A CHILEAN - SWEDISH - DANISH CO-PRODUCTION
GENRE:
ANIMATION - LIVE ACTION FEATURE
(80 - 20 % ANIMATION -LIVE-ACTION)
STAGE:
PRE-PRODUCTION
WORLD PREMIERE:
2026, SANTIAGO DE CHILE
PRODUCTION COMPANIES:
LUCHO FILMS (CL), CUSICANQUI MEDIA (SE), PHAETON NORDICS (DK)
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Chilean exile, living in Sweden, Ariel (52) has communication problems with a son Franco (16) who only interacts with Siri, the virtual assistant on his computer. He tries to get closer to him by reading a graphic novel to him, that he wrote himself some time ago, about his life as a child during the dictatorship and how it changed radically when his parents decided to hide two of the most wanted people by Pinochet's military regime, in their house... For ten years.
Ariel, a father in exile in Sweden, tries to connect to his isolated teenage son by drawing the history of his own life as a teenager in a 'safe-house' for armed oppositional activists in the Pinochet dictatorship. With a unique approach, this film allows us to address the lives of children that grooves up in clandestine homes in a serious but also playful way, integrating the new generations in a dialogue between those who lived in this particular part of history in Chile, and young people who have self-marginalized themselves from what happened “back then”.
The consequences of living your childhood with a secret identity, as our protagonist did during the Chilean dictatorship, connects to an audience that might not have experienced the horrors of the Pinochet era. The film mixes frame by frame 2D animation to recreate the graphic novel set in Chile 1973-1986, and a fiction part set in Sweden at present time.
The black and white drawings bring us sometimes to a dark place viewed from Ariel's internal memories and battles, exposing sometimes difficult issues of mental health that can be difficult to talk about with your teenage children and friends. The film dares to explore the images that Ariel draws representing how he was formed by these traumatic experiences and shaped by the fear of being in constant danger and persecution.
The film allows us to experience, through the eyes of a child, the separation from a father, and Ariel’s present as a father himself. We think this gives the film a universal topic that can appeal to a broad teenage and adult international audience. The story is unique and strong in itself.
To address the horrors of the Pinochet era in Chile with an animated feature is an artistic move that is brave and compelling.