Chilean director, producer, writer and editor Ricardo Larraín died yesterday at the age of 58 in Santiago Chile.
With over almost four decades of artistic career, he is best known for his 1991 debut feature film La Frontera / The Frontier (pictured below), winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Goya Award to Best Ibero-American Film, and Best Director at the Havana Film Festival.
Set during Chile’s military dictatorship and starring Patricio Contreras, Gloria Laso and Héctor Noguera, the film is the story of school teacher Ramiro Orellana who is sentenced to internal exile for questioning the disappearance of a colleague in this examination of dictatorship and military rule. La frontera is a desolate land inhabited by the world's castaways, who live lives of dreams and frustrations.
Larraín also directed the films El entusiasmo / The Enthusiasm in 1998, Chile Puede / Chile Can Do It in 2008, and El niño rojo / The Red Child in 2014.
The Chilean filmmaker studied in the School of Communication Arts in the Catholic University of Chile. On the last years he centered his work in the life of the Chilean independence leader Bernardo O´Higgins and he presented a miniseries of his life in open television.
He was founder of the film school at Chile’s University Mayor of Chile, where he taught, and was developing a new project under the title of El Guerrero enamorado / The Warrior in Love.
