Oscar-Nominated Documentary Filmmaker Maite Alberdi On Making Her Fiction Debut With Netflix Crime Flick ‘In Her Place’ — San Sebastian

Zac Ntim
·6-min read

Twice nominated for the Academy’s Best Documentary Feature gong, Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi is one of nonfiction cinema’s best-known contemporary voices.

On Monday evening in San Sebastian, however, Alberdi launches her first departure from the factual world with In Her Place (El Lugar de la Otra), a cunning and deceptively ambitious crime romp she has directed for Netflix.

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Penned by Uruguayan writer Inés Bortagaray and Chilean comedian Paloma Salas, In Her Place debuts in competition at San Sebastian. The film’s story is based on the true tale of Chilean writer María Carolina Geel who, in 1955, killed her lover at a high-class hotel in the center of Santiago. But the story isn’t explored through the eyes of Geel. We barely see her. Alberdi’s camera is instead focused on Mercedes, a fictional character who works in the prosecutor’s office and develops a charged fascination with Geel’s life.

Loosely inspired by the nonfiction book When Women Kill (Las homicidas) by Alia Trabucco Zerán, In Her Place has been described, around the festival, as Alberdi’s most commercial work so far. While the flick moves through its true crime plot at an entertaining pace, the story is full of earnest questions about art-making in a gendered society.

Before this evening’s premiere, Alberdi spoke with us about crafting the story, transitioning into fiction filmmaking, and working with Netflix. Check out the conversation below.

In Her Place drops on Netflix on October 11 and has already been picked as Chile’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar.

San Sebastian runs until September 28.

DEADLINE: Maite, how did this project come to you? Did someone hand you the book?

MAITE ALBERDI: Yes, the book was given to me. It’s a nonfiction book about four cases of women who killed their partners. And all four women were pardoned by law because they were women. At the time, women held very small positions in society, so the judges didn’t want to prosecute them because that would give women visibility. That was the thesis of the book. The adaptation process was very organic for me because it was like documentary research. I always start research on documentary projects by creating a big investigation, picking up testimonies, articles, and letters from the time. The only difference in this project was that the people in this story were no longer alive. But all the testimonies are real.

DEADLINE: You mention your documentary practice. Watching this film, it’s a pleasant surprise to see how theatrical it is and in parts how funny it is. One might expect an ex-docs filmmaker to shoot in a vérité sort of style. Why did you choose this style to shape your first fiction film?

ALBERDI: My reference for the crew was Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line. I wanted to place the audience with the judge in the film and imagine what the court testimonies were like. In documentary filmmaking, you’re never there when the golden moment happens. You’re always reconstructing scenes. And this is the same. You mentioned the comedy, when we started on the film, all the producers were asking whether it was true crime or comedy or drama but it’s really everything. I work in reality and in real life, all our emotions co-exist. It’s funny nobody asked me what genre my films were when I was making documentary films.

DEADLINE: The character of Mercedes is so great because she takes the film beyond the murder plot and allows the story to touch on bigger philosophical questions. You see her story unravel and you immediately think of, say, Virginia Wolf. Where did that character come from?

ALBERDI: Yeah, she was something that we created. We always knew that we wanted to construct the film from the perspective of a witness and not the killer protagonist. After all, María Carolina Geel never spoke about the crime in real life. So I didn’t feel I had the right to put a voice on her. I wanted to reconstruct her through what people were saying about her. She was a woman who had a lot of freedom in that period. Even in jail, she had the freedom to write a book, which became a very important text. Being a woman and filmmaker today in society, it’s so difficult to find even one hour of personal space to write, read or create. This film is, in part, a defense of one’s own room. The necessity of silence and the ability to have personal creative independence.

DEADLINE: What would you say is the biggest barrier to that independence for women in Chile?

ALBERDI: I think that the big difference that I see from Latin America, not only Chile, with the rest of the world, is that we still have a gendered approach to caregiving. In Latin America, 99% of caregivers are women and mothers. So you go to work, but at the end of the day, you have to go home and there’s a whole other job. The work is not divided.

DEADLINE: You’re a double Oscar nominee. And your last film, The Eternal Memory, had huge visibility in Europe and the States. Did that success make it easier for you to navigate this industry?

ALBERDI: The nominations and prizes have allowed me to continue making films. Before it was so difficult to find financing. It is now easier to pitch an idea and I’m very grateful for that. But it’s never easy. For example, things like press and campaigns are difficult for me. I spent a year making this film and now come back to speak about it. But I now understand that’s part of the job. It’s a whole other part of the job that is separate from being a director. And it’s important for the distribution of a film.

DEADLINE: Are you at all worried about how visible this film will be on a streamer like Netflix?

ALBERDI: If you asked me that question five years ago I might have said yes. But I premiered The Mole Agent on a streamer, and at the time, it was so painful. It was the middle of the pandemic. Now I’ve realized there are so many audience members that don’t go to the cinema to see certain films. So streaming, as a director, opens your work up to new audiences that you never get in the theater. But, at the same time, this film is also going to be in theaters in Chile and other countries. So we’re getting a bit of both.

DEADLINE: Why come back to San Sebastian with this film?

ALBERDI: San Sebastian is a festival where the audience actually goes to the cinema. The theaters are full. I have traveled to many film festivals and you don’t always see that. It’s also a very important connection point between the European and Latin American worlds. As a filmmaker, you get a great mix of real audience members and industry.

RELATED: Festival In Focus: How San Sebastian Has Positioned Itself As A Bridge Between Europe & Latin America

DEADLINE: Chile appears to be such a bustling film industry. People like yourself and Pablo Larraín are making a lot of diverse work. What’s in the water over there?

ALBERDI: As an industry, we have been racing along together. We are respectful of each other’s personal style and nobody copies anyone. We understand our industry can be a diverse filmography and we promote that. My generation, which includes Pablo Larraín and Sebastián Lelio, is the first generation to study at the cinema school after the dictatorship. The previous generation didn’t get to go. They had to do everything themselves. So we are a new generation with all the freedoms that the previous one didn’t have.

DEADLINE: Are you optimistic about the future of cinema in Chile?

ALBERDI: Previously, national funds across Latin America were increasing. But now as we see in Argentina, this can change depending on the whims of a president or government. So it is important to have private money and the streamers are investing. This is providing money that we didn’t have before. So I am optimistic about the new possibilities that previously wouldn’t have been possible because of the political context of Latin America.

DEADLINE: Will you make another fiction film?

ALBERDI: I think I will do more hybrid work. Fiction and non-fiction mixed.

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