SANTIAGO, Chile — At the climax of Saturday night's awards ceremony, where Santiago Maza and Diego Luna's emotional project “State of Siege” took top honors, Santiago de Chile's Sanvic and its industrial arm Sanvic Industria delivered a vibrant edition, confirming the joint event as one of South America's three major festival markets.
This year’s dual event also reflects the larger shift in work underway across industries in Latin America and many international industries. Here are seven key takeaways from the 2024 event, which will take place August 18-25 in Santiago de Chile.
Sanvic is still growing.
Other major festivals across Latin America have seen their budgets cut by governments, though the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival in October and Mexico’s Guadalajara Festival in June could return. Meanwhile, Sunvic and Sunvic Industria have held up and even grown, recovering their pre-pandemic levels of 40,000 tickets by 2023.
Submissions for the main divisions of Sanvic Industria, for example, are up 55% from 2023, said Gabriela Sandoval, president of Sanvic Industria. This reflects the post-pandemic recovery of production in Latin America, as well as the growing profile appeal of Sanvic Industria, the main summer film event in South America.
““The general consensus was that the quality of this year’s crop across multiple divisions was so high that we had to add new awards,” Sandoval said. diverse“It's the best version we've had in terms of projects, players, new voices and incentives,” she added.
“We have evolved in line with the Chilean industry,” said Carlos Nunez, president of Sunvic, at a panel discussion on current and future festivals. He added that young audiences, aged 20 to 30, are returning to cinemas and to Sunvic. As audiences have become more interested in non-English language films and series, Sunvic is now turning to a strong lineup of films and series not only from Chile but also from the rest of Latin America.
Chile's film industry is exceeding all expectations
The Sunvic Festival kicked off last Sunday with a tribute to Chilean filmmakers Pablo Larraín, Sebastián Lelio and Maite Alberdi. Since 2012, with Larraín’s No, their films have garnered five Oscar nominations, helping Chile to the best Oscar record since 2012 of any South American nation. Working in English with some of the best actresses on the planet, producing investigative portraits of famous people trying to control their image (“Jackie”) or their lives (“Spencer,” “Disobedience,” “Wonder”) or blending nonfiction with fiction, whether it’s a spy thriller (“The Mole Agent”) or a love story (“Eternal Memory”), the trilogy has arguably produced some of the best work produced by any Latin American filmmakers’ collective. It’s no surprise that Fremantle recently renewed a first-look deal with the Larraín family’s Fabula, the company behind the trilogy’s latest.
Producers Co-Consumers
This is the era of co-production, to combat rising costs, produce films that can respond to the artistic ambitions of creators, and pool expertise. If so, Chile is a master of co-production, obliged for two decades to produce because of its relatively small domestic market. Almost half of the industrial news coming out of Sanvic Industria this year were international co-production deals, executed by some of its most experienced experts, such as Quixote Films, the Chilean producers of “The Settlers.” Producers are also experimenting with new production models, such as pairing Belgian and Spanish tax exemptions, as in the case of Griselda González Gentil, who announced a new co-production, “Hollow Flowers,” at Sanvic Industria.
Talent in depth
But Chile isn’t just a case of three filmmakers punching above their weight. There’s depth in the talent pool, which is evident at Sunvic and Sunvic Industria, where feature directors Laura Donoso and Alfredo Borali took home awards for their debut feature Sariri (best performance, Paulo Latos, in the Chilean Film Competition) and The Magnificent Gold Harvester (best picture, tied with Matías Rojas Valencia’s Our Memory). In all, 11 of Sunvic’s 13 award winners were feature films, documentaries or feature-length films, confirming that Sunvic is a huge new platform for talent.
Outputs in the spotlight
In the tradition of Sanvic Industria, a panel discussion brought together female filmmakers to discuss directing, films and series from a gender perspective and the “place” of women in creative processes. Moderated by Sandoval, the panel featured Alberdi, Caro Pluj (“Synchronia”), Rocío García (“Peloquelán”) and Luz Orlando Brennan (“La Estrella que Perde”). The speakers were keen to emphasize the progress made on gender issues and the long road ahead. Sandoval noted that five of the 10 titles in Sanvic Industria’s Ibero-American Action Program were directed by women. García noted that industry bodies in Chile, such as the producers’ organization APCT, were discussing anti-gender abuse protocols and urged the public to have their say. “There is more parity but in reality it doesn’t exist,” Alberdi said, noting that 85% of American films are directed by men. “I never felt discriminated against in the industry until I became a mother and had to advocate for a lot of things that men don’t do, like bringing my son on set,” she said. Parity is sometimes measured by the number of female leads. “We don’t necessarily need female leads to represent our voice,” she added. “The main characters in The Mole Agent are men, but I see it from a female, feminist perspective.”
