Audio transcription

John Quackenbush  0:00  

February 25, 2019, the Harvard Film Archive screened Too Late to Die Young. This is the audio recording of the introduction and Q&A. Those participating are filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor, and HFA Director Haden Guest.

Haden Guest  0:16  

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive. I want to thank you all for being here tonight as we welcome back for her second night, Dominga Sotomayor, who is here to present her latest film, Tarde Para Morir Joven—Too Late to Die Young. And those of you who were here last night for Sotomayor’s first film, De Jueves a Domingo—From Thursday to Sunday, will find common themes and imagery here and certain families, generational divides, and automobiles and motorcycles—this time dynamically used as cinematic and theatrical spaces, as vehicles for promised voyages that lead to unexpected directions and destinations. And yet, Too Late to Die Young finds Sotomayor working upon a much bigger and even more ambitious canvas than her remarkably accomplished first feature, now offering a multi-generational portrait of a community composed of several families living in close proximity to one another, off the grid, and in the foothills near Santiago. With Too Late to Die Young, Sotomayor invites us to consider and question this fragile community. And this experiment in alternate living is a kind of larger family defined by unspoken intimacies and tensions, by certain loneliness that finds the individual characters often isolated and alienated, even when within the larger group. Too Late to Die Young takes place in a subtly indefinite time, perhaps sometime in the early 1990s. Perhaps just after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship. Celebrative occasions—Christmas and New Year's—are similarly rendered ambiguous, tinged with melancholy and a sense of loss. The specter of history and politics hovers over Sotomayor’s film, without ever entirely defining it in any reductive way, or as simply as allegory. With its title and story, Too Late to Die Young meditates more broadly upon romantic ideals sparked by youth and kindled by middle age; ideas of individuality and freedom that are equally capable of leading to open roads and dead-ends. Our program opens tonight first with a short film from 2008, La Montaña—The Mountain—which is a student film made by Dominga Sotomayor while she was finishing film school in Barcelona. And I think it's a wonderful showcase of the understated style and approach to narrative and landscape, which continues to define her work. This earlier version is an older video format. And so you'll notice the sort of softer resolution that characterizes that video from around that time. Now, Dominga Sotomayor is here not just to present her work at the Harvard Film Archive—for which we're very grateful—but she's also here as a Baby Jane Holzer Visiting Artist in Film, and this is a new short residency program that is thanks to a gift by the great Andy Warhol superstar Baby Jane Holzer—and this allows the visitors under this fellowship—and which has included in the past Alice Rohrwacher, Valeska Grisebach, and then later in the spring Lav Diaz will be here. But these filmmakers, these visitors actually become part of the really vibrant community that defines film studies and filmmaking here at Harvard. And so Dominga Sotomayor will be visiting classes, giving a masterclass later in the week, and also doing crits with aspiring filmmakers. So we're really pleased that she can be with us over the course of the next few days. I'd like to ask you to please turn off any cell phones or electronic devices you have; please refrain from using them. We're gonna have a conversation about these films afterwards, so please don't go anywhere. And now please join me in welcoming Dominga Sotomayor.

[APPLAUSE]

Dominga Sotomayor  4:41  

Good night. Thank you so much for this nice introduction. I thank Haden for this invitation and your team. I'm very happy to be here for the first time in the Harvard Film Archive. This residency is something new for me and very exciting. So I don't want to be long, I just wanted to say that I will be at the end. And so any questions, don't be shy. I'll be happy to discuss with you either this film or the previous one, if you were here yesterday. So thank you so much and see you later.

[APPLAUSE]

 

Haden Guest  5:16  

Join me in welcoming back Dominga Sotomayor.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you, Dominga. And we definitely want to take some questions/comments from the audience. But I thought maybe we could start here. And we were talking about the fact that this film is about to have its release in Chile sometime soon, and the kind of conversations you're preparing for, right? Conversations, which will have a lot to do with the ways in which this film addresses or doesn't address the political—and I was wondering if this is something where we could start because I feel like this is where this film, like the film we saw last night, is very much about family, about community, about sort of ideals. At the same time, this is a film that seems to be exploring that topic with more—again, with just a larger set of ideas that take it in different places. So I was wondering if you could talk maybe about this? And maybe one way to begin this is talking about the way in which you left this periodization—that time in this specific place, both very, like, seemingly of a certain place, but at the same time kind of floating.

