Zona cero directed by Edmundo Miquel, Chile

This 16-minute short film, & ZONA CERO&, is a first cut of a larger project, which is also my first “one-man-band” film.

The whole documentary will cover one of the main multi-crisis Chile has ever faced in its history: a big social explosion, huge protest marches, the feminist movement parades, the COVID Pandemic, and a long ‘constitutional process’.

All was recorded through the years 2019, 2020 and 2021, in the big city of Santiago and in the south of Chile's sublime nature: millenary forests, national parks, lakes, rivers, volcanoes... mysterious full solar eclipse included.

In parallel, I recorded the melodramatic self-told story of a Chilean man, Pablo, trying to live an alternative life to & the system&, contrasted with the same story told by his closer circle (ex-couples, children, friends and enemies), so that "their" point of view became a different, sometimes opposite perspective on him and his views (especially of women/romantic/sex- father/children-mother/son- friends-and-working relationships).

Also, I interviewed dozens of people, from Chile and different countries, from diverse identities, ethnicities, backgrounds and ages, to tell their stories, in order to gather as many perspectives as possible on the political crisis, Chilean society and history.
The formal idea is to accomplish something along the lines of a “Rashomon effect”. The challenge is to accomplish this through the pure art of montage and editing: no “voice off”, no archival material, no “explanations”. The objective is leaving as much space as possible for the viewer to interpret the "facts" from their own backgrounds, inviting the audience to actively and critically dialogue with/confront the film.

I'm also using my own music for the final feature documentary, from an album produced by myself and recorded with my ex-rock band, as well as music from one of the most popular rock bands in the history of Chile, “Los Prisioneros”, whose songs played in the streets as an organic political backdrop to the protests, and whose vocalist I also interviewed.

The next step in the project is to release other short and mid length cuts from the 60-hour material, and finally complete a three-part documentary, 90 minutes each, approximately.

The objective is to release the most comprehensive, perspectivist and multi genre documentary ever made about the different crisis Chile faced from 2019 to 2021.