Satellite Voices

Santiago / Español

Marialy Rivas

April 11, 2012

The prodigious young Chilean filmmaker and her critically acclaimed debut feature Young & Wild

• Text by Fer Munizaga



Marialy Rivas is a young Chilean film director and screenwriter whose first feature film "Young & Wild" was screened at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and also recieved the award for best International dramatic script at the same iconic festival. The story revolves around a young evangelical woman who narrates her religious and sexual adventures. The film opened at the end of March in Chile and has already explored (and garnered quite a lot of press with regards to) certain taboos that are still apparent in our culture.

Satellite Voices: How did you become interest in film?
Marialy Rivas: The truth is that I’ve always seen it as a vocation, a call. I have always wanted to be a filmmaker. I think it also has to do with the fact that when I was little there was no TV at home, so I went three times a week to the movies. I saw every movie, it seemed something so mine that it brought me an inmmense pleasure.

SV: What inspired you to make "Young & Wild"?
Marialy Rivas: I got the inspiration from a fotolog called Soyebanjelica. The person who wrote it signed as Young & Wild. She told sexual and bisexual explicit stories as well as sweet stories about her childhood and her present day tales of the Evangelical Church. It seemed so attractive that she exposed her life that way and I fell in love with the fotolog. And when you fall in love, there is nothing left than to consummate it.

SV: What does "Young & Wild" mean to you?
Marialy Rivas: I don’t know, yet I can’t size it at all. But in this moment a lot of learning, collaboration, challenge and love that has nothing to compare with any other experience in my life.

SV: Do you consider yourself young and wild?
Marialy Rivas: Ha. We all have some of it, I think…

SV: What's your favourite movie?
Marialy Rivas: Wow, tough. Paris, Texas I think. One day I went to the three functions of the film in the local cinema Normandie. It never bores me.

SV: Who's your favourite film director?
Marialy Rivas: Another difficult one, there are many. The classic masters like Cassavetes, Bergman, Fassbinder and Won Kar Wai. My friends Pablo Larraín, Sebastián Leilo, Antonio Campos and Sean Durkin. If I ever have to choose only one I would have to say Godard, Godard and Godard.

SV: And your favourite soundtrack?
Marialy Rivas: "The Hours", "High Fidelity", "The Sound Of Music", "Dirty Dancing", ha!