Dominga Sotomayor  6:40

Yeah, I think it's interesting because there is a contradiction, right? In a way, I was inspired by the 90s. But this is a specific summer when democracy arrived to Chile. There was a specific summer where my parents decided to move to a community that is similar to the one that is portrayed in the film. So it was a very specific summer because Pinochet was kicked out in December, which is summer there. And the first democratic president will start in March. So between December and March, it was kind of a transition itself. It was like a waiting for democracy. So I was thinking in that when I was writing, but at the same time, I wanted to make a film that is not particularly in that period. So I was motivated with this idea of making a film about adolescence, about teenagers, but at the same time, about the adolescence of a country that has to deal with this change. It has to leave some things behind and has to restart. But I think what moves me in cinema has to do with a kind of timeless and spaceless place of untime, which is not specifically related with history, but maybe is moved by it. So, yeah, yeah.

Haden Guest  8:13  

I feel like in this film, we deal with the elements in certain ways like fire, earth, water, like, you know, there's something—even from the wood that burns, to the wood of the houses, to the wood of the musical instrument. It seems like this is something else that the film kind of meditates on, and the ways in which the connection to—right?—to a kind of tactility of place and a kind of almost, I want to say, this desire to find a kind of connection with the place but it seems like in your way, in your film, you're also looking for a way to give that cinematic form and to allow the elements to have that sort of presence unto themselves. I mean, the fire we see in different—you know, of course it comes at the end, but it's anticipated in so many different ways—right?—a shot of the firemen testing in a way, that there's sort of a trial run of the fire.

Dominga Sotomayor  9:12  

Yeah, I was captured with this idea of doing a film about these people that have the illusion to move far away from the dangers of the city. But they're instead confronted by nature and their nature. So maybe people will ask me, “What does the fire mean?” or “What does the water mean?” They don't have a meaning. They're like objects that are there and maybe I will articulate the meaning later, but for me was first the image. And I think this is pretty related with my relationship with this place because I arrived there when I was four years old, and there was no electricity or phones. And I ended up living there for 20 years. So I could walk in this place as like—I don't know—not looking at it. I know every stone by heart, every tree. And I kind of all my life grew—this place crossed my life in some different status that I think the place is for me the main character. And I think it's very different when you make a film about people moving to a place or when you make a film about a place that is kind of with people—

Haden Guest 10:28

Right.

Dominga Sotomayor  10:28 

So for me it was like this is what I wanted, because I'm always full of rules and like dealing with limitations. And in this case, I wanted to be as open as possible, thinking in how the place was even more the main character than the characters, and yeah. And regarding the nature, I think one of the starting points was to think how there are not like limitations between the interior and exterior—so the exterior is an interior and the interior is an exterior. And for me, it's a film about no borders, you know, in a way I was trying to explore that. Also no borders between feminine and masculine, kids and adults, nature and them. So I don't know, this is where I was just trying to explore about it.

Haden Guest  11:29  

I love this idea of a fluidity between interior and exterior because we have these houses that are unfinished—right?—so the walls are actually open. Then we also have that musical performance where it's like this kind of intimate like, revelations are made—you know—to the larger group. But thinking about how the ways in which, you know, that you talk about the place as having a sort of central role of being kind of the protagonist here. One of the ways that you make that possible is by having these multiple storylines—right?—you've got the story of Clara and the dog, you've got the story of Sofia and her mother. And you've got all these different lines, and I was wondering if you could talk about the ways in which this came about, how you conceived this, how you thought about intertwining them and the sort of risks and possibilities of doing that?

