Satellite Voices

Santiago

Rising Auteur Che Sandoval

April 11, 2011

The controversial director of "You Think You Are The Prettiest... (But You Are The Sluttiest)" speaks about his new movie

• Text by Camilo Salas

Che Sandoval is one of the rising stars of Chile cinema. He has won theatre success, local awards nominations and a genuine hoemgrown fame with his first movie, "You think you are the prettiest... (but you are the sluttiest)" - here's the trailer. He has now managed to raise the funds to film his second movie, based on a side character from his first film and speaks to Satellite Voices about creating real Santiago street films.

Satellite Voices: When did you start to be interested in movies?
Che Sandoval: When I was 15 I started to get interested in films in a different way from the rest of my friends. I saw a lot of movies, but Hollywood kind of movies. I was fan of actors and actresses, more than directors. Later, with the idea of studying cinema, I started to go to alternative movie theatres three of four times a week to see something different that probably none of my friends have ever heard about. But I liked it, i liked that sort of melancholy of going to the cinema alone and meet stranger girls. So, with the idea that I knew something about cinema I went to film school (Escuela de Cine de Chile) but truth is I didn't know anything and I hadn't seen much.

SV: Tell us about the movie you are working on, what is it about?
Che Sandoval: In my first movie, “You Think You Are The Prettiest... (But You Are The Sluttiest)”  Javier, the protagonist, meets a lot of people in a night. So my new movie is about one of this characters after this encounter. Sebastián (35-years-old) is an office worker, he is broken hearted because his wife has just left him and he wants to get laid out of spite, but in the meantime he finds out his wife wants to leave the country with his two kids. So that night he has to decide between his family and his adolescent lifestyle. The movie is about being 30 to 40, an age in which you are between stages.

SV: What subjects are you interested in?
Che Sandoval: I'm interested in human nature. I like the way values change, it's like everything is just normal now (things that used to be judged by people). I like street films with good but hypocritical people, people that pretend to be something they are not. I'm interested in how the concept of man has changed. For instance, my first movie is about what you think is being a man when you're 20 (fuck all the hottest girls that you find) and the second one is about what you think is being a man when you're 35 (have a family, grow up).

I am interested in doing a street film. I am interested in colloquial speech. I am interested in fresh movies that seems to happen at the moment you watch it. I am interested to take the big issues with humour, we are in a nihilistic and light (I call it nihilight), in which pain is easier to deny and ways to divert attention are many.

SV: What is your next project?
Che Sandoval: It would be the third part of this trilogy, and its about the son of Sebastian. He is 13-years-old and this closes my trilogy about my vision of man, seen from the eyes of a child who is being disarmed his family and possibly should stop seeing their friends in the coming days. His mother is in Europe waiting for him with his younger brother, and his father is missing. His name is Camilo and he is a young punk who walks around the city with his friends doing bad things. More than that I can not tell.