Tony Manero (2008)

Essential Viewing

Chile/Brazil

Feature Film

Director: Pablo Larraín

Writers: Alfredo Castro, Mateo Iribarren, Pablo Larraín

Cinematographer: Sergio Armstrong

Cast: Alfredo Castro, Paola Lattus, Héctor Morales, Amparo Noguera, Elsa Poblete

Against a backdrop of fear, repression, and persecution under the nefarious rule of military dictator Pinochet in 1979, Larraín brilliantly and painfully paints a portrait of a social outcast who, at the age of 52, has nothing in his life other than a desire to be Tony Manero, the fictional hero of Saturday Night Fever (1977), a dream for which he is willing to go to extreme and bloody lengths. Iain.Stott