Dominga Sotomayor  12:21  

I think the most challenging thing was to try to make a film that is not about one character. It's more like trying to capture like a collective status. And also, it's been very difficult for me to describe this community or this kind of life. And it was so open on some—with all these digressions and things that I cannot explain with words that I was thinking, this film cannot have like a conventional structure trying to portray the life that wasn't conventional. So it was—

Haden Guest  12:51  

Right, not conventional. Right. Right. Right.

Dominga Sotomayor  12:54  

Yeah, I wanted to be as free as possible, jumping from one character to the other one. I think talking about Clara or talking about the dog is also about talking about Sofia. So it was like a fluid puzzle of images and feelings and maybe they're connected more about feelings, rather than cause and effects.

More logical things.

Haden Guest  13:19  

I love the way, especially if you were here last night for From Thursday to Sunday, we start—the film starts in the backseat of a car like, kind of like the film. But then now and we think it's maybe it's going to be a film about Clara, the little girl with the dog, and then it actually moves to the front seat, and then it keeps drifting to find different characters. And I feel like that's one of the ways I think the film manages this—is a kind of drifting floating—

Dominga Sotomayor  13:45  

Maybe it's even more close to the structure of nature where it's like I was thinking in the trees looking up to them, in the smoke. It’s like—and yeah, I forget what I wanted to say—

Haden Guest  14:02  

No, but this idea of just kind of floating from—

Dominga Sotomayor  14:05  

Like organic, to be like organic and closer to life, rather than to ideas. So, yeah.

Haden Guest  14:13  

And so how closely modeled was the actual place we see in the film to the actual place where you grew up? I mean, in terms of the site, in terms of the actual—what we see on screen?

Dominga Sotomayor  14:27  

I think I kept thinking, how traumatic or disappointing it is to make something all the time. Like there’s—

Haden Guest  14:34  

When you make something there's a disappointment to it—

Dominga Sotomayor  14:37  

No. But in a way, when I was writing the script, I was having these memories in mind. Then when I was doing the locations, the place was not the same as I was imagining. And so there was kind of a nice frustration, I would say. There's some kind of frustration in trying to portray something that is not possible anymore. So now I’m getting used to this image, to the place, but it's not the same. I don't know.

Haden Guest  15:03

I see.

Dominga Sotomayor  15:04  

So it's been an interesting process. I decided to shoot the film in the same community where I grew up. But the place now has like 400 houses.

Haden Guest  15:14

Oh, okay.

Dominga Sotomayor  15:15

And has fences.

Haden Guest  15:16

Has electricity.

Dominga Sotomayor  15:17

Electricity, of course. So, but it was an interesting limitation because we were looking for some houses on some dirt roads that could work and it was important to me to make it in this place. In the same one, yeah, but it was challenging, and in a way I like that you're kind of lost in the place because they're not connections between the houses. It was impossible to make connections because the roads don't work anymore. So it was like fragments of what could have worked in the present. And I like that even though it has kind of a personal starting point, it becomes something very surreal for me; it's a place that doesn't exist. It's a time that doesn't exist. And we had to build another community to be able to portray this. And also in this film, I was sure that the film was not in the script. So I wanted to portray something alive that will happen during the shooting. So it was very important—the casting and the crew—and I'm happy that we kind of built a new community to put this community in life and then we tried to portray it. It was an interesting process. Yeah.

Haden Guest  16:43  

I like the way you talk about disappointment or you have a sense of, so to speak, of a kind of melancholy resignment to like being a distance from what you're trying to achieve and what happens. I say that just because I feel like that's a theme in the films themselves, right? Like you know, this idea of being too young, it's like the—you know—"it's too late to die young." It's like this idea that like youth itself is something that could never quite be attained even when you're there at the moment. The idea of going on a trip like in your last—in the film we saw last night—means never quite reaching the place you want to go. You know, I feel like that's something that's—

Dominga Sotomayor  17:20  

Yeah, what you think you need or you think you want is not what you need. Or—

Haden Guest  17:25

Right. Right.

