1992. By exhibiting a piece of Antarctic ice at the Seville Expo, Chile sought recognition from the international community as an ‘open, forward-looking, civilized nation.’ This was just after the curtain had fallen on the Pinochet dictatorship. But ice, by its nature, melts - and the truth buried within it merely waits, holding its breath, for the moment it can reveal itself. Through the disappearance of a girl at a Chilean ski resort, the film asks how ordinary people submitted to the violence of the era through their silence and became complicit in the system for the sake of their own advancement - revealing that freedom and liberation do not arrive through proclamation alone. As director Manuela Martelli has noted, the girl’s connection to East Germany, a ‘vanished country,’ underscores that this allegory of ‘thawing’ is bound up not only with Chile’s history but also with the global systemic transformations that unfolded at the end of the twentieth century.
Chilean actress and filmmaker Manuela Martelli debued in B-Happy, winning the Coral Award for Best Leading Role. Her feature directorial debut, 1976, premiered at Cannes Directors' Fortnight in 2022 and won the Sutherland Award at BFI.
From Tokyo International Film Festival 2026, No. 39
