Eight Chilean doc companies will be in La Rochelle this year to discuss collaboration with the great and the good of the international production, finance, sales and distribution sectors. The headline project Diary of an Infiltrator (Diario de un infiltrado), a Chilean co-production with Spain and Italy and co-directed by Saúl Valverde and Samuel León, is part of the official selection in the History Pitch section. The other Chilean companies in attendance are La Ventana Cine, Cábala, Raki Films, Tres Tercios, Villano, We Are South, and Voladores Films.
Even though there have been notable Chilean projects selected for past Sunny Sides, this is the first year that a full Chilean delegation is present in La Rochelle. This year’s participation is organised by Chiledoc, the sector brand for Chilean documentaries worldwide.
“For the first time, this exceptional documentary market, primarily focused on TV content, will welcome a delegation of Chilean producers. Alongside the attending projects, we are proud of the selection of a national co-production in one of the market’s pitches. For years, there has been considerable interest from Sunny Side of the Doc in fostering a more robust presence for Chile; abroad, there is a high value placed on our productions,” says Chiledoc director Paula Ossandón.
Adds Raúl Vilches, head of Creative Economy at ProChile: “We are convinced that our work contributes to diversification and enhances the value and quality of our exportable offerings.”
The History Pitch project Diary of an Infiltrator is co-directed by Samuel León and Saúl Valverde and produced by Samuel León (Bioesférica Filmes, Chile), Alberto Rull (Vértice 360, España) and Marco Visalberghi (Doclab, Italia). From 1972 to 1974, the Spanish filmmaker and journalist Miguel Herberg, supported by the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, dared to defy the Pinochet regime. He infiltrated the ranks of the extreme Chilean right wing and collected hundreds of documents and photographs that shed new light on the coup in Chile, the involvement of the CIA, and the bloody and brutal repression that followed. He also documented unique material about Pinochet’s concentration camps, which he later brought to light, forcing the regime to release many prisoners. From then on, Miguel’s name was number one on the Chilean secret service’s blacklist. Today, 50 years later, Miguel is on his way to restart his journey, reunite with those former prisoners, and unveil an unpublished page of history…
Cábala, a production company with much experience in creating series for streaming platforms and television, arrives in La Rochelle with Not One Less, a documentary series that explores and reveals the very active Latin American feminist movement, based on cases of gender violence and femicide in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Spain. The series is directed by Paula Rodríguez Sickert and produced by Gonzalo Argandoña and Diego Rojas.
La Ventana Cine (who have attended previous editions of Sunny Side) attend in 2023 with Antarctic Mission and Lonko, projects in the post-production stage and development respectively. Both projects are directed by Jota Loyola and produced by Juan Ramírez, Carola Fuentes, and Rafa Valdeavellano. In the first project, beneath the Antarctic ice a group of scientists discover a story of hope amid the catastrophe caused by climate change. Lonko, meanwhile, offers a story set in a Mapuche community. After the death of a renowned Lonko, or Mapuche leader, his children must decide who will continue the leadership of their community.
Raki Films has conducted long-term research into, and has extensively shot footage for, for the series Children of Water, directed by Joy Penroz and produced by Sylvain Grain. In the project, which is in post-production, we see children from all over the world discovering and promoting knowledge of ancient civilizations to protect the essential treasure they have left: water. Each episode is set in a different country, focusing on a specific water conservation tradition, and features a child who invites us to discover how to revive the ancient connection between humans and water. The series takes us to the Yucatan jungle in Mexico, the mountains of Cusco in Peru, the heart of the Colombian páramos, the volcanoes in Chile, the Saloum delta in Senegal, and the oasis of Tafilalet in Morocco.
Directed by Diego Breit and David Guzmán and produced by Tres Tercios, Sketches of the End of the World of the production company house takes us back centuries ago when naturalists like Charles Darwin, Marianne North, and Claudio Gay used illustrations to unveil never-before-seen species to the world. Today, a new generation of illustrators carries on their legacies in an unprecedented documentary series, this time to explore territories in crisis and “sketch” ecosystems threatened by the human species.
The production company Villano presents the series Freed, directed by Juan Pablo Sallato and produced by Juan Pablo Sallato and Juan Ignacio Sabatini. It portrays the battles and stories of inmates that seek to re-immerse themselves into society while being haunted by the ghosts of their violent past.
We Are South is taking three projects to Sunny Side: A Country Imagines Itself by Miguel Soffia and produced by Camila Maureira and Valeria Fuentes, which is presented in both feature-length and medium-length formats. The film sets out to explain how Chile embarked on a new and progressive constitutional process, only to reject the resulting proposal later. What went wrong? What lessons are there for modern democracies? Rooting: Bamboo in Latin America. Season 1: Mexico, directed by Miguel Soffia, is both a series and medium-length film. The project presents Juan Ignacio and Francesca, two architects passionate about sustainability and bamboo, who travel through Mexico to explore this material’s latest cultivation, design, and construction trends. The third We Are South project is Extremes of the Americas (6 x 52’) which looks at climate change from a local perspective. In Patagonia and northern Canada, people and animals are already adapting to a new normal. The series is directed by Miguel Soffia and Kelsey Eliasson.
Miguel is the name of the feature film project by Voladores Films. Directed by Omar O Zeballos and produced by Sophie Chevallier-Z, the synopsis read: “The murder of Miguel, an adventure friend in Mexico, shocks me. He had stayed in Chiapas, far away from his native Italy, to continue his work as an environmental activist. I reconnect with my friends from that time to find out what happened and to ensure that his crime does not go unpunished in a Mexico that now seems strange and dangerous to me.”
Chiledoc is hosting a Happy Hour June 20 (17.00) at Sunny Side.
