By Hanna Rantala
VENICE (Reuters) – Chilean director Pablo Larrain, known for his Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana dramas “Jackie” and “Spencer,” chose General Augusto Pinochet as the subject of his latest film, “El Conde”.
The movie, which is screening in competition at the Venice Film Festival, depicts Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire whose family gathers at his remote hideout as he decides his time on earth has come to an end.
As Chile prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power, Larrain said it was time to show him on the screen.
“Pinochet has never been filmed before, never been portrayed, whether in cinema or television,” Larrain told a Venice press conference ahead of the Netflix title’s premiere.
The filmmaker, who co-wrote the movie’s screenplay, chose to tell the dictator’s story as a gruesome black-and-white satire.
“Probably it’s the only way. I think that if you were to avoid the satire, it could easily take you towards some form of empathy (towards Pinochet), and that’s not acceptable,” said Larrain.
During Pinochet’s bloody 17-year dictatorship, 1,469 people were forcibly disappeared, and thousands more tortured as political prisoners, according to the Ministry of Justice, based on fact-finding by various commissions.
Pinochet, who died in December 2006 at the age of 91, was never convicted of his responsibility for the crimes.
“There is a resurgence of the extreme right in Chile and I think this film is needed because it shows who Pinochet was and the things he did, the horrors he committed,” said 28-year-old Chilean actress Paula Luchsinger, who plays a young nun in “El Conde”.
“And I think that this is needed so that it never happens again.”
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