Dominga Sotomayor  17: 26

Even if we think about democracy, it was like a party. It was like a New Year's Eve. We thought it was gonna be amazing. And then democracy is just what we're living now. It’s like another dictatorship of capitalism. I don't know. So I'm quite disappointed as well. It was like color, colorful, but there is something in Too Late to Die Young that in Spanish is Tarde Para Morir Joven that means afternoon and too late. But it's just this—

Haden Guest  17:55  

Afternoon To Die Young is another way to read this. It’s true.

Dominga Sotomayor  17:57  

Yeah, but it's just impossible to go there, so it's implicit that it's a time that is not possible to come back, in many layers.

Haden Guest  18:08  

But one of the things that you do... I wanted to talk just a little bit about the casting because, especially I feel like the youth—the children and adolescents—are so vital in this film, and to me like a character like Clara who just seems to have—like the dog—seems to be going on her own sort of path, and the ways in which—then also Demian is so striking. At the same time you talked about this ambiguity in terms of her look and presence, and so I was wondering if you could talk about the ways in which you were guided by certain ideas, or in the ways in which you were guided by these actors as you—or non-actors as you discovered them, and as you learnt—

Dominga Sotomayor  18:59

So—

Haden Guest  19:00

As you were with them.

Dominga Sotomayor  19:01  

As in my first film, I had this rule of working with just kids without any kind of experience in camera things, like TV commercials. And I worked with my mother. She's an actress. She's in one short film.

Haden Guest  19:14

Los Barcos.

Dominga Sotomayor  19:15

She’s also been acting in some of my projects. So she's still living in the community. And she helped me to scout kids from there and some others from abroad. But the general idea was to make an unconventional casting, where they could not be not selected. So—

Haden Guest  19:34

I see.

Dominga Sotomayor  19:35

I mean, I didn't want to make a casting with kids like, you are not there yet. Like—

Haden Guest  19:39  

Everybody who came, you included somehow.

Dominga Sotomayor  19:41  

Yeah, because I make like a scouting and then I invite 12 little kids and 12 teenagers to a workshop in my house, and we were playing music and then I was looking and playing with them. And then I decide who will be the main characters and the other ones were already invited to be secondary characters. But I think it was really important even though it's like a kind of technique, because they're shooting becomes like a prolongation or like a continuation of that process, and they were already friends and they were not in competition. And then I think casting is very important. And it's like 80%—I don't know—it’s everything there. And you cannot create complexity. I don't think you as a director, you can observe something that is beautiful, and it's complex, and it has layers. So I was looking for kids that seem to be older than their age

Haden Guest  20:40

Older than their age, right.

Domingo Sotomayor  20:42

Yeah, that'd be like in kind of a turmoil or—and I connect with them. And every time I make a film, I kind of extend my family. They're like calling me every day; they like go—Lucas has Christmas with my family—it's like, really like they become part of my life in a very close way. So I think that's the rule, like there's not a rule but people will ask me, “How do you direct kids?” It's like it depends. Demian was one process. Antar was another one. Clara, she's amazing. She's like, super talented, but it's mainly like, make them trust in me and be free and be themselves—as closest to themselves in the context of my story. 

Haden Guest  21:34  

Do you have rules for the adults at all, in terms of casting the adults?

Dominga Sotomayor  21:39  

Actually, it’s the same. It was a very challenging and eclectic casting because there are famous actors with a lot of experience as the mother of Lucas, Antonia Zeggers, but it's also the father of Sofia is a painter, and is my friend.  He made a short film with me 15 years ago. He's not an actor. So I treat him as a non-actor. But yeah, and then there are people living in the community. It was beautiful. I tried to make them connect in the same world and just be in the present and be with the others. And I think they had fun and the kids had fun. For me, it's like very heavy to think that these kids will spend five weeks of their life in a film. So I put a lot of energy to make them grow and to have a beautiful experience. And they were going to the shooting even if they didn't have to go because they wanted to be there. So then they will make like a [?PMR?] party. They were really into it and something happened with them also. For example, Demian, I was really struck by Sofia. Sofia, when I met her she was the friend of a girlfriend of my brother. And I was captured by this—you couldn't say it was young or old, it was man or girl. And actually, after the shooting, it started a process of transition that I didn't know.

