"I would love for someone after watching 'Luna en Escorpio' to decide to rebel and reveal themselves to the expectations and labels that society often imposes on us",
Ernesto Araya
Luna en Escorpio, the debut film by director Ernesto Araya, will have its world premiere in Mexico at the Feratum Film Fest, which will run until November 25 and has positioned itself as one of the most important fantastic genre competitions in Latin America.
The thriller and black comedy film, which is part of our 2021 Chilean International Film Catalogue, portrays the story of Ruben, who leads a sad and boring life in the care of his abusive and elderly father. All this changes when he meets his neighbor Lucrecia, who will take him out of his self-absorption and trigger him to bring back dark secrets of the past.
About the premiere, the director says that "we received with joy and pride the news of being part of the official selection of this Mexican festival because it has been dedicated to promoting fantasy and horror films for years". There, the film will share the screen with productions that have been awarded at other festivals such as Sitges.
As Araya recounts, he has always found the stories about characters who think they know themselves inspiring, but then they go through a process of introspection and they realize that piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit them was just what they had hidden inside themselves. That 's how Luna en Escorpio was born.
We invite you to enjoy this revealing conversation with Ernesto!
What do you think the experience of premiering Luna en Escorpio will be like and how do you think the film will dialogue with Latin American and world audiences alike?
The beauty of a festival is that it can give the same level of interest to a large production as to a more limited budget production, because finally what matters is that it is a good story, well told.
Luna en Escorpio, in particular, I believe that it can dialogue with audiences from anywhere in the world because it touches on a completely universal topic such as self-esteem and the sense of self-worth, and it does so without losing sight of the fact that this story takes place in Chile, but it could also happen to someone in Argentina, Peru or Colombia.
What do you want to convey with the film?
I would love for someone after watching Luna en Escorpio to have an epiphany and decide to rebel and reveal themselves to the expectations and labels that society often imposes on us.
How was the job of finding the right cast to bring the characters to life?
I wrote the characters thinking about the actors I could count on because they are all my friends whom I had already seen in other works. I am more sensitive to sounds and I put a lot of focus on the voice of the actors and their way of speaking. Maybe that’s why I like the mix of accents that is given in this production. Then there is the aspect of photogenicity and there I lean towards asymmetries and atypical features, such as large eyes or a very long nose. I happen to forget perfect faces easily.
Telling a story through a suitable film genre can sometimes be the most difficult task for a director.
For the young director, the biggest challenge of his film was to achieve the empathy of the audience from laughter rather than grief. He says that he wanted to escape from "that hyperrealism that seems to hold a large part of Chilean cinema captive" and that is why he introduced elements of fantastic cinema into the plot. His decision to also choose dark comedy came from the eagerness of telling a story about the drama of feeling like a freak, someone who does not fit into his own existence, but doing it from humor.
What is coming for you as a director and what other projects are you planning after FERATUM FILM FEST?
At the moment, I keep writing different stories, always going through my cinephile references, ranging from comedy to fantasy. In addition, I hope to be able to continue participating in other festivals or meeting activities, to contact other filmmakers, actors, etc. because I feel that these last two years have been of too much hiding in lockdown and we need to meet again and portray what happens in the world and so, hopefully, to contribute to changing things for the better.
