SanSebastian

As part of its Klasikoak section, the San Sebastian Festival will host the world premiere of El realismo socialista / Socialist Realism (1973-2023), an unfinished film by the Chilean moviemaker Raúl Ruiz, which has been rescued and reconstructed by the moviemaker Valeria Sarmiento, his widow and regular collaborator. The world of workers and the lumpenproletariat run into the petite intellectual bourgeoisie in this hitherto-unseen film, conceived as a satirical reading of President Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity process, prior to the military coup d’état that took place in Chile 50 years ago.  

El realismo socialista is a production by POETASTROS, a film production company headed by the actress and moviemaker Chamila Rodríguez and the editor and director Galut Alarcón, who were also behind the recovery and completion of another two posthumous works by the famous Chilean director: La telenovela errante (2017), premiered at the 70th Locarno Festival, and El tango del viudo y su espejo deformante (2020), shown in the Forum section of the 70th Berlinale.

Raúl Ruiz (Puerto Montt, Chile. 1941-Paris, France. 2011), one of the historic names of Chilean cinema, received countless recognitions during his career. For example, Tres tristes tigres / Three Sad Tigers, 1969) earned him the Golden Leopard at Locarno Festival, while with Genealogies d’un crime (Geneologies of a Crime, 1997) he received Berlin Festival’s Silver Bear. Outstanding among other works by Ruiz are two presented in San Sebastian’s Official Selection: Fado, majeur et mineur / Fado, Major and Minor (1994) and Mistérios de Lisboa / Mysteries of Lisbon (2010), for which he landed the Silver Shell for Best Director.

Valeria Sarmiento (Valparaíso, Chile. 1948), who worked closely with Raúl Ruiz as the editor of many of his films, has put her name to around thirty movies including documentaries and features. With her first film, Notre mariage (1984), she won the Donostia Grand Prix for New Filmmakers at the San Sebastian Festival, to which she later returned with As Linhas de Torres / Lines of Wellington (Zabaltegi-Specials, 2012) and Le cahier noir / The Black Book (Official Selection, 2018).

In the coming days the San Sebastian Festival will announce the other titles making up Klasikoak, the section featuring classics old and new from the history of universal cinema screened in restored versions.