Film Factory Boards Andrés Wood’s Fox-Distributed ‘Araña’ (EXCLUSIVE)
By John Hopewell
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – BUENOS AIRES — Vicente Canales’ Film Factory Entertainment has boarded “Araña,” directed by one of Chile’s foremost filmmakers, Andrés Wood, and distributed in North and Latin America by 20th Century Fox.
Produced by Alejandra García at Santiago de Chile’s Wood Producciones, “Araña” is co-produced by Brazil’s BossaNovaFilms and Argentina’s Magma Cine, two of Southern America’s most ambitious co-production players.
BossaNovaFilms already teamed on Wood’s Sundance winner, “Violeta Went to Heaven.”
Written by Wood and Guillermo Calderón, co-writer of Pablo Larrain’s “The Club” and writer of his “Neruda,” regarded by some as his finest film to date, “Araña,” a political thriller, also joins a lineage of Latin American movies which in their multi-lateral co-production structure, stars – such as Mercedes Morán, who plays Inés, more mainstream tropes, and above norm budget, set out to score audiences outside their country of origin.
Wood’s credits include “Sundance winner “Violeta Went to Heaven,” and “Machuca,” a big sales breakout which examines through a sweet-bitter coming of age narrative the social context which helped Pinochet’s military coup to prosper.
“Araña” comes into the coup from another angle, Chile’s ultra-nationalist movement, Fatherland and Liberty. It turns on three once inseparable friends, Inés, husband Justo and Gerardo, all members of Fatherland and Liberty. which organizes attacks and crimes to sow disorder in the build-up to Augusto Pinochet’s 1973. Ines and Gerardo carry on a passionate love affair. But in one operation, where they assassinate an Allende aide-de-camp, an act of treachery separates them, seemingly for ever.
More than 40 years later, Inés and Justo, having ridden Chile’s neo-liberal wave, are now powerful, prestigious professionals. Then Gerardo erupts into the couple’s privileged existence. He’s now a problem.
The film, on paper, begs large questions, such as whether the basis of support for Pinochet’s coup was always, in essence, economic, not ideological.
“‘Araña’ is a political thriller with theatrical potential all over the world, for me a clear example of the big leap in quality of Chilean filmmaking in recent years,” Canales said.
“This is a risk-taking, daring, quite unpredictable, original in its viewpoint and discomfiting,” added García, noting that “it transcends beyond its individual story” and “uses the tools of its cinematographic format in a very singular way.”
Shot in Santiago de Chile, the south of Chile and Buenos Aires,” “Araña” is now in post-production. It co-stars María Valverde, Marcelo Alonso, Pedro Fontaine, Felipe Armas and Gabriel Urzúa.
