La Sagrada Familia

Sebastián Lelio’s first feature took advantage of the freedoms and aesthetic possibilities of shooting digitally in Chile in the 2000s. He gathered together his actors and made them live together for a week on location, asking them to improvise based on a pre-established structure that takes the form of a tragedy; the script was ten pages long, and the plot already laid out, but the “how” was still open. The subsequent story unfolds in the beach house, owned by a family of architects, during the Easter holidays. Marco, a student of the discipline, has a competitive and unhealthy relationship with his father. Soledad, his mother, is always trying to calm them down. When Sofia, Marco’s girlfriend, arrives with her bohemian airs and provocative eroticism, conflict ensues. A modern retelling of the mystery of passion and earthly paradise, LA SAGRADA FAMILIA was shot using a handheld camera whose numerous close-ups reveal a desire to move away from the Chilean cinema of the time, to get as near as possible to what seems insignificant but is in fact vitally alive. Sebastián Lelio made the bold gambit and experiment of documenting a constructed reality. (Dominga Sotomayor)

With DESDE SIEMPRE.

Sebastián Lelio: 4 (1995, K), CUATRO (1996, K), SMOG (2000, K), FRAGMENTOS URBANOS (2002, KO-REGIE), CIUDAD DE MARAVILLAS (2002, K), CARGA VITAL (2003, K), NAVIDAD (2009), EL AÑO DEL TIGRE (2011), GLORIA (2013), UNA MUJER FANTÁSTICA (2017), DISOBEDIENCE (2017), GLORIA BELL (2018), EL PRODIGIO (2022)