Esteban Larrain

In 1997 he won the National Fund for the Development of the Arts award, FONDART, for his documentary entitled, PATIO 29, STORIES OF SILENCE, which narrates the history of the largest discovery of missing persons in Chile in 1992. At the end of 1998, his project, RALCO, about a conflict between an hydroelectric center and an indigenous community, resulted in another award from FONDART.Back in Chile, he directed THE VEIL OF BERTA (2004) and ALICIA IN THE LAND (2008) which won the Special Jury Prize in Locarno.

The Passion Of Michelangelo

A film by Esteban Larrain

2013 - Chile/France/Argentina - Drama

Chile, 1983. The first street protests pose a dangerous threat to Pinochet’s military government. The regime responds through a secret operation in order to divert public opinion. They pick a 14-yearold street child called Miguel Angel, who swears he can see and talk to the Virgin Mary herself, and they turn him into a pop prophet. His tormented face is reproduced in all the media, and in just a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people make a pilgrimage to Peñablanca, the village where he lives, to participate in ceremonies where prophecies, stigmata, levitations and miracles of all kinds are part of the usual routine.
During the period of the hoax, Miguel Angel goes through a deep transformation. From being a fragile and shy kid, he becomes a clever and capricious teenager who uses his
“divine gift” to manipulate his environment to his advantage. When the church investigates and finally resolves to ban the cult of the Virgin of Peñablanca, the government leaves the boy to his fate. Even if he tries hard to keep his seat of honor, Miguel Angel cannot avoid suffering a biblical fall: he is humiliated, abandoned and banished.