Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s sixth feature, NERUDA, a noir reimagining of the Nobel Prize-winning poet and politician’s struggle with the state, will have its world premiere in the 2016 Cannes Film Fest at the Directors’ Fortnight.
With a screenplay by Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderon, (Sundance 2012 World Cinema Jury Prize winner for Violeta Went to Heaven), NERUDA reunites Pablo Larraín with many of the team from his Oscar-nominee No, including Gael García Bernal, Luis Gnecco, and regular acting collaborators Alfredo Castro, Alejandro Goic, Jaime Vadell and Marcelo Alonso, as well as Roberto Farías, who starred in Larraín’s 2015 Berlin Grand Jury Prize winner The Club. Mercedes Morán and Pablo Derquí round out the cast.
Set in It’s 1948, when the Cold War has reached Chile. In congress, Senator Pablo Neruda (Gnecco) accuses the government of betraying the Communist Party and is swiftly impeached by President Gonzalez Videla (Castro). Police Prefect Oscar Peluchonneau (Garcia Bernal) is assigned to arrest the poet.
Neruda tries to flee the country with his wife Delia del Carril (Morán) but they are forced into hiding. In the struggle with his nemesis Peluchonneau, Neruda sees an opportunity to reinvent himself. He plays with the Prefect, leaving clues designed to make their game of cat-and-mouse more dangerous, more intimate. In this story of persecution, Neruda recognizes his own heroic possibilities: a chance to become both a symbol for liberty and a literary legend.
“We are thrilled to be at this Fortnight!” says director Pablo Larrain. “We are spirited and happy to be back at such an important place, both for film and for us. We imagined and made a film about a novel that we would have liked for Neruda to read. We made a fabulous epic story, literary and foul-mouthed, an interpretation of the genius’s poems, a creative persecution. We had a great time making it, and we now have the honor of sharing it”.
NERUDA is the sixth feature film from director Pablo Larraín, following Fuga (2005), Tony Manero (2007 Cannes Film Festival, Directors’ Fortnight), Post Mortem (2008 Venice Film Festival, In Competition), No (2012 Cannes Film Festival, Directors’ Fortnight), and The Club (2015 Berlin Film Festival, In Competition). He also directed Profugos, HBO’s first ever series produced in Chile, in 2010 with a second series aired in 2013. He is a founding partner of the production company Fabula through which Larrain has acted as producer on feature films including Sebastián Silva’s Nasty Baby (2015 Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals) and Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria (Silver Bear winner at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival).
NERUDA is an international co-production of Chile’s Fabula, France’s Funny Balloons and Reborn Production, Spain’s Setembro Cine, Argentina’s AZ Films, and U.S.-based Participant Media. The film is produced by Juan de Dios Larraín, Peter Danner, Renan Artukmaç, Alejandro Zito, Ignacio Rey and Fernanda Del Nido and executive produced by Jeff Skoll and Jonathan King for Participant and Marc Simoncini for Reborn.
NERUDA will be distributed in Chile by Twentieth Century Fox. Wild Bunch Distribution will release the film in France with international sales via Funny Balloons which has been involved in all of Larraín’s films since Tony Manero; NERUDA is the ninth feature film collaboration between Fabula and Funny Balloons and marks Participant’s second collaboration with Fabula following Pablo Larraín’s Oscar®-nominee No.
Share this:
