Post Mortem

Pablo Larraín / Chile, Mexico, Germany / 2012 / 98 min
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  • Venice International Film Festival

  • New York Film Festival

  • San Sebastian Int'l Film Festival

  • The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA)

    Nomination for Best Foreign Film

  • Havana Film Festival

    Second Grand Coral, Best Actress (Antonia Zegers), Best Actor (Alfredo Castro), Best Screenplay, Fipresci Award

  • Guadalajara International Film Festival

    Best Film, Best Actor (Alfredo Castro), Best Photography (Sergio Armstrong)

  • Cartagena International Film Festival

    Best Film

  • Antofagasta Film Festival

    Best Film, Best Actress (Antonia Zegers)
Spanish Film Club
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Synopsis

Spanish with English subtitles

Pablo Larraín first broke onto the international film scene when Tony Manero premiered at the Cannes Directors´ Fortnight. This Chilean director has now followed up with visceral Post Mortem. Mario Cornejo is going about his daily business of writing autopsy reports at the military hospital in Santiago, when the Pinochet coup d´état shakes this heretofore apolitical character out of his state of apathy. This passionately executed film by Larraín has met with brilliant reviews, competing at the Venice Film Festival and nabbing second place at the Havana Film Festival´s Coral Awards. Post Mortem is neither a reconstruction of the Pinochet days, nor an angry denunciation of the period.

Instead, Larraín offers a borderline-surreal –Lynchian–black comedy to show, among other things, how easy it is for ordinary people to sleepwalk into a climate of atrocity, either as victims, collaborators, or as both. As in his first film, Larraín invests his characters with metaphoric undertones, suffusing the city of Santiago with a surreal visual texture that evokes the nightmarish landscape it was rapidly becoming.

Related Subjects
About the Director
Born in Santiago in 1976, Pablo Larraín is one of Chile’s foremost directors and a major producer through his production company, Fabula. Ema is the director’s eighth feature film, following successes such as the Academy Award-nominated films No (2012) and Jackie (2016), as well as the Golden Globe-nominated films for Best Foreign Language Film Neruda (2016) and The Club (2015).
Press

“…begins as a deadpan comedy and ends as a harrowing tragedy.” – Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Impressively directed and superbly written, this is a powerful, thought-provoking and ultimately disturbing drama with stunning production design work and another superb central performance from Tony Manero star Alfredo Castro.” – Matthew Turner, VIEW LONDON

“a rigorous, formally controlled yet emotionally gripping drama.” – Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

“Visceral…brilliant… something straight out of a Kafkan nightmare.” – Tom Hall, INDIEWIRE

“The personal becomes the political, and the historical, in this queasily imagined nightmare.” – Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN

“Takes Tony Manero’s sardonically macabre humor even further. The film’s stylization…works to extraordinary effect, the action seeming to take place in an uncannily still dream world.” – Wally Hammond, TIME OUT

“Larraín’s clever use of almost humorously unconventional framings, expressively washed-out colour tones and mysterious low-key performances brings together human comedy and historical tragedy to unique, and surprisingly emotional, effect.” – Jonathan Romney, SIGHT & SOUND

“A sometimes shocking, often moving journey through a blood-stained corner of the past. Like Costa Gavras’s Missing through the eyes of an everyday Chilean.” – Philip Wilding, EMPIRE MAGAZINE

“A strong albeit grim film, this is recommended. ” – Charles Cassady, VIDEO LIBRARIAN

Notes on the Film

This is the story of an apparently insignificant and charmless couple. It’s Chile’s story during the military coup. Mario’s ideal of conquering the impossible love of a woman is also the ideal of a nation trying to conquer a noble but unattainable political model (Socialism). All this amid the bodies of those who died as a result of military ideals imposed with no care for their cost or consequences. Set in one of Chile’s darkest and bloodiest periods, Post Mortem weaves together three cinematographic, aesthetic and ethical strands – the testimonial, the historical and the fictional – seeking its poetic rhythm in the confusion, absurdity and aftermath of a journey with no purpose.

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