Haden Guest  23:17  

Oh, she started transitioning?

Dominga Sotomayor  23:19  

Into he, him.

Haden Guest  23:22

Ok.

Dominga Sotomayor  23:23

So it was like a month after the shooting. I didn't know. There was something happening that I could feel. And so he asked me, “I wanted to be credited as Demian instead of the previous name.” And, he told me it’s crazy because the film premiered in Locarno. And it was very close to Locarno, and he told me I made this film as a girl and I will go to the premiere as a boy so the film will be the last history of me as a girl. And it was very moving and I started being very close to the whole process. And I think it's interesting how the film is such a transition in many levels, and it was also a transition for Demian.

Haden Guest  24:09  

I'd like to open the floor to questions or comments from the audience that you may have for Dominga Sotomayor. So we'll start right here in the front. And Amanda will pass on microphones so everybody can hear. It's coming right, right now. Thank you very much.

Audience  24:30  

I just have a question as to the evolution of your filmmaking as to the script writing, the dates, like, when did you start your first images for the film? And how long did it take in creating what we've watched tonight?

Dominga Sotomayor  24:47  

So this film in particular was kind of an odyssey. Do you say odyssey?

Haden Guest  24:53

Odyssey, yeah, yeah.

Dominga Sotomayor  24:54 

Odyssey. So I started just after my first film that’s called Thursday Till Sunday. It was screened yesterday. So I had the title, and I have some images. And some, I think I don't decide what will be my next film. It was very obvious to me that it had to do with this place. It was in my mind for a long time. And then I think I—

Audience  25:20

[INAUDIBLE]

Dominga Sotomayor  25:25  

Yes. So I had the first idea in 2012. And, but maybe it was just like a synopsis; an idea that was kind of growing up. And I'm always kind of captured first of all by images. And then the narration will kind of take shape in time. But many things happen with this project because it was refused three times in a row for the Chilean fund. So in the meantime, I started producing other friends. I made Mar—some commissions. Mar was some medium length that it was here on Friday.

Haden Guest  26:04

Shown on Friday.

Dominga Sotomayor  26:05

I made two short films of half an hour, but I think it's interesting because in a way I was changing while the process also and I hope it gained some layers also. I actually think it was for me, yet I had this feeling of being too late to die young also. No, really like it was like I felt older when I was shooting the film. So I don't know if I replied to your question but it was a break. Sometimes I write very fast, but I'm just having this ghost of this project that I knew would happen somehow. But it was very difficult to put all the pieces together.

Audience  26:48

[INAUDIBLE]

Dominga Sotomayor  26:53

Yeah.

Haden Guest  26:59  

Are there any other questions or comments? Yes, right.

Audience  27:13  

[INAUDIBLE] —is a starting point for you. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that—how you develop your ideas based on memory? And then what your changing relationship to the films are because your first film you made when you were 24, and you're looking back at it now in your 30s. If you could just talk some more about that.

Dominga Sotomayor  27:36

Yeah, I think there's kind of an illusion to don't forget, as a basis. I think there's like an illusion of capturing things. And since I make short films every—it was always about something very familiar to me. My first short film was about this 8mm tape that I found about my grandparents, who were acting in a short film shot by my aunt, grand aunt. And so my grandparents wanted to recreate this short film like 10 years ago, and I made it because they wanted to have it. So there's something in the need to, you know, like it's very related with the family. And so I don't know where to start, but basically, some image comes to me like, in this case, the night of Clara and the mother, the dog running, the forest fire. And it's not elaborate. It's not like a theme. It's like something very—like an experience that I wanted to capture. And it's interesting what happens with memory because it's tricky. It’s like, now I watch the film or Thursday Till Sunday, and it's like, what was real and what wasn't real? So memory is like just selecting what you want to select and in the film, kind of to—

Dominga Sotomayor  29:01  

[INAUDIBLE]

Haden Guest  29: 05

Like filling in—

Dominga Sotomayor  29:05  

—mind, like minding in the gaps of fiction, and then it's like a new memory. This film is like a new memory. I'm confused by what was real and what wasn't real. But, I think there is something else I mean, broadly, because it's not just about going to my childhood to portray it—it’s just like, it's my way of reflecting about something that is now like, important to me. And in this case, for example, I think it's very actual—it’s like, for me is very uncomfortable now. Like, is it possible to live this way? Where is the illusion? So I'm trying to—I think my films are not about the past. It's more like a reflection from the present to the past. I like to think in that sense. This way, the time is timeless, maybe it was inspired by the 90s, but it's funny it’s important now in another way.

