Chile’s Florencia Larrea Launches 500 Cinema with Pablo Stoll’s Zombie Pic ‘Summer Hit,’ Debuting Trailer Ahead of its Sitges World Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)

Leading Chilean producer Florencia Larrea (“My Tender Matador”), formerly with 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 for everything to be centered in Santiago,” Larrea remarked.

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

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“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 seeks to challenge the limits of creativity. Antonia and Valentina also saw in the type of cinema I had been making, 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, naturally, I brought my catalog, and they brought their know-how in project development and management,” said Larrea, adding “500 Nanómetros is led by women, and I really like that too.”

Indeed, female producers are plentiful in South America despite its misogynistic culture. Credit goes, in part, to the #metoo movement. Women are also in previously male-dominated professions. There are a growing number of female directors and writers but also DPs and more in art, sound design and editing.

Aiming to center on genre cinema that challenges technical and narrative conventions, 500 Cinema marks it debut with Uruguayan filmmaker Pablo Stoll’s zombie film “Summer Hit” (“El Tema del Verano”) slated to world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival, and bowing its trailer exclusively in Variety. Its next project is “Invunche,” slated for next year.

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

Described as a “unique experience that blends romcom, 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 a pandemic lockdown. Ana, along with her friends Malú and Martina, are small-time thieves who seduce rich guys, drug them, and steal from them.

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 Tübingen mansion, they encounter 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 don’t die,” the synopsis goes.

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

“The first movie I saw on VHS was a zombie film and ever since, I’ve always wanted to make one,” he told Variety, adding: “Contrary to many filmmakers who start with zombies, I began elsewhere, and after making four films, this idea came to me.”

“When it comes to genre cinema, we can’t forget that it’s the cinema we grew up with, the one we watched on kids’ TV, at matinées and on VHS as teenagers. The idea of making a zombie film goes back to the first movie I saw on VHS: ‘Virus’ by Italian director Bruno Mattei, though he credited it as Vincent Dawn. ‘Virus,’ also known as ‘Hell of the Living Dead,’ is an Italian production in English that’s 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. The Uruguayan Berlin Silver Bear-winning filmmaker has showcased his third foray into directing, “A Loose End,” at San Sebastian’s WIP Latam.

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

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