Fandango Sales has boarded Sergio Castro-San Martín’s “The Chilean” ahead of its world premiere at Locarno.
Set in 1976, the film follows Chilean miner Aldo Marín as he flees Chile’s regime for Turin, where he meets Luciana, a doctor who performs illegal abortions. But his attempt to rebuild his life is threatened by a talent that is also his curse: building bombs.
“The 1970s were a defining decade for both Italy and Chile. Although the outcomes were very different, the motivations behind the social and political movements in both countries shared important similarities,” Sergio Castro-San Martín told Variety.
“To speak about that period means, in many ways, revisiting the beginning of the massive waves of migration in Chile and Latin America triggered by forced exile. Today, that same feeling seems to be resurfacing. Not necessarily through demonstrations in the streets, but in the digital sphere.”
The greatest challenge of “The Chilean” – which will be shown in Locarno’s Piazza Grande section – was to make a period film that felt “deeply rooted in the present,” he noted.
“When you make films set in the past – especially in such a politically charged era – it’s very easy to fall into propaganda or didactic political discourse. That’s precisely what ‘The Chilean’ tries to avoid.”
Camilo Arancibia stars as Aldo alongside Sara Serraiocco, Gaetano Bruno, Andrew Bargsted and Lorenzo Richelmy. “The Chilean” is produced by Dispàrte, Equeco and Cinédokké in association with Redibis Film.
While inspired by Juan Cristóbal Guarello’s book “Aldo Marín, Carne de Cañón,” the film is its own beast.
“[In the book], the protagonist dreams of returning to Chile to assassinate Pinochet. In ‘The Chilean,’ Aldo’s dream is much simpler and, I believe, more universal: he wants to reunite with his wife and son. To do that, he must earn enough money.”
He added: “By shifting the focus in this way, the story transcends ideological boundaries and becomes a profoundly human. In that sense, exile naturally leads us to one of today’s most pressing social issues: immigration. This is a theme that permeates every layer of the film.”
Recreating a historical period requires an “understanding of the society that inhabited that world and the people who gave it life.”
“I wanted the language of ‘The Chilean’ to be inherently dual. Chileans speak Italian and Italians speak Spanish. Police officers and militants are both forced to learn each other’s language – a fundamental principle of guerrilla warfare is to know your enemy as well as you know yourself.”
Aldo’s “heart remains in Chile while his body is in Italy.” But he’s not the only orphan in the story, as Luciana is also scarred by a painful past.
“Together, they embody a militant left, driven by revolutionary ideals, that ultimately found itself orphaned. Abandoned by its parties and leaders, and eventually by its own utopias. The characters drift through the streets alone, like ghosts, unable to come together, defeated and forced to reinvent themselves.”
Today, many of our political concepts have been turned upside down, he argued.
“Words that once belonged to the language of the left have been appropriated by the right, and we now live in a landscape where ideological meanings have become blurred.”
However, Aldo’s struggle is not only political: “It is deeply personal.”
“That’s why ‘The Chilean’ brings the idea of the revolutionary back into the domestic sphere. ‘I don’t plant the bombs. I only build them.’ This line defines Aldo as someone who sees himself as an active observer of both his own life and the world around him. His burden is one of accumulation: accumulated anger, accumulated grief over exile, accumulated betrayal. It is within this shared anger – reflected also in Luciana – that he ultimately breaks the promise he made to himself.”
Aldo Marín Piñones is a “ticking time bomb,” said Castro-San Martín. And so is his film.
“Every scene moves quietly towards an inevitable explosion, like a spark slowly traveling along a fuse. Everything is on the verge of detonation. We know something is going to happen – we just don’t know when or how.”
