We celebrate three months from the beginning of this national cinema exhibition program. The “Thursdays of Chilean Cinema” have become a weekly appointment that cannot be postponed and a call to recognize the quality of our works and directors. During the next seven days it will be the turn of the feature film Ulises, by Oscar Godoy and the short film Rapaz, by Felipe Gálvez.
Ulises, Godoy's first feature, addresses the issue of immigration through Julio, a Peruvian migrant in Chile who seeks to adapt in a hostile country with the aim of obtaining a better quality of life.
This work, which speaks about the discrimination and difficulties that migrants in Chile must go through to adapt to a foreign society, was premiered internationally at the San Francisco Film Festival. In addition, he participated in the Havana Film Festival and in the section Horizontes Latinos, of the San Sebastián Film Festival, dedicated to cinema from this side of the world.
Produced by Fabula and Rizoma (Argentina) and starring the Argentine Jorge Román and Francisca Gavilán, Ulises is a film that seeks to open the range of representations of Chilean society. As Godoy stated in an interview with Latam Cinema in 2011, this feature film seeks to “convey the feeling of permanent uprooting experienced by someone who has traveled to live to another culture and what it causes in a person's soul”.
Godoy has directed the successful TV series Bala Loca (Chilevision, Netflix), nominated for the Platino Awards 2017 for Best Ibero-American Series; nominated for the 2017 Fenix Awards in the Best Acting Ensemble category and nominated for the 2017 Peabody Awards for Best Storytelling Entertainment.
In addition, he has been assistant director of the feature films by Pablo Larraín EMA, Neruda, El Club, No and Tony Manero and the series Prófugos (HBO) by Fabula. Also in the films Nacido y Criado by Pablo Trapero and Huacho by Alejandro Almendras, among others. Currently, he is preparing his next feature film titled Mujeres que matan, based on the book by writer Alberto Barrera.
Click here to see Ulysses
Rapaz is a short that made it to the headlines. Released in the Cannes Critics' Week in 2018, this 13-minute production crudely portrays a citizen's arrest, a collective ritual that has become common within Chile, in which a group of passers-by capture a thief stray and torture him before the police arrive.
Since its premiere, Rapaz has had a great reception in both the press and the public. On its way through France, the short was classified as a “political bomb” as it reflects on the limits of violence based on real cases of people who have decided to take justice into their own hands and also on the frustrations of Chilean society, citizen security, among other issues.
The performances were in hands of a great cast, conformed by Benjamín Westfal, Alex Rivera, Ernesto Meléndez, Andrew Bargsted, Claudia Cabezas and Roberto Farías. This acting and thematic quality allowed him to participate in several highly prestigious competitions such as the Huesca Festival, the Guajanato Festival, the New Latin American Cinema Festival in Havana, among many others.
Gálvez has directed outstanding short films such as Silencio en la sala, which received the BAFICI for Best Short Film 2009, and Yo de Aquí Estoy Mirando, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2011. In addition, he has worked as an editor in numerous feature films, among them Nunca vas a estar solo by Alex Anwandter (2015), Marilyn by Martín Rodríguez Redondo (2018), both premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlinale, and Princesita directed by Marialy Rivas, premiered at TIFF 2017. He is currently developing his first feature film Los colonos.
