News

Chile’s Latente Films is teaming with Argentine outfit HD Argentina and Germany’s Orinokia to produce Chilean writer-director Sergio Castro San Martin’s project “Mil pedazos” (“A Thousand Pieces”), selected for the San Sebastian Festival’s Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum this September.

A creator and co-director of TV series such as Amazon Original “La Jauria” and Disney+’s “Llévame al cielo” – both produced by Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín’s Fábula – Castro San Martín’s feature debut, “The Mud Woman,” had its world premiere at the 2015 Berlinale.

“A Thousand Pieces” marks Castro San Martín’s return to the San Sebastian co-production forum after attending in the 2017 edition with “The Saddest Goal.”

In development, and scheduled to shoot first half 2024 in the Chilean region of Coquimbo, “A Thousand Pieces” is produced from Chile by Eduardo Pizarro at Latente, a company based in La Serena, Coquimbo’s capital city, alongside...

A lesbian couple move to the country to deal with terminal illness in this tense, sensitive film by Chilean director José Luis Torres Leiva

Chilean film-maker José Luis Torres Leiva’s new drama is a thoughtful treatment of terminal illness. It gets under the skin and into the thoughts of two women: a couple, and one of them is dying of cancer. Torres Leiva wrote the script after losing three friends to the illness. His film is anti-sentimental, a tough watch, as they say; the kind that can leave you feeling a little fragile. But it’s sensitive, too, and beautifully acted.

Ana (Amparo Noguera) and María (Julieta Figueroa) are in their 40s. The film opens with the two of them in a car. María in the passenger seat gently instructs driver Ana to close her eyes, and for a tense moment Ana drives blind, scared. Afterwards, we discover that María has terminal cancer.

San Sebastian — “Death Will Come And Shall Have Your Eyes” Italy’s Cesare Pavese wrote memorably in a poem that enchanted Chilean film director José Luis Torres Leiva a decade or so back.

Now he delivers a film of that title which world premieres at San Sebastian in main competition and talks about death without, Torres Leiva hopes, either clichés or stereotypes. As in his first fiction feature, the breakout “The Sky, The Earth and The Rain,” which won him a Fipresci international critics’ prize at Rotterdam,plot in “Death Will Come…” is light. Confronting María’s terminal cancer, a lifelong female couple, Maria and Ana, retreats to a cabin in the woods where their love, buried by routine, reignites. “Suddenly, hope appears, imprinting the heart of the story with life and happiness.”

Produced by Catalina Vergara at Chile’s Globo Rojo Films, Paulo Carvalho at Germany’s Autentika and...

Madrid — James Franco’s “Zeroville,” Louise Archambault’s “And The Birds Rained Down” and José Luis Torres Leiva’s “Death Will Come And Shall Have Your Eyes” will compete for San Sebastian’s Golden Shell, the Spanish festival announced Friday.

Further new main competition titles unveiled take in Guillaume Nicloux’s “Thalasso,” Ina Weisse’s “The Audition,” Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s “A Dark-Dark Man,” and Mexican debutant director David Zonana’s “Workforce.”

The seven titles join three already-announced Spanish competition contenders: Alejandro Amenábar’s “While At War,” Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga’s “The Endless Trench” and Belén Funes’ “A Thief’s Daughter.”

Playing out-of-competition will be “Heroic Losers,” , starring and co-produced by Ricardo Darín, which receives a Special Screening, and Daniel Sánchez-Arévalo’s “Diecisiete,” marking the first time a Netflix Original Film makes San Sebastian’s Official Selection cut.

After winning the Golden Shell in 2017 with “The Disaster Artist,...