The circumstances surrounding the 1948 manhunt for the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet and politician Pablo Neruda is retold in Director Pablo Larraín’s Neruda.
The film from Chile recalls how Neruda served as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party until Communism was outlawed in that country during the Cold War. Impeached from congress by President Gabriel González Videla who ordered his arrest, Neruda was forced to go into hiding with his wife Delia and was relentlessly pursued by Óscar Peluchonneau, a police inspector hoping to make a name for himself. As the adversaries engage in a dangerous game of ‘cat and mouse,’ Neruda pens Canto General, an epic collection of poems and goes on to become both a literary legend and a symbol for liberty.
The film, which plays with traditional forms of narrative by questioning the line between fiction and reality, premiered in the Directors Fortnight section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and is Chile’s official submission to the Academy Awards.
Following the Special Projects Committee’s Global Cinema Series screening in the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on November 1, Larraín discussed the challenges of making Neruda in a conversation moderated by Global Cinema subcommittee Chair Victoria Hochberg (The Chris Isaak Show).
Larraín’s other directorial works include the features Fuga, Tony Manero, Post Mortem, No, The Club, and Jackie as well as an episode of the Chilean television series Prófugos.
You can listen to Larraín's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find all DGA podcast episodes here.