“1976,” the awaited first feature of Chile’s Manuela Martelli, has closed first new major territories for sales company Luxbox before its world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight later this upcoming week.
The film is produced out of Chile by writer-directors Omar Zúñiga (“The Strong Ones”) and Dominga Sotomayor (“Too Late to Die Young”) at auteur-focused Chile-based Cinestación (“Too Late to Die Young”) as well as Alejandra Garcia and Andrés Wood, another celebrated Chilean director (“Violeta Went to Heaven”) at Wood Productions. Nathalia Videla Peña and Juan Pablo Gugliotta at Argentina’s Magma Cine co-produce.
“1976” is set, as its title implies, in 1976, one of the bloodiest years of Augusto Pinochet’s hugely bloody dictatorship. Carmen, the wife of a well-heeled Santiago de Chile doctor heads off to her beach house to supervise its renovation during the holidays.
The local priest appeals to her to help cure a young man who’s escaped from jail. Or so, the priest says. And Carmen’s life and sense of identity changes for ever.
One of the very first films to portray the period from the point of view of a woman, “1976” has closed Spain with upscale SVOD platform Filmin and Italy with Fil Rouge Media, a Rome-based theatrical distributor whose more prominent pick-ups include Gemma Arterton-starrer “The Escape.”
Leopardo (Portugal), Bir Film (Turkey) and Weird Wave (Greece) have also licensed the film in a near Southern Europe clean sweep.
Deals were negotiated by Luxbox’s new head of international sales Jennyfer Gautier.
Luxbox announced on the cusp of Cannes that Dulac Distribution had closed French distribution.
“It’s a great start for the journey of ‘1976’ with this strong market debut and the first enthusiastic reactions.These first deals are the first signs of other upcoming commitments on behalf of Manuela Martelli’s film. It’s a good omen for this bold feature debut,” said Luxbox CEO Hédi Zardi.