Cuadro negro

CountryChile Year2025 Duration126 min. Projection formatDCP LanguageSpanish DirectionJose Luis Sepúlveda / Carolina Adriazola

World premiere

 

Sofía, a young journalist immersed in making an artistic documentary about the Chilean army, goes back to live with her grandmother after a breakdown in a relationship. There she meets María, a woman whose view of the military legacy contrasts with that of her grandmother, reflecting the tensions of a country marked by its history.

“Disconnected, diffuse, savage”: that was how Glauber Rocha imagined cinema of the future and he warned that this was a line that had been interrupted since L'Age d'Or by Buñuel. Carolina Adriazola and José Luis Sepúlveda have been making films for 20 years that could form part of that genealogy and that nowadays represent one of the most challenging collections in contemporary cinema. In their latest film, they return to some of their regular topics: the gap between person and mask, and how that space can be harnessed for the production of anarchic and destabilising situations, where the boundaries between the faked and the real are pulled down through a satire so ferocious that it appears rather unseemly. In Cuadro negro, a hellish project (the production of a documentary about the Chilean army) is the fantastical framework for portraying not only the protagonist —another memorable female character in the filmography of these filmmakers (the impressive Sofía Gómez)— but an entire society. The country is riddled with a systemic crisis, which is why every shot exudes an air of catastrophe. The main character serves as the core around which revolve the most antagonistic positions a society can produce. Her job as a documentalist allows her to issue orders to soldiers but also submerges her in a humiliating atmosphere. That polarity and the historical vocation of the film is duly introduced in its title: an event so macabre that it cannot be shown.

Manuel Asín

Promoted by
Gobierno de Navarra
Organized by
NICDO
With the aid of
Con la financiación del Gobierno de España. Instituto de la Cinematografía y las Artes Audiovisuales Acción Cultural Española Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia Financiado por la Unión Europea. NexGenerationEU
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