After the Fog

1988. After fifteen years of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chile is holding a plebiscite. 8-year-old María watches the adults around her and knows that, finally, change is coming.

1988, south of Chile. In this elliptical memory of the childhood, María (8) goes to school in Osorno, returning at weekend to her family home by a lake. The sense of abandonment and isolation weighs on her and she escapes into the world of her imagination. When her parents’ friends come from Santiago, the parties last for days and Maria is left completely adrift, watching the adult world around her.

1988. After years of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chile holds a plebiscite. María (8) boards at a school where she’s fascinated by Tante Ruth, the German headmistress whose strict kindness gives her a stability.
      At weekends, at the family home by a lake, her parents’ marriage is falling apart and María’s even lonelier. When friends visit from Santiago the parties drag on into the night. The adults play poker and talk politics – they all support Pinochet. María steals a bottle of whisky and goes to the lake where, unnoticed, she floats away. After the guests leave María watches her parents argue and then make love.
      At school María dresses up in the clothes she finds in Tante Ruth’s drawers. She faints and Tante Ruth tucks her into bed. Back at home, her mother tells her that they’re returning to Santiago. María goes to the lake, saying goodbye to a life she loves. Her mother promises they’ll go anywhere she wants to. María takes her hand and believes her. But the future feels uncertain.

Director's note:
A German-British filmmaker based in Chile, I am drawn to the intimate and personal experiences of individuals confronted with epochal events. María grew up in Chile during the 1988 plebiscite that overthrew Pinochet. We see her vision of an unreliable world and her loneliness. Verging on tragedy and vibrating with the absurd and unexpected, Después de la niebla interrogates violence at all levels, in the mind of a young girl, and in the social, historical, and political context. The film is constructed from snippets of life that reveal a tension between a bucolic surface and a hidden malaise, creating a cumulative effect of fragmentary and impressionistic representations, inviting the viewer to experience the gaze of childhood on the adult world. In its historical context, as Chile this year commemorates 50 years since the bloody coup d’état, this film becomes a metaphor for society as a whole.