Haden Guest  30:09  

I wanted to ask—I mean, just to follow up on that question, which raises a great number of topics, but to talk about the importance of music and song, because songs are kind of memory in your film, you know, in De Jueves a Domingo, the idea that the little girl knows all these songs, she's memorized them, but these songs are so often from the past that also, in the case of this film, the idea that the mother is a singer, and when she's listening to the tapes, we think of a past thing. So these songs are kind of both individual memories in a way, but they're also like a kind of collective cultural memory in a way—

Dominga Sotomayor  30:44

Yeah.

Haden Guest  30:45

—that are reinterpreted each time they're sung—because music and song is very important in your work. So I was wondering if you could talk about that?

Dominga Sotomayor  30:51  

Yeah, I love how this kind of popular music in Spanish talks about the feelings of this character that I’m not able to communicate what happened to them. So I like to play with this popular, common feeling.

Haden Guest  31:06

Pop music.

Dominga Sotomayor  31:07

Pop music. And in this film, I think music is the most concrete thing that moves at least Chilean people to a period. It is very concrete. And for me it was really interesting to see how even in music, it was a transition. It was a very random period in arriving to democracy, where we have this music in Spanish against the dictatorship that parents will listen and in the other side we have Michael Jackson—

Haden Guest  31:38

Right.

Dominga Sotomayor  31:39

—influencing the kids and everything that is in between. So I was trying to explore this randomless—

Haden Guest  31:44

Right.

Dominga Sotomayor  31:45

—period. And I think, I was thinking in each character also, how Sofia is someone that wants to be far away from there, so is listening to this English music—

Haden Guest  31:55

Right.

Dominga Sotomayor  31:57

—while Lucas is more into Argentinian reference.

Haden Guest  32:01

And the father with the classical music—

Dominga Sotomayor  32:03

Yes and I think this cross of generations and classes has to do with music as well.

Dominga Sotomayor  32:09  

Yeah, I love music and I think, yeah, everybody kind of shaped my taste because I'm very pop. I love pop Spanish songs, but I think they're super rich and I like to put them in another position in the films and talking about these feelings where characters cannot express and—

Haden Guest  32:32  

Well, and you deliberately avoid political songs like Victor Jara and things like this, now you're looking for an emotion instead.

Dominga Sotomayor  32:43  

Yeah, it was interesting what happened—yeah, it was interesting because parents will listen to music with meaning and kids without meaning and there was like a cross, like a crash of generations about this music that has like a goal, while other music is just like enjoyable.

Haden Guest  33:04  

Any other questions or comments? Did you want to ask another question or follow-up?

Audience  33:09

[INAUDIBLE]

Haden Guest  33:19  

So, a question about politics in terms of different groups expressing different ideas in the film. Yeah.

Audience  33:28

[INAUDIBLE]

Dominga Sotomayor  33:35  

Outsider. Yeah.

So, what was interesting for me was to observe these people trying to build like another world, like with freedom, like out of society, but they become kind of the same, no?  When there is no water, they will take the water of the neighbor, and even though they have good, like spirit, they will have like a worker there and the worker cannot belong to the party, but maybe the little kid will be. So it's kind of strange. But for me, the dog is the only one that has like—¿Cómo movilidad de clase?

Haden Guest  34:20  

Yeah, class mobility. The dog can go from—

Dominga Sotomayor  34:23  

The dog is like, it's like—

Haden Guest  34:24

—multiple identities.

