The Meltdown

A nerve-wracking drama set at a winter hotel in Chile, in the wake of Pinochet's fall.

We are in the early 90s in Chile. Pinochet's regime is history, but the mindset of the dictatorship persists. At a winter ski hotel in the country's northern mountains, a group of German skiers is training for the upcoming Olympics. The hotel is run by a married couple who are currently abroad, representing the country at the 1992 Seville Expo – where they are showcasing a massive block of ice to symbolize the nation's transition away from dictatorship. Back at the hotel, their nine-year-old daughter, Ines, is under her grandmother's watchful eye. 

A nerve-wracking drama unfolds when Ines bonds with Hanna, a fifteen-year-old German girl who subsequently vanishes without a trace into the snowy landscape surrounding the hotel. A massive search operation is launched, but Ines has witnessed something no one else has. Fear, codes of silence, and disappearances – the legacy of the Pinochet era – underpin this powerful, expertly crafted film, serving as a fine follow-up to the director’s previous work, Chile '76, which screened at the Films from the South festival in 2022.

The film is Chile's Oscar submission.

Lasse Skagen