The Summer of Flying Fish

Manena is vacationing at a summer house. Her father dotes on her, but acts as an arrogant patriarch towards his wife, his employees and his neighbours from the Mapuche tribe. He is obsessed with exterminating the carps in his artificial lagoon, which serve as a metaphor for the Mapuche natives, who with their traditional way of living no longer have a place in modern Chile. As his methods become increasingly extreme, the conflict culminates. In many ways this is a coming-of-age story that sucks the viewer into the building tension from the get-go. Manena is betrayed by both her love interest and her father, and her childlike naïveté is forever lost. acvb

The Summer of Flying Fish is the Chilean documentary filmmaker Marcela Said's (b. 1972) narrative debut, and premiered at the film festival in Cannes in 2013. As a documentary filmmaker, she has made films such as Valparaiso (1999), I Love Pinochet (2001), Opus Dei, A Silent Crusade (2006), and The Young Butler (2011).