Dominga Sotomayor  34:25

So, I was playing. I didn't want to make a comment about this. But I wanted to observe this complexity of classes that we have in Chile and also yeah, through that dog specifically, I think this is seen as really violent for me when they took the dog back. And another thing is that you asked me at the beginning about the political thing. I was really radical in leaving all the political stuff in the city. And I think that was a kind of a political decision because when democracy arrived, nobody wanted to talk about Pinochet or all of that. So for me it was like a decision to make a film in this particular summer not talking about it. So I was more focused on the emotional impact in these characters, or in the illusion of this group, rather than on the political subjects. And yeah, Igancio is a foreigner. I don't know, the mother—maybe the mother of Sofia, used to be very compromised. And now is like a pop singer in the city. But we don't know. It's like—questions. And I think what I like is to put the main things out of the frame—the city so Sofia wanted to go to the city, the mother is like a huge character and we cannot see her, and the politics.

Haden Guest  35:52  

So, playing with absences, right, that are really important, and has a lot to do with the kind of abstraction, I think, of space that you work with. Other questions or comments? Let's take one up here in front.

Haden Guest  36:10  

Actually, just wait one sec, because we won't hear otherwise. Yeah. Brittany, thank you so much. Here you go. Thank you very much.

Audience  36:22  

Okay, you talked a little bit about race and class. But that to me was very stark. And I'm wondering what you think the Chilean reaction will be from the public to this kind of film, and also what kind of audience you think will be kind of compelled to watch it? I've been out of the U.S.—or of Chile for 11 years. And I feel like I've already adopted this kind of, you know, like different positionality. So I'm wondering what you think also, as somebody maybe who's not in Chile permanently, I believe might?

Dominga Sotomayor  36:53  

So, what people in Chile would think?

Audience  36:55  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, once it’s screened.

Haden Guest  36:56  

Or what they’re anticipating, right?

Dominga Sotomayor  36:58  

Yes. I don't know—there were two screenings in Chile. And I was really afraid because there were a lot of people from the community also going. So I was afraid of the people thinking that it was one layer, like I was trying to make a critique about this hippie community or these hippie parents and I think what for me is interesting is the balance. No? Or the unbalance. But the contrast of—for me it was an amazing childhood, but marks me a lot in many layers. As a kid I had—I don't know—I had a voice. And a painter will ask me, “What do you think about this painting?” Regarding this I will say, I was eight years old, I was like “No, I preferred this one.” So it was a really interesting way of growing up. But at the same time, we were like, forced to grow up a little bit too early and exposed to the parents. So this is regarding the community and in Chile, there's a lot of prejudice. So people really liked it or people hated it. What happened in Chile for me always is like—we were talking about this. It's like people will expect something and then will comment about that. It will be what it could be, like a politically interesting portrait of the arrival of democracy, is losing these kids in love. So it's like okay, but I didn't want to make the other one so I have to be prepared for that I think, of course, it’s kind of a bourgeois, hippie community that can create—¿Cómo se dice anticuerpo, Cómo?

Haden Guest  38:38  

Antibodies.

Dominga Sotomayor  38:39  

Yes, like very bourgeois. So they'll say like this where you are a filmmaker doing bourgeois—they will say many things. I don't know. I think you can do whatever. Just what you can do—I’m not serving around and it’s my life and it's my interest. And I think people are also allowed to hate it or like it.

Haden Guest  39:06  

Right. Well, are there any final questions or comments for Dominga Sotomayor? And because I really want to thank you for your presence here these two nights and for this really wonderful film, which I know is going to have its U.S. release later this spring—

Dominga Sotomayor  39:23

May.

Haden Guest  39:24 

—in May, so we're hoping audiences will have—more audiences will have a chance to see your film then.

Domingo Sotomayor  39:27  

Thanks so much for this invitation.

Haden Guest  39:31

Thank you.

Dominga Sotomayor  39:32

I'll be around until Thursday. So if anyone wanted to talk deeper, I'd be open to—happy to.

Haden Guest  39:42  

Well, thank you so much.

Dominga Sotomayor  39:43

Good night.

Haden Guest  39:44

Please join me in thanking Dominga Sotomayor.

[APPLAUSE]

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