Writer-director Pablo Larraín has completed his first feature film set in Argentina, titled “My Sad Dead” (“Mis muertos tristes”), which is competing for the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival. The project originated as a Netflix four-part miniseries produced by Larraín’s production company Fabula, with his brother Juan de Dios Larraín, and was subsequently restructured into a nearly three-hour feature version for festival competition.
The film adapts three stories by Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez and features performances from Mercedes Moran, Dolores Fonzi, Alejandra Flechner, and Carolina Álvarez. The narrative centers on a recently retired doctor named Ema who possesses the ability to perceive the dead. When her niece arrives and three teenagers are murdered in a troubled neighborhood, supernatural occurrences intensify, blurring the boundary between the living and deceased. Larraín co-wrote the adaptation alongside Enriquez, Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón, and Anastasia Ayazi.
Enriquez explained that her source material draws from personal experiences and real locations, including her mother’s work as a physician in a public hospital and an actual neighborhood that inspired the setting. She noted that while the protagonist’s supernatural abilities are fictional, they reflect genuine experiences within her family. The writer cited inspiration from the 1980s film “The Entity” when developing the character of the niece, reimagining the relationship with spirits as consensual rather than frightening.
Larraín described his first production experience in Argentina as revelatory, noting that working directly in the country and collaborating with local crews deepened his understanding of cultural similarities between Argentina and his native Chile. He identified the film’s innovative sound design as both its most challenging and interesting element, emphasizing how auditory elements convey narrative information beyond what appears on screen, a consideration particularly relevant for television viewing.
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