Werewolves, Pinochet’s Cocaine Cook, Glorious Music: Sanfic’s WIP

Roberto Doveris’ werewolf tale “Blood Red Nails,” two doc-features – Cristobal Valenzuela’s Black Cocaine” and Agustín Flores’ “The Curve” – and Málaga Fest hit “The Night is a Farce” look like potential standouts at a wide-ranging Sanfic WIP Iberoamericana, which underscores new production models on the rise in Latin America and beyond.    

Part of Sanfic Industria, the industry arm of Chile’s Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic), the pix-in-post spread also provides a significant platform for movies from Latin America and Spain aiming to hit the festival circuit later this year or first half 2026.  

Probably the biggest industry package in this year’s Sanfic WIP and a step in Doveris’ consolidation as one of Latin America’s prominent genre auteurs, “Blood Red Nails” marks his third feature after 2016 debut “Plants” which won best film at the Berlinale Generation14+ while 2022’s “Phantom Project premiered in main Tiger Competition at Rotterdam.

Matured at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University, Spain’s gold standard for creative doc development, “The Curve” is classic Barcelona Pompeu Fabra U. style dramatising its director Agustin Flores’ search for a narrative in his interviews of a legendary horse trainer and his grief at his father’s suicide. When he discovers the sense of story it is the makings of the film.

The shadow of Hannah Arendt – quoted in an introductory title card – falls over Cristobal Valenzuela’s “Black Cocaine,” a portrait of heinousness, embodied in Pinochet’s chemist, Enrique Berríos who was over-the-moon when he perfected hard-to-detect Nazi death gas serín for the dictator. Begun as an interrogation of evil, the bio climaxes in farce.       

Set to be released in Brazil by energetic distributor Descoloniza Filmes, as Germany’s Weltfilm boards as a co-producer, “The Night is a Farce” segues from Spain’s…