IFFR KINO #29: No

We continue the fourth season of IFFR KINO on Wednesday 4 March with No (IFFR 2013), Pablo Larraín's final piece of his masterful trilogy on General Pinochet's Chilean dictatorship.

Before Neruda, Jackie, and recently Ema, we knew Pablo Larraín mainly as a chronicler of the Pinochet era. He made no less than three films about this infamous period in Chilean history, which lasted from 1973 to 1990.

After his film about life during the dictatorship (Tony Manero) and one about the beginning of it (Post Mortem) he shows in No the final deathblow for Pinochet's regime: the pro-democratic No vote in a referendum held in 1988 under international pressure. As a commercial advertiser Gael García Bernal incites the melancholy political opposition to a cheerful, optimistic No campaign. Following the stylized design and black and comic tone of the two previous films, Larraín employed an energetic reportage style in this closing piece, in which original news and advertising images could be seamlessly integrated thanks to the use of old U-matic video cameras. 

Missed Pablo Larraín's latest film, Ema, at IFFR 2020? This audiovisual spectacle full of dance and drama about a foster mother who is trying to get her adopted child back, will be screened in the film theatres from 19 March.

Pablo Larraín, 2012, Chile/France/USA, 118', Spanish spoken, English subtitled