As The Meltdown (El Deshielo) begins, vintage news footage reveals the strange-but-true sight of something being lifted out of a frosty sea. It’s a huge chunk of an Antarctic iceberg, on its way to becoming the centerpiece of Chile’s pavilion at the 1992 world’s fair. As a symbol of national ingenuity and know-how, the frosty specimen is kind of out-there. And yet, for a country emerging from 17 years of military rule and determined to redefine itself, it represents an understandable leap of faith. It’s also an apt starting point for a movie in which submerged things come to light, if only briefly — a coming-of-age story where the key lesson is to keep what you know to yourself.
Manuela Martelli’s well-received debut, 1976 (aka Chile ’76), a selection of the 2022 Directors’ Fortnight, took place during Chile’s Pinochet era. The writer-director sets her sophomore feature barely two years after the country shook off the despot’s iron grip. Inés, the lead character, was born in the final years of the dictatorship. A cherub-faced 9-year-old with an old soul, she watches the grown-ups around her calibrate their actions to a shifting world. Truth, she discovers, is less important than the ability to anticipate how people will react to it.
