Our Father

VANCOUVER PREMIERE  │  Writer-director Rodrigo Sepúlveda’s sophomore feature was Chile’s official Foreign-Language Film submission to the most recent (80th) Academy Awards. When Caco (Jaime Vadell), a charming but irresponsible bon vivant and bohemian, is diagnosed with a fatal illness, he makes one last stab at reconnecting with the family he abandoned years before. His three adult children, sons Pedro and Roberto and daughter Meche, arrive at his hospital bedside. Caco, eager to let loose in the final party of his life, soon convinces Pedro and Roberto to join him on a binge through the bars and brothels of night-time Valparaiso. Sepúlveda’s fine drama is intimate, well-observed, and leavened with black humour. “Graced with the presence of the luminous Argentine actress Cecilia Roth [who plays Pedro’s wife], the film is a funny and insightful portrait of a benign Chile of the 30s to the 70s, now long disappeared” (Palm Springs I.F.F.).