Once again,CinemaChile has the honor Of presenting to the world the best of chilean documentary: a feature film and a short film that are the faithful reflection of the talent and freshness that distinguish our cinema. We’re talking about the opera prima Adriana’s Pact and A Moon Made of Iron, two magnificent works that give life to a new edition of Thursdays of Chilean Cinema.
It’s unusual for a debut film to cause as much commotion as Lissette Orozco managed to do with her documentary “Adriana’s Pact”, demonstrating not just her immense cinematic talent, but also her bravery in sharing her personal journey and having it resonate universally. Since its premiere at the Berlinale, the film has participated in more than 100 festivals and received 25 awards, among which include the Peace Prize in Berlin, and the nomination for Best Film at the Fénix and the Platino Awards.
Adriana’s Pact, produced by Storyboard Media and Salmon Producciones and co-produced by Carnada Films, Ursus Films, La Post, and 235, a Colombian production company, and was made with the support of Corfo, Tribeca Film Institute, DocsDF, and Industry Guadalajara, it’s one of the most emblematic Chilean documentaries of late, an instrumental piece in understanding how the effects of the dictatorship remain latent in new generations.
Adriana’s Pact drives us to question our childhood idols by way of the director’s own experience, who begins to dismantle the dark past of Adriana, her favorite aunt.
The film is constructed through an intimate narrative and a fresh perspective of a moment in history in which Orozco wasn’t alive yet. It will transform into an investigative device, driven by the desire to know the truth hidden by a former worker of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the secret police of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Lissette Orozco is a director, producer, and screenwriter. She was assistant director of the documentary Lemebel by Joanna Reposi, the film that won the Teddy Award at the 2019 Berlinale. She directed several short documentaries that were awarded in the Museum of Memory and Human Rights’ National Contest, and as a creator she has worked on docu-realities Match and 4to Medio.
She is currently working on documentaries Después de Leonor, about adoption, and producing the documentaries Positivo, para Violeta about HIV, and Dalila about the Armero tragedy in Colombia.
Click here to watch Adriana's Pact
A Moon Made of Iron by Francisco Rodríguez is a short experimental documentary produced by Bertrand Scalabre that premiered at the 2018 Copenhagen International Documentary Festival.
This 28-minute work was shot on 16mm film and won the award for Best Latin American Short Film at the 2018 Valdivia Film Festival. It also had an important international run that contemplated events like the Punto de Vista Festival and the Viennale.
It’s a film with hypnotic cinematography, simultaneously political and intimate, where four Chinese workers disappear in the ocean, having leapt from a boat as it crosses the Strait of Magellan in an attempt to reach the Chilean coast and escape the conditions of exploitation in which they find themselves.
Francisco Rodríguez is a graduate filmmaker from Le Fresnoy and has directed the films Samanta, Appels télephoniques and Why Are They Equipped With Eyes?, among others. His work explores the multiplicity of visions, the opacity of violence, the mark of the dead on the world of the living, and the orality in language.
His films have been presented in Film at Lincoln Center, CPH:DOX, Shanghai Film Festival, Courtisane, Doclisboa, ZINEBI, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, and Collection Lambert.
