Connect with Deadline online! https://www.facebook.com/deadline/ https://twitter.com/DEADLINE https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Welcome to the deadline screening of Netflix's In Her Place, Chili's official selection for
00:11this year's Oscars. I'm your host, Anthony D'Alessandro. Let's welcome our guests, the
00:18director of the film, Maite Alberdi. Hello.
00:22Hi, thank you for the invitation.
00:25And producer, Rocio Hadaway. Hi.
00:28Hi, Anthony. Nice to meet you.
00:32Let's start off with how did the source material come to you and how did you both first learn
00:38about the case of Maria Carolina Gil?
00:42Yes, thank you. It's a good question because the starting point was a book that we loved.
00:51We read it at the same time, I think, with Rocio. And it's a book called Las Homicidas,
00:58The Killers in English. And it tells the story of four cases of women that commit crimes
01:06in the past century. And there we find the story of Maria Carolina. But what it was the
01:14most interested for us, it was the point of view of the author. It's a nonfiction book
01:22I can say. And she said that all the women that commit crimes in Chile in the past century
01:28were forgiven by law only because they were women. Because if the justice forgave them,
01:37they will have, if the justice condemned them, they will have more visibility. So the way
01:45to put her in a quiet place, it was to give to them the forgiveness. So that point of
01:56view was very special for us because all of that women were treated as the crazy, that
02:02they need to go to the psychiatric, but nobody wanted to listen to the reasons. They were
02:09sick for the justice. They cannot be bad. The woman must be a good woman and they cannot be
02:16out of her place, of their places. And that theory was our starting point that was very
02:23interesting for us. And in the other hand, the case was very rich because we have all the real
02:31materials, all the archive, all the testimonies that you see on the film are the real testimony.
02:40We have the press, the letters. So for me as a documentary filmmaker, it was the kind of
02:50documentary that I will do if their characters were alive. So it was like a kind of reconstruction
02:58for me of that episode with the real materials. So I understand that the character of Mercedes
03:08is fictitious. Can you talk about that? Yeah, she's a fictitious character that for us was very
03:14important to don't put the protagonist in the killer, Maria Carolina, because she was a character
03:22that she never speak about the case. So if we put her as the protagonist, for me it was unfair
03:30because I have to give to her reasons that in the reality she never did. So we create the character
03:39of Mercedes as an observer of that period as we, RocÃo, me, the scriptwriters, are observers of this case
03:49trying to understand to this character that is Maria Carolina. So I think that Mercedes
03:56represents our point of view of a woman that is discovering new descriptions of freedom
04:07and personal spaces looking into the other. And I think that it's a kind of what do you look
04:15when you look another woman? What do you learn to be in another places? That it's so important
04:21for us like to have role models in a way. The idea was this reconstruction of all the investigation,
04:30all the testimonies we had, and put it in a place. And that place was Mercedes. She's always looking,
04:39she's really quiet, she's overthinking what's going on, and nobody is actually seeing her or
04:49looking or understanding what she has to say. Is the judgment for Maria Carolina still a shocking
04:58one to this day in Chile? It's weird that people don't knew the case really. Like with the film
05:06and with the book, the people started to know about it. But every time that they saw the film
05:12or read the book, everybody got crazy like how she got the pardon with a letter of Gabriela Mistral,
05:20like our most important writer, to the president. And it's like crazy and it's still happening that
05:29kind of high class privilege in the justice system that are terrible. It's unbelievable
05:40until today and unbelievable when the people know that story. Can you talk about the complex
05:48feelings that Mercedes has toward Maria Carolina? Yeah, I think that Mercedes is a character that
05:58as most of the women of that period never saw another forms of life or another ways to think
06:11her life or her day by day, I think. And it's the first example that she saw of an independent
06:22woman, that she has her own space. She has her own life. She take her own decisions.
06:30She killed her boyfriend without gave explanations to anybody like that kind of freedom. It's
06:40shocking for her. And she's discovering not a new life, but the minimum necessities that you have
06:49of your personal and own space for being creative. And I think that small discovery,
06:58it's very big at the end, because at the same time, I think it's not of that period.
07:06I think that it's about the necessity of your own room that everybody has until today. And
07:13as a woman, we conquer so many public spaces, but not so many domestic spaces,
07:22mostly in Latin America, that that kind of personal space is important. And it's what she
07:31learned of Maria Carolina. Maite, how do you identify with both of the lead characters,
07:39female characters? I think that I identify with Maria Carolina with her capacity of being like,
07:49I think that filmmakers, we are like that. We try to be creative in any place and in any
07:56circumstance. And she's a woman that wrote an important book, being on jail, like for a short
08:04period. I think that in any place that I will be, I will be thinking in a film. Like, I connect
08:13with that, like take advantage of your situations to be creative. And with Mercedes, I completely
08:22connect with her situation of the necessity to have an identity and the necessity to sometimes,
08:33as one character say in the film, like all of us, we need a place to when we are nobody, like
08:41the necessity of don't be having a role and being freedom of ourself. Like, I think it's simple
08:50and basic. Rocio, tell us about recreating the 1950s era in Chile. Was that very, was it hard?
09:02Was it easy to pull off? No, it was very, very hard. We were lucky to have a very impressive team
09:16that led all the production design, wardrobe and props. In Chile, we don't have like, we don't
09:28conserve monuments or streets from that era. Everything is super modern. So, our location
09:38manager did an extremely good job, like looking for the places that would resonate to that era,
09:47especially for the Chileans. Hotel Trillon today, it's a wardrobe big company, like Macy's,
10:00in a way. So, we had to look at other buildings, other streets. And regarding wardrobe,
10:10our costume designer had to flew to Argentina to get most of it and reconstruct
10:20the character's wardrobe. So, it was very tricky, very tough, but we had a very good time,
10:31like investigating, reading, looking and understanding how our Santiago of the 50s
10:39would look like. It was very important because it's not only a context, it's a narrative issue.
10:47The spaces and the clothes, because the character of Mercedes changed in the relationship with the
10:56space and with her own image. And you both tell us the story about getting this entire production
11:05off the ground. Did you have to wait years to secure your cast, to find financing? Tell us
11:14about that. And Netflix coming on board. It was a Netflix invitation. We have, as Fábula,
11:24been chasing Maite for quite a long time and trying to convince her to explore the fiction side.
11:34And I think it was like the right time at the right place that we got this book that is amazing,
11:43that Maite liked the book. We secured the rights and I would say that the longest
11:53part of the process was the first part, that we need a lot of investigation before getting
12:01into the script itself. But besides that, I would say it was quite a costume time
12:09that we pulled this over. What are the lessons that you hope that audiences walk away with
12:17after they watch this movie? One of them, I think that it's for me so important
12:26to try to hear or understand the real reasons when people commit crimes and to don't judge
12:36like with prejudge and stereotypes, mostly in case of women, I think that it's one.
12:44And in the other hand, yeah, it's the defense of finding your own room or your own 20 minutes per
12:53day of silence and creative space that it's difficult to conquer for me. And I would add
13:04there's a lovely scene in the film where Mercedes goes to this prison and meets
13:11with an intern there, an old lady, and she says that she's really, really happy that she rests,
13:19that she has her conscience clear. So it doesn't matter where you are actually, like in your place,
13:29but if you feel free, that's the point, like feeling free independently where you are.
13:37In her place. Director Maite Alberti and producer Rocio Hadaway. Thank you both very much.