Pablo Stoll from Uruguay in Sitges with zombie photo ‘Summer Hit’

Leading Chilean producer Florencia Larrea (“My Tender Matador”), formerly of Forastero, has launched a new all-female company, 500 Cinema, based in the coastal town of Viña del Mar, where she and her partners are based. “Chile is too vast and beautiful a country to concentrate everything in Santiago,” Larrea noted.

500 Cinema serves as the film production arm of 500 Nanómetros – an innovation-focused media agency founded by Antonia Valenzuela and Valentina Ripamonti.

“After leaving Forastero, I started as creative director at 500 Nanómetros, a company with a long history in new media and immersive projects that always tries to challenge the boundaries of creativity. Antonia and Valentina also saw in the kind of films I made a space to continue developing innovative narrative projects. I saw in them great professionals and people with whom I could embark on a new adventure. So of course I brought my catalogue, and they brought their knowledge of project development and management,” says Larrea, adding: “500 Nanómetros is led by women, and I really like that too.”

Indeed, female producers abound in South America, despite its misogynistic culture. Part of the credit goes to the #metoo movement. Women also enter professions that were previously male-dominated. There are a growing number of female directors and writers, as well as DPs and more in art, sound design and editing.

Aiming to focus on genre cinema that challenges technical and narrative conventions, 500 Cinema makes its debut with Uruguayan filmmaker Pablo Stoll’s zombie film “Summer Hit” (“El Tema del Verano”), which will have its world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival . trailer only Variety. The next project is ‘Invunche’, planned for next year.

“Summer Hit” has been selected as the official feature for Sitges’ wildly popular zombie street parade, the Zombie Walk, and will be shown in the Midnight X-Treme sidebar of the prominent Spanish genre festival. Pic marks Stoll’s third feature as a sole director, following hits such as ’25 Watts’ and ‘Whisky’, which he co-directed with Juan Pablo Rebella.

Described as a “unique experience that combines rom-com, heist film and zombie horror on the sunny beaches of Uruguay,” “Summer Hit” follows Felipe and Ana, who find themselves on a beach after a year and a half of pandemic lockdown. Ana, along with her friends Malú and Martina, are small-time thieves who seduce, drug and steal from rich men.

For this post-pandemic summer, they have planned their biggest heist yet: robbing Ramiro Tübingen, an eccentric millionaire and patron of dilettante artists. At the country house in Tübingen they meet Tito, the landlord and his artist guests. However, their plans go awry when they accidentally kill their victims instead of just putting them to sleep. “This wouldn’t be a problem if the dead stayed dead, but this summer the dead aren’t dying,” the synopsis reads.

According to Stoll, the concept for “Summer Hit” started years ago. Stoll said: “While discussing film with Florencia Larrea in a bar in Santiago, I shared this idea about some girls who rob on the beach and accidentally end up in a zombie-infested situation. Although it took longer than we expected, here we are: many years later, with the summer zombie movie we wanted to make.”

“The first movie I saw on VHS was a zombie movie and I’ve always wanted to make one ever since,” he said. Varietyand added, “Unlike many filmmakers who start with zombies, I started somewhere else, and after making four films, this idea came to me.”

“When it comes to genre films, we can’t forget that it is the cinema we grew up with, the film we watched as teenagers on children’s television, at matinees and on VHS. The idea of ​​making a zombie movie goes back to the first movie I saw on VHS: ‘Virus’ by Italian director Bruno Mattei, although he gave the name Vincent Dawn. “Virus,” also known as “Hell of the Living Dead,” is an Italian production in English that is full of blood and guts and kept me awake for several days,” he said.

The main cast includes Azul Fernández (“Merlí Sapere Aude”), Malena Villa (“El Ángel”, Débora Nishimoto (“Pr1nc3s4”), Sebastian Iturria (“El Año de la Furia”) and Agustín Silva (“La Nana”) The film also features a special appearance by Uruguayan actor-director Daniel Hendler his third attempt at directing “A Loose End” at WIP Latam in San Sebastian.

“Summer Hit” is a co-production of 500 Cinema, Stoll’s Temperamento Films and Nadador Cine from Uruguay, founded by Pedro Barcia and Juan José López, known for the films “The Employer and the Employee”, who represented Uruguay at the 2022 Oscars and Celina Murga’s ‘The Freshly Cut Grass’, presented at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and with Martin Scorsese as executive producer.