An ailing mother and estranged sister (Paola Lattus) reluctantly coax prodigal daughter Silvia (Patricia Cuyul) home after her 30-year absence in “Death Brought you Back” (“La muerte te vio volver”), the debut film from emerging Chilean director Sebastián Cuevas, selected for Sanfic Industria’s Ibero-American Works In Progress lineup.
In 2023, the film received financing from the Regional Audiovisual Fund and the Development Fund of the Audiovisual Fund of MINCAP, Chile after previously participating in film Labs in the region, including the Sanfic Lab, Lab Cinelebu and the 2nd CCC Co-Production Meeting, with mentorship from Christopher Murray and Jose Luis Torres Leiva.
Produced by Catalina Alarcón at Amanda Puga’s Southern-Chilean outift Praxia and Santiago-based Mala Films, the script was penned by Cuevas and Paula Armstrong, the narrative focusing on the vast space between siblings as they come together to mourn the ill health of the family matriarch.
“While I was studying, my first big goal was to write and direct a film that talked about my roots, my ancestors; as a main driving force I took a piece of my family’s history that no one wanted to talk about and captured it in the pages of a script,” Cuevas told Variety.
The silence of relationships neglected for decades hangs heavy against a mystical and remote isle backdrop. The location, an adversarial protagonist in the film – its solemn, hazy days rolling into tranquil, half-eerie nights. The tension between sisters is on full display, nothing to distract them save for their time spent smoking cigarettes or tending to the grounds.
“It’s a sensitive and authorial film that explores family secrets and the pain of a family’s past. Produced entirely in the south of Chile, on the island of Chiloé, our film seeks to portray and preserve the atmospheric, sensory, and observational tone that the island and its inhabitants possess, “Alarcón relayed.
Cuevas added: “I’ve always felt connected to the Big Island of Chiloé. My thoughts, desires and goals reside there. I feel that a part of me belongs to the island, and that was the genesis of telling this story.”
“Beyond wanting to talk about its myths and legends-that’s what almost everyone who films there wants to capture-I was interested in exploring its people, their fears and the loneliness in which many live and die. All of these aspects, added to the atmosphere and landscapes of the island, make the story inevitably ascend to a universal level due to its themes,” he continued.
A hushed holding pattern takes Silvia hostage, a near stranger to the place she once knew. Her inheritance on the line, she’s placed firmly at the center of her grief while parsing through a thorny past in this slow-burn odyssey toward reconciliation.
“I think we all want to go home at some point in our lives. We feel that desire to return to the place we were born and raised. Even though it’s sometimes painful, we must face it in order to close cycles, heal. It’s difficult because no one wants to face rejection or those fears that become traumas and pains that we carry throughout our entire lives,” Cuevas mused.
“Right now, I’m writing a new film called ‘Los susurros del viento del desierto,’ and I constantly return to the place I grew up; a poor, marginal commune on the outskirts of Santiago where I’m proud to belong, because despite experiencing my greatest pains and fears there, I also have very good memories, it makes me very happy,” he added.
Concluding, “We can return home in different ways, at different times, but I think what’s important is that we do return.”