The documentary feature film Meeting Point was part of Cannes Docs, a section of his year’s edition of the Marché du Film’s, in which the film won the VOSTAO award, consisting of the subtitling of the film once it’s finished.
This year, four Chilean projects were part of the Docs in Progress Showcase Chile in Cannes Docs of Marché du film, the industry section of the Cannes Film Festival. Meeting Point, directed by Roberto Baeza and produced by Paulina Costa and Alfredo García, was one of them. This project’s about two filmmakers who attempt to reconstruct the memory of their respective fathers, who were sent to torture prisons. Their families, who get involved while working with actors, reveal the emotional repercussions they’ve suffered behind cameras, especially knowing the different outcomes in each case: one of the fathers survived, and the other is still missing. «We want the audience to identify with the personal process experienced by families who have suffered the trauma as victims of crimes and human rights violations. And, beyond their personal political stories, we show the legacy of scares that different generations carry on their shoulders», says the film’s producer Paulina Costa.
The film won the VOSTAO award in its participation in the Chilean Showcase, organized by Chiledoc and Cannes Docs, a section of the French film market that each year invites agents from the most important markets to present a selection of documentaries from all over the world. The award consists of subtitling the film into French and English once it is completed.
«We are happy. The crew celebrated the award at Cannes, but the most important thing for us is that the film is already breaking frontiers, moving and evoking empathy in an international audience without being completed. The jury’s words confirm that we are going through the right path. We will keep working on that», adds Costa. VOSTAO was created in Paris in 2008 by Fraçois Minaudier, a literary who believes that subtitling is not a simple translation of dialogues but support to understand films.
Furthermore, the producer Alfredo García, who is also one of the characters of this documentary, refers to this recognition: «This is a significant award after so many years of working with an incredible human and technical crew. I believe we are going through the right path; the film pushes frontiers, which fills me with joy. It’s the cinema’s path that seeks to heal by rebuilding memories, by making visible all the things that have happened and by communicating them onto others», he says.
«A Chilean project winning at Cannes Docs is a remarkable thing, and it fills us with pride. It also confirms the echoing that Chilean documentary is achieving at an international level, being in the spotlight because of the depth of its stories and its great artistic quality, two traits that characterize Meeting Point«, concludes Chiledoc’s Director Paula Ossandón.
Meeting Point, winner of the 2020 FICViña Docs Work in Progress and the 2021 Cineteca Nacional de Chile, is currently one of the three projects in the development stage of the production house La Toma Producciones. La Toma is a seventeen-year-old film academy with outstanding faculty: Gregory Cohen, Danielle Fillios, Javier Expósito Martin, Paulina Costa and Roberto Baeza.
Chile’s participation at Cannes Docs was organized by Chiledoc, the Chilean documentary sectoral brand, promoted by ProChile and the Chilean Documentary Corporation CCDoc.
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