Guillermo Calderón: Last News

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentNetflix and ‘Spencer’ director Pablo Larraín have gone into production on “El Conde,” a black comedy picturing bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire.Larraín will share screenwriting credits with Guillermo Calderón, Chile’s foremost playwright and Larraín’s writing partner on “Neruda” and Berlin Grand Jury Prize winner “The Club,” the movie which persuaded Natalie Portman to play the lead in the Larraín-directed “Jackie.”“El Conde” is produced by Juan de Dios Larraín at Fabula, the Larraín brothers’ Chile-based film-TV production house whose credits include “Spencer” and “Jackie,” all Larrain’s Chilean movies, and Sebastian Lelio’s 2018 Academy Award winning “A Fantastic Woman.” Moving from fest-winning straight-arrow arthouse fare such as “Tony Manero” to movies with a wider audience appeal from 2012 Cannes Directors Fortnight winner “No,” starring Gael García Bernal and then into English-language titles from “Jackie,” Pablo Larrain has established himself in the vanguard of Latin American cinema.Whatever the setting, his movies combine an acute sense of character and big ideas, on power dyanamics, the fate of women in traditional worlds, the lure and hell of fame and also the multiple hostages left to fortune by Augusto Pinochet’s far right and bloody dictatorship.In a review of “Jackie” Variety’s Guy Lodge hailed Larraín as “the most daring and prodigious political filmmaker of his generation,”“El Conde” looks to drive deeper into some of the themes, mixing character analysis, drama and comedy and a trenchant analysis of the makings of the modern world – not only in Chile but in global terms.The historical black comedy revolves around Augusto

EXCLUSIVE: Guillermo Calderón, one of Latin America’s most respected screenwriters and playwrights, has come aboard to script the miracle true story from last year of four children, including a baby, who survived a plane crash and 40 days in the Amazon Rainforest before being rescued by Colombian special forces.

Pablo Larraín’s string of mostly 20th century biographical dramas hits a pinnacle of audacious brilliance with El Conde (The Count), a madly inspired reinvention of events embedded in the notion that longtime Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet became a vampire who ultimately tires of life and wants out after living some 250 years.