Chile’s Oscar submission this year for International Feature, In Her Place, re-dramatizes an intriguing murder case back in 1955, that of feminist author María Carolina Geel (Francisca Lewin) who murders her lover during an afternoon tea in the fanciest hotel in town. She was then remanded in a nunnery. It was rare for women at that time to kill in Chile, and if they did, they were often deemed insane. We won’t spoil the ending, of course, however, the verdict of that case was part of an intriguing wave of justice in the country at the time. Some may even believe it was a miscarriage of justice.
Such complexities are what fascinated filmmaker Maite Alberdi and her producer Rocío Jadue to tackle a feature version of this story. It all started with the book that Alberdi co-adapted, Las Homicidas by Alia Trabucco. The story is told through the lens of a legal secretary to Santiago, Chile judge, Mercedes (Elisa Zulueta), who the filmmaker says “is also invisible at that time, who in the midst of the debates about guilt or innocence, understands that prison is relative, and freedom has to do with her own room. That the only way to forge identity and personal and creative space is to defend the smallest thing, a place of silence, a room of one’s own, and this is learned by inhabiting the place of the other.”
While Las Homicidas follows the stories of three female murderers, Alberdi was drawn to how they were judged and how their crimes made them totally invisible.
Watch on Deadline
Click above to watch our conversation with Alberdi and Jadue from our recent Awardsline screening of the film. In Her Place is available to watch on Netflix.