Cinema
The Frontier
La Frontera
Ricardo Larraín · 1991
Synopsis
In the last years of the dictatorship, Ramiro Orellana, a teacher in Santiago, signs a complaint about the arrest of a colleague. He is sentenced to relegation in a remote town of the Frontera, the former boundary between the Mapuche people and Spanish colonisation. There he lives, according to T13, a kind of exile in his own country, among colourful inhabitants; the AFI mentions a woman, the sea and a landscape that govern life in the place. Patricio Contreras plays Orellana, opposite Gloria Laso.
Context
The first feature film of its director, co-written with Jorge Goldenberg, the film received the Silver Bear at the Berlin festival in 1992, then a Goya and the prize for direction at the Havana festival, according to T13. It was Chile's entry for the Oscar for foreign film and, according to the AFI, many critics held it to be the best Chilean film in twenty years; T13 notes its share of magical realism. It also brought Patricio Contreras, settled in Argentina since the seventies, back to the screen, recalls Radio Universidad de Chile.
Who it is for
A film of about two hours, somewhere between political chronicle and magical realism; released in English under the title The Frontier.
Prizes and reception
Silver Bear at Berlin in 1992, and awarded in Spain the Goya for best Spanish-language foreign film.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.