Director Felipe Ríos on Karlovy Vary Competition Film ‘The Man of the Future’

Chilean filmmaker Felipe Ríos’ “The Man of the Future” holds the unique distinction of being the only film from his country to participate in the main competition at Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where it world premiered on Wednesday evening.

Set on the highways of the the seemingly endless ranges of Chile’s southern Andes, Ríos’ road film tracks an estranged father and daughter who end up on the same lonely road south, he a truckdriver and she a hitchhiker in separate rigs.

The unplanned encounter offers the opportunity of reconciliation, and possibly a path to a shared future. The minimalist film set in anything-but minimal surroundings also proved a chance for Ríos to face his own troubled relationship with his father.

“The Man of the Future” is produced by Chile’s Quijote Films and co-producers Sagrado Cine and La Unión de los Ríos. Celebrated Argentine filmmaker Alejandro Fadel, a two-time Cannes participant with 2012’s “The Wild Ones” and last year’s “Murder Me, Monster,” co-wrote the screenplay.

It stars Chilean TV star Antonia Giesen (“Río Oscuro”), Pablo Larraín regular José Soza (“The Club,” “Neruda”) and Argentine rising star on both sides of the camera María Alche, who wrote and directed last year’s Locarno and San Sebastian standout “Familia Sumergida.”

Ríos talked with Variety ahead of Karlovy Vary about writing with Fadel, his relationship to the story and who the real “Man of the Future” is.

This is the first Chilean film to screen in the main competition at Karlovy Vary. How did that come about?

It’s a great honor 
to be able to premiere the film 
in a festival as important and lively as Karlovy Vary. Not only because it
 is the first
 time that Chile has a film
 in the
 official competition, but also because it
 is the result of a very long
 process. Being able to share the material for the first time with the public after so long is very comforting for me.
 I have a lot
 of anxiety before seeing how viewers react. For me, to screen the material with the public 
is, in a way, to return to the origins of 
the project, to its premise, which is to travel, and feel the emotions of another.

Can you talk about the screenwriting process with Alejandro Fadel? Where did the story come from?

Alexandro was key to the writing process. He had a very different 
way of approaching 
the story. From the beginning 
he 
wanted
to
 center the story around Elena, who was a secondary character at first. He always had a lot of respect for my 
creation space, but at 
the 
same time 
he always
 maintained a strong point of
 view, and that constant debate helped me find an appropriate way to express the emotions I wanted to communicate. I think 
Fadel’s work in writing and 
filming, and lead actress Antonia Giesen on set, helped me to be able to connect with the feminine side of the story, which 
in my opinion is the most 
interesting part of the film.

Michelsen is a man who belongs to a world of the past that is disappearing around him, so why did you choose the film’s title?

For me
 it is very important to be
 able to capture spaces, characters, customs and looks of a 
world that 
is endangered, 
such as 
Patagonia. I think that those men and women who live in such an isolated world can often lack the tools to express their emotions, perhaps because 
of the 
presence of a silence so deep that sometimes it’s preferable not to speak. I connected 
a 
lot with that way
 of
 relating, even though I’m from the city and am part of a supposedly hyperconnected world. I find myself unable to connect emotionally with others in a sincere way. I think we are in a world
 where one
 tends to focus on individualism and dodge real human relationships. Elena shows a 
tremendous valor in facing her father who she hasn’t seen for years and
 try to heal old wounds. To me, she is the man of the future.

This is your first


 feature film. 


How did you find the process?

First, I 
let myself fall in love with 
environments that inspired me. I listened to
 the few words of 
silent people and felt the temperature of a cold 
and distant 
place. But as time went 
on, I realized 
that was just the context for telling something that I had inside, which was my relationship with 
my 
father. I used my
 biography, 
pains that I’ve had since childhood, and I realized that
 that world that created me was the right setting 
to 
express 
my emotions. For 
me,
 art becomes a kind of therapy, a medicine. For a long time, I thought I was writing about a trucker in Patagonia. I
t was a revelation when I realized 
that the story I had in my hands was about my relationship with my father.

This film is very Chilean in its language, look and characters, but the themes it addresses are completely universal. What is its intended audience?

I find it wonderful that such a remote and particular place can be the context to talk about how important and difficult it 
is to 
forgive. I felt a great need to capture the essence of that place and to be able to make the viewer travel on those southern routes, but without 
neglecting the most 
important part for me, which is to be able to empathize about something nobody can escape, which is the relationship
between parents and children, and the ability to
close wounds that often come from early childhood.