Let us introduce you to the Chilean director Victoria Giesen Carvajal, who is participating in this year’s Berlinale Shorts competition.
Born in Santiago de Chile in 1987, she pursued dance, drawing and music from an early age. She has a degree in image and sound design from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
A fishing cove on an island fallen out of time and space, almost like the rocky island in Michelangelo Antonionis L’Avventura (1960). Nature is not merely decoration, but an active force of events. Ships appear in the distance, but do not dock. Here is where Gabriel works with a small group of young men. They amuse themselves in an age-appropriate way, but also talk frequently of the devil and are magically drawn to a cave. Out of nowhere, an androgynous creature appears called Héctor. Gabriel instantly falls in love. The birth of a love that Gabriel tries to decipher. But the enigmatic girl disappears. The other men burn her tent and clothes at night. A visually bewitching and disturbing film poem, which remains reserved and vague, constituting its fascination and magic.
What is your ambition in the film?
This is the first short film that I premiered in my life, it is the first time that I share something of mine that has a life of its own! It will be beautiful if its images and sounds cause some new idea or feeling in others and that these readings will be also new to me. Honestly, I do not expect a specific type of discussion, I just hope there can be one.
What do you like about the short form?
It’s not something I’ve really thought about. I think that the short length has the advantage of a more easily dispensing with a strong „hook“. Maybe that’s why it’s a good space for narrative exploration.
What are your future plans?
I want to do many things. I want to do classes, I want to migrate again, I want to work with children, to participate in an artistic residence. In creative terms, I have a couple of long-term projects that I want to develop during this year, one is a documentary in the south of Chile and the other is a project that in the first instance will be an audiovisual blog and then see what springs from there.
24 films from 17 countries will be competing for the Golden and Silver Bear, the Audi Short Film Award, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a nomination as “Berlin Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019”.
Berlinale Shorts 