Los debutántes
Chile,
2003, 115 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
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Andrés Waissbluth
- prod
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Sebastián Freund, Andrés Waissbluth
- scr
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Julio Rojas, Andrés Waissbluth
- cam
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Arnaldo Rodríguez
- editor
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Galut Alarcón
- mus
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Cristián Heyne
- cast
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Antonella Ríos, Néstor Cantillana, Juan Pablo Miranda, Alejandro Trejo, Eduardo Barril
- source
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WORLD SALES, Vision International, 27 rue de Solferino, 92100 Boulogne, France, FAX: 33-1-46-94-01-69. EMAIL: international@visiongroupe.com.
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COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender. Andrés Waissbluth in person.
OTHER
The Newcomers marks a grand entrance for director Andres Waissbluth. Setting box office records in Chile and submitted as the country’s nominee for the Foreign Language Oscar, this feature film debut deftly details the passions and humiliations of three desperate underworld neophytes, treading water among the city of Santiago’s felonious sharks. Brothers Silvio and Victor are recent arrivals from the Chilean countryside. Looking for a way to keep his young charge away from the capital city’s mean streets, Silvo seeks out a job as an enforcer in the city’s sex industry—collecting money from debtors and chauffeuring for the loathsome Don Pascual. When the brothers both fall for the boss’s mistress, they find themselves at odds with each other and targets of the boss’s brutal jealousy. Waissbluth’s keen eye and steady hand transcends the conventions of the gangster genre. Revealing the details of the story from multiple points of view, Waissbluth documents the dreadful particulars of each character’s fall from innocence with an unwavering gaze. The use of abrupt violence and copious exotic dancing underscore the illicit backdrop in blazing neon.
—Aaron Lazenby
FACTOID #208
Before the showing of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest at the 40th SFIFF, Bay Area editor Walter Murch (who selected the film to screen in the Indelible Images series), passed out fortune cookies to the crowd with Bresson’s musings on making films.
