Festival Predictions

2016 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Marialy Rivas’ La Princesita

Published on November 25, 2015

Home to about seventeen million folks, the nation of Chile and more specifically its filmmakers are super well served by Park City programmers. While we have the Sebastián Silvas and Larraíns leading the charge, this hotbed country includes provocative, genre-bending, unique perspectives from a peer countryman/women. In 2012, Marialy Rivas was part of that wave with her grab them by the balls dramedy Young And Wild which would go onto win the World Dramatic Cinema Screenwriting Award. She surfaced for a special project, mini film Melody was part of the Sundance Institute Short Film Challenge. Production on third feature began earlier this year. Since then, she took La Princesita to the 2015 Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Lab: Feature Film this July and this past September Rivas brought an unfinished copy to San Sebastian’s Films in Progress pix-in-post competition. Inspired by true events, this stars Sara Caballero, Marcelo Alonso, Maria Gracia Omegna and Stefano Mardones. The trailer recently dropped and it’ll be another item we can categorize as “disquieting”.

Gist: Written by Camila Gutiérrez and Rivas, the leader of religious cult has one single purpose and belief: a new order is necessary, and 12-year-old Tamara is the one responsible for procreating the leaders of the new world. Tamara shall earn her freedom in a way she never imagined.

Production Co./Producers: Fabula’s Juan de Dios Larraín and Pablo Larraín (The Club).

Prediction: Sundance World Dramatic Comp with Rotterdam and Berlin fighting to get it within their line-ups.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international)

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Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).