Life

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: May, 2024

Production stage: Editing

Budget: €135.000 (83% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivales, Sales Agents, Distributors, Co-Producers, Gap Financing

Synopsis:

Fresia, a young Pewenche girl who has lived all her life in a community that mistrusts Chilean institutions, must gradually move away from her home and territory because she is pregnant. Fresia visits clinics for her maternity check-ups, travels to cities she does not know and finally enters a public hospital, where after a long wait she gives birth to her baby, Dalila, who is born with the cleft palate.

Director’s profile:

Born in 1982 in Kiev, in a Chilean-Russian family. Living in Chile since the age of 10, he first studied Medicine. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as a general practitioner in the Pewenche territory of the Bio-bio river. During that time he was the chief of the maternity department at the Santa Barbara hospital, and in 2007 he was the founder of the Intercultural Health Team. Then, he graduated as a film director at the EICTV in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. In 2012 he was selected at Nikita Mikhalkov’s Film Academy in Moscow. He’s been guest teacher of film directing at the Escuela Veracruzana de Cine Luis Buñuel and the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico. Previous documentary works include his co-direction with the Mapuche filmmaker José Carihuentro “Pentukuwün, Viajando con Imágenes” (24 min, 2016); “Arbenin’s Mask” (50 min, 2017) and “Through the Wall”, feature- length documentary.

Producer’s profile:

Michel Toledo is a chilean director, screenwriter and producer. He studied Film at the University of Valparaíso, Chile; Advanced Screenwriting at EICTV, Cuba and has a Master’s degree in Film and Digital Image from the University of Sydney in Australia. He is the founder and creative director of Totem Productions, a company dedicated to create audiovisual projects for film, television and digital media. He develops audiovisual works in short, feature film and serial formats, both in the documentary and fiction genres. He also works as an academic in the University of Viña del Mar, where he teaches photography and production in the degree of Film Studies and Audiovisual Communication and transmedia production at the Master’s Digital Communication and Transmedia from the same university. Actually he is in charge of research and creation for the film studies department.