Renowned Chilean writer and filmmaker Luis Sepúlveda has died at the age of 70 in Gijón, Spain, of Coronavirus. He was one of the first patients reported with COVID-19 in the European country at the end of February. Born in in 1949 in Ovalle, he was the author of more than twenty novels, travel books, screenplays and essays. He left Chile in 1977 after being jailed for over two years by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, and after numerous stops throughout Latin America, he settled in Gijón, where he resided since.
In addition to his acclaimed work as a writer, Sepúlveda directed two feature films, worked on the big screen adaption of some of his works, and had some of his short stories and novels made into films. He made his debut film in 1986 in Argentina, Vivir a los 17. the film was never commercially released. Starring Marta González, Arturo Bonín, Daniela Pal, Hugo Arana and Mauricio Dayub, with music by Andrés Calamaro, the film tells the story of a teenage girl who is mistreated by her indifferent parents, and finding solace on drugs. Sepúlveda wrote the screenplay with María Victoria Menis and Gabriel Wainstein.
In 1998, Italian director Enzo D’Alò adapted Sepúlveda’s novel History of a seagull and the cat that taught him to fly into an animated feature film with the title of Lucky and Zorba / La gabbianella e il gatto. In the film, a dying seagull entrusts her egg to a cat named Zorba, who promises three things: he won't eat the egg, he'll care for the egg, and he'll teach the baby seagull to fly. Sepúlveda lent his voice for the role of the poet.
Lucky and Zorba
In 2000, Sepúlveda worked with Chilean director Miguel Littín in the screenplay of the feature film Tierra del Fuego, based on a short story by Francisco Coloane. The film starring Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría, Ornella Muti, Tamara Acosta, chronicles of the Romanian engineer Julius Popper, a nationalized A.rgentine and one of the principle actors in the genocide of the Selk'nam, one of the indigenous peoples who inhabited the Tierra del Fuego Archipelago.
In 2091, Dutch-Australian director Rolf de Heer directed the screen adaptation of Sepúlveda’s novel An Old Man Who Reads Love Stories. Starring Richard Dreyfuss and Timothy Spall, the film tells the story of a man, who is forced to confront a dangerous female jaguar and his own past through the sacrificial killing of the beast he has grown to love. The film received numerous nominations to the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, including for Best Film.
Nowhere
Two years later, Sepúlveda wrote and directed his second feature film Nowhere in Italy with an international high-profile cast including Perugorría, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Luigi Maria Burruano, Ángela Molina, and Harvey Keitel. Set In a country under dictatorship (with clear allegorical references to Chile), a police night raid comes up with a few usual anti-regime suspects. They are sent to a camp in the middle of nowhere, and their friends on the outside start to plan their escape.
In 2004, the Chilean writer directed and edited the short films Mano armada and Corazón-bajo, which he also wrote. His last short story to have been adapted to the big screen was “The Last Fakir,” which was directed by Greek director Babis Makridis and released under the same title.
