that the different instances of the competition will be a path towards the visibility of Chilean cinema, but also for the materialization of new projects”.
Minister of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, Carolina Arredondo
11 exciting Chilean productions will be participating in 6 of the 13 sections of the festival in the official competition. Get to know the sections and productions here!
| The Practice, film directed by Martín Rejtman (Argentina) and produced by Florencia Larrea, Giancarlo Nasi and Fernando Bascuñan, will participate in the Official Section, a selection of unseen feature films competing for the Golden Shell. With a majority Chilean cast that includes Manuela Oyarzún, Amparo Noguera, Camila Hirane and Catalina Saavedra, the film was filmed in Chile and Portugal, also with the participation of Manuela Martelli who headed the casting. | Chilean actor Pedro Fontaine will be representing Chile in Ex Husbands, a film directed by Noah Pritzker. The film focuses on a father facing the crisis of a divorce and the illness of his own father, where Fontaine plays a Chilean living in the US who plays as a friend of the protagonist. |
Three feature films with a Chilean presence will participate in Horizontes Latinos, a section dedicated to feature films produced wholly or partly in Latin America
| The Settlers After its premiere in Cannes and its recent participation in TIFF, Felipe Galvez arrives with this choral film that brings together a great national and international cast. The film nominated to represent Chile in the Oscars, portrays the extermination of the Selk’nam people and the colonization of Patagonia. | Los impactados Chilean actress Mariana Di Girolamo (Ema, 2019) and (La Verónica, 2020) is the protagonist of the new film by Argentine director Lucia Puenzo. There, the Chilean actress plays a woman who experiences physical and psychic changes after being struck by the lightning of a storm. | A ravaging wind Alfredo Castro returns to San Sebastian. In addition to his remarkable performance in The Settlers, he will also be representing Chile in Paula Fernandez’s A Ravaging Wind. A film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Selva Almada that opens Horizontes Latinos and tells the story of a preacher and his daughter who suffered a car breakdown in the middle of an evangelizing mission |
This year, the section brings together two Chilean co-productions, a competitive section considered to be the most open of the festival, where films seeking new perspectives are included and productions are eligible for the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award.
| The Delinquents After screenings in Berlinale and Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2023, the postmodern heist saga directed by the Argentine Rodrigo Moreno, in co-production with Jirafa Films (Chile), Argentina, Brazil and Luxembourg arrives in San Sebastián. An action drama where two bank employees question the routine life they lead, which also includes in its cast the Chilean director Javier Zoro. | Mixtape La Pampa Directed by Andres Di Tella (Argentina) and produced by Paola Castillo (Errante Producciones, Chile) the documentary is the film diary of a long journey through La Pampa, following in the footsteps of Guillermo Enrique Hudson, also known as William Henry Hudson |
Perlak brings together two productions with Chilean professionals, from different corners. The section brings together outstanding feature films of the year that have been critically acclaimed and/or awarded at other international festivals.
| The Eternal Memory After a successful year with a premiere at Sundance, international participation at Berlinale and FICG, and a powerful premiere in Chilean theaters, Maite Alberdi returns to San Sebastián, after her participation in 2020 with The Mole Agent, where she won the audience award. Her reunion with the festival, this time with The Eternal Memory seeks to continue the conversation around Alzheimer’s and the reconstruction of social memory, a film that is also a candidate for nominations to represent Chile in the Goya awards. | Memory Chile arrives in San Sebastián represented by Joyce Zylberberg and Tatiana Emden, the two Chileans who founded Screen Capital, a traditional funding model whose first funded project is Memory directed by Michel Franco and starring Jessica Chastain who arrives at the festival after her participation in the official selection of Venice 2023 |
Natalia Luque will represent Chile in Sombras nada más, a short film directed by Kathy Mitrani (Colombia), where the Chilean filmmaker was part of the editing. A work that will participate in the section that brings together short films from students from film schools around the world and that in recent years has consolidated as one of the most important sections of the festival in its capacity as a hotbed of new talent.
An exciting section that rescues old classics and during this edition revives the great cinema of Raúl Ruiz and closes the trilogy Ruiz-Sarmiento (El tango del viudo y su espejo deformante/2020 and La telenovela errante, 2017) through Socialist Realism filmed in 1973 by Ruiz and finished in 2022 by Valeria Sarmiento, together with the production company Poetastro.
A feature film shot in 16 mm that portrayed with irony the Popular Unity, and that had the collaboration of Jorge Müller in cinematography and José de la Vega in sound, along with the performances of Jaime Vadell and Marcial Edwards
Did you think this was it? The Chilean delegation lands stronger than ever in Spain.
In addition to the outstanding participation of 11 Chilean films in the festival competitions, this year we also witnessed a significant impact of presence in the industry Club San Sebastian, a space created to facilitate work and meetings with professionals from around the world who look to strengthen their projects and participate in activities.
In total, 15 production companies will participate in the Festival market with the goal of forging international connections and bringing promising film projects to life. Among the attendees is the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, which supports 5 Chilean delegates in their search for collaborations and opportunities that will further enrich the Chilean film scene. If you want to know more about their participation soon we will announce their names and all the details