Ventana Sur: Puenzos, Demente Back Guillermo Helo’s Film Debut (EXCLUSIVE)
Chilean companies Altirosapiens and Demente Producciones are teaming with Argentina’s Historias Cinematograficas, the shingle run by the Puenzo family, to co-produce social comedy “Spider Thieves,” the feature directorial debut of Chile’s Guillermo Helo.
Preceded by good buzz, “Spider Thieves” screens Dec. 1 at Ventana Sur’s 7th Primer Corte pix-in-post competition, which takes place Nov. 30-Dec. 3 in Buenos Aires.
The humor-laced “Thieves” follows three dirt-poor adolescent girls who dream of having the material wealth they see in TV commercials. To fulfill their dreams, they decide to climb buildings and plunder expensive apartments. They become media celebs, heroines for some.
The film is based on real events that happened in 2005, in Santiago, which inspired playwright Luis Barrales to write the play “Spider Girls,” from which the script is adapted.
“The issue of criminals who become media ‘stars’ has been addressed many times in cinema. What makes this story different it is that they are girls. The focus is on how the fame impacts on 13-year old girls and their environment. The film explores the fantasies and delusions that may be caused by an overnight change in social status,” said writer-director Guillermo Helo.
Set up at Altirosapiens, Helo’s feature debut is produced by Susana Espinoza and Argentine Oscar-winner helmer-producer Luis Puenzo (“The Officila Story”), founder of Historias Cinematograficas. The film is supported by Chile’s Fondo Nacional and Argentina’s INCAA Film Institute.
After eight years working in Chilean TV fiction -first as screenwriter, more recently as a director- in his first feature film Guillermo Helo has chosen the furthest possible narrative path from TV, for example, using handheld camera and tracking shots.
“I felt that the story of the ‘Spider Girls’ needed this kind of narrative to lead the spectator to be one more among the girls, but it was also refreshing for me to get away from the usual style of Chilean TV’s narrative fiction with which I had been working,” he said.
For Puenzo’s Historias Cinematograficas, the “Spider Thieves” co-production marks a further step into an already close relationship with Chilean film and particularly with Demente, which is also co-producing Nicolas Puenzo’s feature debut, futuristic western “Los ultimos,” alongside France’s Pyramide.
“We have always been interested in political and social issues and also in debuting film auteurs. It’s almost a specialty,” Luis Puenzo said.
“In Latin America, returns from local film markets are not enough to produce as we want. We have had to learn to co-produce with Spain, France, Italy… but also with Chile, Uruguay, Brazil or Mexico. It is not just a matter of survival, it transcends the economic. If we understand this, our Latin American cinematography will grow stronger each day,” he added.
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