Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta died this Tuesday at the age of 83. A key figure in Latin American literature, Skármeta also had a significant influence in cinema, working as a screenwriter, director, and actor. He was widely known for the film adaptations of his works, most notably Ardiente paciencia (Burning Patience), which he originally directed as a film in 1983, later adapted into a novel, and eventually remade into the Oscar-winning film Il Postino: The Postman.
Born on November 7, 1940, in Antofagasta to a Croatian family, Skármeta was awarded the National Literature Prize in 2014. He studied philosophy and literature in Chile and at Columbia University in New York City. During Pinochet’s dictatorship, he lived in Buenos Aires and West Berlin.
A passionate cinephile, Skármeta wrote several screenplays, directed at least two films, and acted in five. In 1973, he penned his first screenplay, Victoria, for German director Peter Lilienthal, whose film of the same name won an award at the 1974 Baden-Baden Television Film Festival. Skármeta also wrote scripts for other Lilienthal films, including Es herrscht Ruhe im Land (1976), La insurrección (1980), which he later turned into a novel, and Der Radfahrer von San Cristóbal (1988), based on his own short story.
He also wrote the screenplay for De lejos veo este país (1978), directed by Christian Ziewer, about a Chilean refugee family in Germany; Die Spur des Vermißten (1980) by Joachim Kunert; Seine letzte Chance (1986) by Alexander von Eschwege; Neruda, todo el amor (1998), a documentary by Chilean filmmaker Ignacio Agüero; and the short film Brisa de Navidad (1999) by Mexican director Carlos Carrera.
In 1983, Skármeta directed the film Ardiente paciencia (With Burning Patience), based on his own screenplay. Starring Óscar Castro, Roberto Parada, and Marcela Psorio, the film tells the story of a poor postman in Isla Negra, Chile, who befriends Pablo Neruda and asks for his help in writing poems to the woman of his dreams.
Two years later, Skármeta adapted the film into the novel of the same name, which almost a decade later inspired the 1994 Academy Award-winning film Il Postino: The Postman, directed by Michael Radford and starring Massimo Troisi, Philippe Noiret, and Maria Grazia Cucinotta.
Il Postino: The Postman earned five Oscar nominations and won the award for Best Music, composed by Argentine musician Luis Enríquez Bacalov. This international production relocated the story of friendship to the Italian island of Procida. Later editions of Skármeta's book were published under the title El cartero de Neruda (Neruda's Postman). Burning Patience was also adapted into an opera by Mexican composer Daniel Catán, premiering at LA Opera with Plácido Domingo as Neruda, and was adapted once again for film in 2022 for Netflix, directed by Rodrigo Sepúlveda.
Skármeta’s novel El baile de la Victoria was adapted for the screen in 2009 by Fernando Trueba, and his play El plebiscito served as the basis for Pablo Larraín's 2012 film No, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2017, Brazilian filmmaker Selton Mello directed The Movie of My Life (O filme da minha vida), based on Skármeta's novel Un padre de familia. In 1987, Skármeta served as a member of the official jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival.