Spotlight on the Sanvic Industry: Pina Daigeler
German costume designer Pina Daigler, based in Madrid and recipient of the 2024 Sanvik Industry Award, gave a powerful masterclass in the keys to costume design, from “Mulan,” for which she was nominated for an Oscar, to “Tar,” directed by Todd Fields and starring Cate Blanchett, to her films with Pedro Almodóvar: “All About My Mother,” “The Return” and his “The Room Next Door,” now showing in Venice. One important point is preparation, from the painstaking research to visiting China to prepare “Mulan,” to the detailed budgets she can defend with producers, to supervising the costumes of the extras. Another is responding to the visions of the directors and actors for the films and characters. “My costumes have to represent the inner world, the psychology and the emotions of the actors,” Daigler said in Chile. Also, “The costume designer has to understand the director’s vision and present it. Each director is his or her own world.”
Offers
12 of the best movies that were recently announced or exclusively reported by diverse In or during the preparation for this year's Sanfic Industria:
*Paulina Valencia, former executive producer of Pimienta Films, joins Nicolás Ruiz on her feature debut, “The Weird” (“Lo Raro”), which is being developed at Cordyceps Content in Chile (“The Dog Thief”) headed by Mathias de Bourguignon. Ruiz, along with Matt Porterfield, directed the short film “Extinction of Species,” which premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week 2024.
*Two-time Oscar nominee Maite Alberdi (“The Mole Agent,” “The Eternal Memory”) has been revealed. diverse Details of her Netflix-backed fantasy film “El Lugar de la Otra” (“In Her Place”) which has been selected for the main competition in San Sebastian.
*After Stephen King described The Coffee Table as “a terrible and very funny movie. Imagine the Cohen brothers' darkest dream,” Sanfic-Mórbido revealed Caye Casas' next film, “El Show del Gran Luciferio.”
*The House of the Spirits, an adaptation of Chilean author Isabel Allende’s career-launching novel, has begun production, with Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola (“The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future”) writing and executive producing the series alongside veteran local director and producer Andres Wood (“News of a Kidnapping”).
*Chilean company Quijote Films has hired Sergio Carmi from Fabula to lead new growth plans.
*Chilean band Los Bunkers, one of Latin America's most impressive rock bands, have signed a recording contract for “El Ultimo Testigo” (“The Last Witness”), a documentary about Louis Poirot, who took pictures of Allende during his election campaign, the brilliant Victor Jara, Pablo Neruda at his desk, and even the 2019 social protest “Estalido” to this day.
*Chile’s Juntos Films and Colombia’s Angie Cepeda and Juan Pablo Raba have joined forces to produce “Domestic Animals,” one of the highlights of the Sanfic Fiction Lab project. The film is directed by Rafael Martínez Moreno and was shot at Colombia’s Ferviente Films.
*Santiago Lab Fiction has signed with Chilean director Ernesto Meléndez, winner of the Guadalajara Co-Production Award, the first contract with a main cast that includes Aline Koppenheim (“1976”), Alejandro Goik (“1976”) and Francisca Gavilan (“Violeta Goes to Heaven”). The company has also acquired the soundtrack rights to the music of the famous Chilean artist of the 1960s, Cecilia La Incomparable, also known as Cecilia Pantoja. The story revolves around a foreign actor who stars in a gay porn film and falls in love with his co-star, his brother-in-law.
*Here is Better Than There, Sanfic Lab's science fiction competition entry, directed by JP Echeverría Echegoyen and produced by Alejandro Ugarte and Infractor Films, about a couple whose lives are turned upside down by a violent, alcoholic tenant, has confirmed the casting of Juan Pablo Ogalde (Paraiso B). The project has been selected for the Venice Production Bridge.
*Madrid-based Luminosa Venture Films is set to co-produce the multimedia animation project “Hollow Flowers.”
*Germany's Weltfilm is teaming up with Bolivia's CQ Films, Argentina's Maravillacine and France's L'Œil Vif to support Martín Boulocq's Criminal Body, which was screened to positive acclaim at Sanfic Industria's IberoAmerican Work in Progress exhibition.
*The sci-fi thriller “La Isla,” starring International Emmy Award-nominated actress Daniela Ramirez (“Isabel: The Intimate Story of Isabel Allende”), will premiere in southern Chile in October. The script was written by Felipe Carmona (“Prison in the Andes”), the series is directed by Rodrigo Susarte (“Jen Mishima,” “Infant”) and produced and presented by Pablo Díaz del Río at Rio Estudios in Chile.
