OVID.tv, the curated streaming destination for documentary and art-house films from around the world, has released this week seven films by acclaimed Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor, the first woman ever to win the Golden Leopard for Best Director at the Locarno Film Festival.
Sotomayor studied Audiovisual Directing at Universidad Católica de Chile and received a master’s in Directing at ESCAC in Barcelona. She developed her first feature Thursday Till Sunday / De jueves a domingo at the Cannes Cinéfondation Residence. The film won the Tiger Award in Rotterdam in 2012 and screened at more than a hundred festivals.
In 2013 she co-directed Island, which also won the Tiger Award. In 2015 she premiered her mid-length Mar at Berlinale Forum and the collective film Here in Lisbon produced by Indielisboa. Her 2018 film Too Late to Die Young / Tarde para morir joven had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Golden Leopard for Best Director, marking a first for a female filmmaker in the festival’s history. Her newest film project, the omnibus film The Year of the Everlasting Storm will premiere at Cannes this July.
She has worked on videos and photographs for visual art exhibitions, including Little Sun (Olafur Eliasson, 2012) at the Tate Modern in London. In 2009 Sotomayor co-founded Cinestación, a leading production company based in Santiago where she produces auteur filmmaking in Latin America. Recently, she has been involved in Los Fuertes by Omar Zúñiga, Murder me, Monster, by Alejandro Fadel, premiered at Un Certain Regard in Cannes 2018, and Raging Helmets by Neto Villalobos. She also co-founded CCC, Centro de Cine y Creación, a cultural center, and arthouse cinema scheduled to open in Santiago de Chile in 2019.
The six films to stream on OVID.tv are
Thursday Till Sunday / De jueves a domingo
(Dominga Sotomayor, Chile, 2012, 96 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A family takes a short vacation, while the daughter of the family gradually discovers that her parents could be separating.
Too Late to Die Young / Tarde para morir joven
(Dominga Sotomayor, Chile/Brazil/Argentina/Netherlands/Qatar, 2019, 110 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Chile 1990, at the end of Pinochet's dictatorship, a group of adolescents living in a commune, attempt to make sense of their own burgeoning desires and tangled relationships while the adults prepare for the first New Year's Eve under the promise of democracy.
Mar
(Dominga Sotomayor, Chile, 2014, 58 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Martin (33) goes on vacation to the beach with his girlfriend. Everything seems normal, until his mother arrives. Lightning strikes and soon they need to make a car disappear.
Video Game
(Dominga Sotomayor, Chile, 2009, 6 min.)
León plays a tennis match while a farewell takes place behind him.
The Mountain / La montaña
(Dominga Sotomayor, Chile, 2008, 10 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Jose and Manuel are climbing the Montserrat mountain. They have not seen each other in some years, and they are in Spain for a funeral. It is a narrow, winding, uneven path up the mountain that makes communication difficult, until they reach an appropriate place to rest.
The Island / La isla
(Dominga Sotomayor, Chile, 2013, 30 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
A family gathers at their summer house on an island. Waiting for the last member to join them, they wander around absorbed by the overwhelming nature, unaware of the devastating news awaiting them.
Below / Debajo
(Dominga Sotomayor, Chile, 2007, 17 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Jaime, who’s been away from the city by his own free will, invites his family to watch an eclipse at his house in the mountains. The tensions in the group are apparent, but they slowly vanish, reaching the most transparent moment among the eclipse’s darkness.
