EXCLUSIVE: Chilean writer-director Felipe Gálvez, whose debut feature The Settlers premiered in Cannes in 2023, has set his second feature film as Impunity, a spy thriller set in the late 1990s around the arrest of dictator Augusto Pinochet. 

The film, which is based on the upcoming book 38 Londres Street by Philippe Sands, follows an ex-spy hired to prevent the escape of the Chilean dictator after his capture in London unleashes geopolitical unrest. Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations committed in Chile by former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón before he was arrested in 1998 at the London Bridge hospital. He was held under house a rest for a year and a half before being released by the UK government in 2000. 

Impunity is adapted by Gálvez, Mariano Llinás (Argentina, 1985) and Antonia Girard and is produced by international outfit Rei Pictures and Quiddity in the UK, along with co-producers Les Films du Worso in Paris, Danish outfit Snowglobe and Italian label Volos Films Italia. 

Gálvez’s debut feature The Settlers launched in Cannes in 2023 where it competed for Un Certain Regard and the Caméra d’Or. The project won the FIPRESCI critics’ award, marking the first Chilean film to win the prize, before selling worldwide. That frontier epic, set at the turn of the 20th century, followed three horsemen who set out across the Tierra del Fuego archipelago tasked with securing a wealthy landowner’s vast property. The film was selected as Chile’s entry for the Best International Feature Film that year. 

With Impunity, Gálvez turns his lens to the shadows of political violence and accountability at the end of the 20th century. 

“It was a privilege to come across Philippe Sands’ book when we started developing this film,” said Gálvez. “38 Londres Street reveals a part of Chile’s history that had remained hidden until now. This story offers a disturbing mirror on our present times, and a warning.”