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Chile’s ‘Erratics,’ Blending Denis Lavant, Speculative Fiction and Ghost Cinema, Bows at San Sebastián New Directors Competition
Chilean filmmaker Thomas Woodroffe’s debut feature, “Erratics”, will have its world premiere in the New Directors competition at the San Sebastián Festival. Combining speculative fiction, ghost cinema and Patagonian history, the film follows the ghost of French filmmaker Lucien Castelnau, who awakens after a century trapped in a glacier and searches for meaning in a changed world. Its central concerns include forgotten films, cultural memory and whether art can exist without an audience.
Denis Lavant plays Castelnau and provides the film’s voiceover, with the story drawing on indigenous memory, displaced communities and the discovery of the 1925 ethnographic documentary “La Terre de Feu”. Woodroffe said the project began after he was mistakenly sent research about the rediscovered film rather than a study of Patagonian photographs. “Erratics” is produced by companies from Chile, France and Argentina, with international sales handled by Paris-based MPM Premium; its wider cast includes Francesca Bozzano, Daniel Muñoz, Dominga Sotomayor and Felipe Gálvez.
In short
- Chilean debut “Erratics” premieres at San Sebastián’s New Directors competition.
- Denis Lavant plays a filmmaker’s ghost wandering a transformed Patagonia.
- The film explores cinema, memory and forgotten artistic legacies.
Explained simply
Patagonia is a sparsely populated region at the southern end of South America, shared by Chile and Argentina. Its history includes Indigenous communities and people displaced as outside powers expanded into the region; films and photographs from the past can shape how that history is remembered.
“Erratics” centres on a fictional French filmmaker and a real historical form: early ethnographic films, which recorded the lives and customs of people considered subjects of study. The story connects a rediscovered 1925 film about Tierra del Fuego with questions about who made such images, whose memories they preserve and how they are seen today.
The film is the debut feature of Chilean director Thomas Woodroffe, with French actor Denis Lavant in the lead. Its Chilean, French and Argentine production links reflect the story’s cross-border setting and its interest in cultural memory and the life of artworks after their makers and audiences are gone.
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