SANFIC 2017: Santiago International Film Festival kicks off in Chilean capital

SANTIAGO – The thirteenth edition of the Santiago International Film Festival (SANFIC), which will kick off from today, will have in its national category four world premieres and four national premieres, showing particular points of view of the new Chilean directors.

Organized by CorpArtes and produced by Storyboard Media, the Festival will include eight feature films – composed of four fictions and four documentaries.

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The 13th version of the contest will be held from August 20 to 27, in the capital Santiago de Chile.

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The selection includes the world premieres of the documentaries: “In transit”, by Constanza Gallardo Vásquez; “Jaar, the last place” by Paula Rodriguez Sickert, “Robar a Rodin” by Cristóbal Valenzuela, and the fiction “Sapo” by Juan Pablo Ternicier.

Meanwhile, the national premieres that participate in this competition are: “The color of the Camaleón”, by Andrés Lübbert, world premiere at the International Film Festival in Guadalajara; “The mother, the son and the grandmother”, of Benjamin Brunet; “The memory of my father”, by Rodrigo Bacigalupe Lazo, who participated in the Malaga Festival; And “Reinos”, by Pelayo Lira, premiered in the International Competition of the last edition of Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival.

In this version, the jury of the Chilean Film Competition will be composed of a set of personalities from the national and international film world, who must choose the winners of Best Film, Best Director and Best Performance.

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Movies from the Chile Film Competition at SANFIC13

The Color Of The Chameleon
2017, 87′
Director: Andrés Lübbert

During Pinochet’s dictatorship, Jorge, 21, became an instrument of the Chilean secret services, which forced him to work for them in an extremely violent manner. He finally escapes from Chile to Europe, where he becomes a war cameraman, an occupation that has taken him to all areas of conflict in the world. Today his son Andres makes a psychological portrait of his father, and together they search the depths of Jorge’s unfinished past.

In Transit
2017, 65′
Director: Constanza Gallardo Vásquez

Four transsexual people wander around everyday places, which somehow seem strange and menacing to them. They travel among the inhabitants of Chile as if carrying a heavy disguise. Mara (24) is a poetess, student of pedagogy and activist; Gis (18) is trying to finish school while trying to coexist with his two mothers, who do not understand their transition; Patricia (35) is an empowered working woman who, however, is afraid to tell the rest of the world her truth; Finally Matías (14) has a beautiful family, but lives in a small mountain town with a population that has a hostile opinion about transgender people. Through their daily lives we will know how difficult it is to live in a country that does not understand them and does not have a place for them.

Jaar, The Last Place
2017, 70′
Director: Paula Rodríguez Sickert

This documentary looks at the creative process of Alfredo Jaar, one of the most relevant artists of contemporary art. His works deal with emigration on the border between Mexico and the USA, genocide in Rwanda or the military coup in Chile. Jaar believes that art is “the last place” of freedom in our society, and from this trench displays his work as an act of resistance.

Mother, Son and Grandmother
2017, 88′
Director: Benjamín Brunet
Actors: Ana Gallegos, María Muñoz, Gonzalo Aburto

After the eruption, Cristóbal, an adopted young man, fond of photography, arrives at Chaitén, his hometown. Through a photographic project, he tries to rescue part of his still unknown roots, photographing the debris, houses filled with ashes and places destroyed by the volcano, which could have been his home. It is here that he meets Anne, a strong woman who lives with Mary, his old mother. Despite being very sick and Ana’s insistence, Maria refuses to leave her destroyed but beloved city. Cristóbal, Ana and María will form a temporary family, facing illness, loneliness and living intense moments of change. A photographic project that becomes a reality.

The Memory Of My Father
2017, 87′
Director: Rodrigo Bacigalupe Lazo
Actors: Jaime Mc Manus, Tomás Vidiella, María Izquierdo, Romina Mena, Tamara Tello, Marcial Tagle, Mireya Sotoconil, Luz Jiménez

Alfonso is a repressed adapter of North American comedies for the TV, that to the 50 years and after the death of its mother, is forced to take charge of a father who does not support, since it is the alive reflection of its own affective defects And stubbornness. Now the senile is losing his memory, becoming a child away from that strong man who was, and is obsessed with his wife is still alive, lost in a hospital on the coast. Can Alfonso coexist with the weight of his own memories and the disconcerting of the present?

Realms
2017, 79′
Directed by: Pelayo Lira
Actors: Diego Boggioni, Daniela Castillo, Sol Rodríguez, Alex Quevedo, Mauro Vaca, Gastón Salgado, Astrid Roldán, Paula Zúñiga

Alejandro, a freshman and Sofia, a late thesisist, meet at the University and build a relationship in which he falls in love while she only wants to satisfy his sexual desires. Over time, Alejandro’s teenage behaviors will provoke Sofia’s refusal to think how to solve their future. In the end, everyone should find out what they really need.

Steal Rodin
2017, 80′
Director: Cristóbal Valenzuela

One morning in June 2005, guards at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Chile noticed that a millionaire sculpture of Auguste Rodin had been stolen. 24 hours after the event a shy art student returns the piece claiming that he had stolen it as part of an artistic project in which he wanted to prove that “a work of art was more present not being”. After a decade of this event, artists, lawyers, theorists and the protagonist of the robbery revive this artistic-delictual episode through this documentary articulated as an absurd detective story that allows us to ironize on the state of contemporary art and the contradictions of the work artistic.

Toad
2017, 79′
Director: Juan Pablo Ternicier
Actors: Fernando Gómez-Rovira, Loreto Aravena, Mario Horton, Ingrid Isensee

Valparaíso, 1985. Journalist Jeremías Gallardo dispatches from the post office the end of a long history of crimes committed by two former police officers, which shocked the public. Jeremías is the only journalist to interview the two carabineros Sagredo and Topp Collins, and records the time of execution of the sentence, the latest death penalty applied by a Chilean court. That same night, Jeremiah must attend the birth of his first daughter. On his return to the capital, the road will take care of reviving in him moments of his hidden past linked to the intelligence services of the time.

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KINEMA PRIZES: Productions that enhance Chilean landscapes in the cinema

There are already four Chilean films that will compete in the third edition of the Kinêma Prize.

The chosen works will now be evaluated by the jury, which will determine the audiovisual production that, in an exceptional way, highlights and promotes the different potentialities of Chile as a cinematographic location. The winner will be announced on August 25 in the framework of SANFIC Industria.

El Valle de los Negros

A feature film by Richard Salgado focused on the community of the Azapa Valley, where the black people of northern Chile are shown and the conflictive construction of their identity

Bad Junta

A feature film by Claudia Huaiquimilla, an intimate account of a friendship between a Mapuche teenager and another Santiago, in southern Chile

Cloudy, covered and rain

A feature film by Fernando Solís tells the story of a well-to-do penquist family, immersed in the individualistic routine, which faces isolated situations that make it rethink the course of their lives

Riu

Pablo Berthelon’s feature film, a physical and spiritual journey of the last heiress of the ancestral culture of oral tradition that remains on Easter Island.